Fennel and rosemary pork chops

Pork chops benefit from a good beating to tenderise them and a bit of acidity to cut the fattiness. They can take rather strong flavours (like rosemary and fennel) but in a different way to beef which goes better with really savoury things like mushrooms.

This is kind of like a spice rub.

Mix a table spoon of fennel seeds with a couple of pinches of dried rosemary, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Rub the (tenderised) pork chops with a bit of olive oil and the rub and roast them (they take less time than the potatoes and they can also be grilled). Drizzle with a bit of lemon a couple of times as they cook.

I served it with lemon and thyme roast potatoes and a light salad.

Rocky road cake: attempt 1

I wanted to experiment a bit so I tried to make a rocky road cake. Not the most successful in the rocky road sense but really good none the less. The marshmallows I used, started off large but I chopped them into mini marshmallow size and as a result the just dissolved into the batter. I haven't gotten around to repeating this will larger ones so feel free to help me experiment. You can just leave out the marshmallows in any case.

Brief discussion of making a cake/bun, some recipes tell you to put everything in together and beat. I do not like this as the more you mix, the more gluten forms making it all chewier and thus less cakelike and more breadlike. Anyway from theory to practise

• 200g caster sugar
• 200g butter
• 4 eggs
• 1tbsp vanilla
• 200g self raising flour
• 50mL milk
• 200g frozen mixed berries
• 100g white chocolate, chopped
• 100g milk chocolate, chopped
• Large handful of marshmallows

You know the drill with cakes, cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs and vanilla, mix in flour and then add the milk. You can adjust the milk according to how large the eggs were, basically you make the batter nice and smooth.

Stir in the fillings and pour into a baking tray. I used a round silicone one. The silicone baking tray LINERS need to be placed on a baking sheet. They are really nicely nonstick if you brush them with oil but I tend to crudely line the base just in case. Bake at 170 degrees for a fan assisted and 180 for a non-fan assisted for 35-40 mins (check at 30 to be safe but don't forget that the oven loses a significant amount of heat, I think about 40%, every time you open the oven door). It's a good idea to allow it to cool in the baking tray for a couple of mins (to prevent melted chocolate going everywhere) before turning out onto a wire rack.

Excellent with a bit of ice cream.

Veggies moussaka

Well it's been a long time. I've been really all over the place lately: had to pack up and move house, sort out the new house (still not totally finished) and I've been really busy in work too. One of my best friends and I have also decided to try and start up a business of our own (coz, you know, we don't have enough to do anyway). More about that when it's ready.

Anyway, unsurprisingly there has been lots and lots of food in that time and obviously I'm not going to write all of it up but I'll try and put up the highlight over the next while.

Going to start with something I made absolutely yonks ago: Veggie moussaka.

This is really simple and to be honest I made it coz we'd run out of mince.

• 2 onions chopped
• red pepper
• green pepper
• yellow pepper
• 2 tins of tomatoes
• 2 aubergines, sliced
• 4 potatoes peeled and sliced
• about 500mL béchamel (3 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp flour, 500mL milk, 2 balls of mozzarella)

The ratio of the veg doesn't really matter, just use whatever is in the fridge. 

Sauté the onions in some olive oil then add the peppers chopped up. Once they are a bit softened add the tomatoes and season. I added a generous amount of oregano as well. While this is gently simmering,   boil the potatoes. While moussaka is great made with sautéed potatoes, it is also more calorific. If you have a multi tier steamer you can steam the aubergine over the potatoes, otherwise blanch it.

To make the béchamel (I believe I've previously discussed how it has a different name once you add cheese to it), melt the butter in a pan and add the flour to make a paste, fry this gently for a bit then slowly mix in the milk (much easier if you use a balloon whisk but a wooden spoon will do just fine). Heat this to almost boiling while continuously stirring to prevent it sticking. Stir in the chopped mozzarella making sure it all melts.

Assembly time! A layer of potatoes, the pepper sauce, the aubergines in a layer, followed by a layer of the remaining potatoes and the béchamel poured over. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius until nice and golden brown (about 30-40 mins).

Very easy, lots of food and ridiculously healthy. If you want to further reduce the calories/fat just don't add the mozzarella.

Simon's birthday cake

I like the combination of raspberry and chocolate as it prevents the cake being too sweet. Originally I saw the recipe in delicious! magazine: chocolate and berry tray bake

I modified it a bit to make it more chocolatey (and easier to remember) and added extra baking powder to lighten it.

250g butter
250g caster sugar
4 eggs (I used 5 coz they were small)
2 tsp vanilla essence
250g self raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
250g drinking chocolate
100mL milk
250g frozen raspberries

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy then beat in the eggs. Mix in the dry ingredient, then the milk (to make a nice smooth batter) and the raspberries. Pour into a lined and greased baking tray (I used a roasting dish) and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 50 mins until springy. Cool in the tin a bit then on a wire rack.

I decorated it with some melted chocolate and mushed up raspberries (and birthday candles).

Lamb and goat's cheese sandwich

One day I had to make a quick lunch for the boyfriend and myself. We had some lamb left over from dinner the night before and some goat's cheese in the fridge....

 

I melted the goat's cheese in the microwave. Sandwich consists of cheese, lamb, lettuce, tomato and red onion.

Multi seed bread

This is quite a healthy bread but the flavour is very strong. In my opinion it is a bit too strong for everyday use and I made it to be eaten with a curry instead of naan bread.

500g plain flour (ideally use strong white flour which has more gluten and hence is better suited to making bread but I've been using plain flour for ages and it's fine)
about 2 tsp of fast acting yeast
120g sunflower seeds
50g poppy seeds
50g sesame seeds
2 tbsp caraway seeds
3 tbsp black treacle
300ml water
pinch of salt

If making in a bread maker just chuck it all in and press start. If making by hand just follow the instructions on the back of the yeast packet!

Apple crumble with orange flavours

This is a bit of an overhaul on apple crumble (I am a bit obsessed with orange flavour)

• 1 kg apples
• zest and juice of 2 oranges (or 1 depending on the size and your personal preference)
• 250 g oats
• 200 g plain flour
• 4 tsp cinnamon
• 200 g butter
• 200 g light muscovado sugar

Peel, core and chop the apples and place into a buttered baking dish (I like to use purex as that way you can see the food), and add the orange stuff. Mix everything else except the sugar together, then stir in the sugar. Sprinkle over the apple and bake for about 30 mins at 170 degrees Celsius (depending on the the surface area to volume ratio of the dish).

Pork chops with roast potatoes and salad

This was inspired by Jamie Oliver and prompted by the need for a quick dinner.

• 4 pork chops
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 2 tsp dried sage 
• garlic powder
• a drizzle of honey
• enough potatoes for 3 people, chopped into bite sized pieces
• 2 tsp dried rosemary
• half a head of iceberg lettuce, sliced
• half a red onion, slices
• squeeze of lemon juice

Put the pork chops on a baking tray, sprinkle with the fennel seed, sage, garlic powder, drizzle with oil and season. Rub all this into the chops and then drizzle with honey.

Put all the potatoes on a baking tray, sprinkle with the rosemary season, drizzle with olive oil.

Bake the potatoes and the pork chops in the oven for about half an hour at 180 degrees Celsius, flipping the chops and stirring the potatoes half way. Take the pork chops out and let them sit for a few mins while you crank up the oven temperature to 200 to slightly crisp up the potatoes.

While this is happening make the salad by mixing the lettuce and onion with extra virgin olive oil, a bit of salt and a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Bruschetta: goat's cheese; chorizo and red pepper

I made another two kinds of bruschetta. I have a bit of an ongoing obsession with goat's cheese and I got a lovely round of French goat's cheese in Dunnes that I couldn't wait to use.

I sliced the round horizontally in 2 and put one on each of 2 slices of bread and grilled them until the cheese was a bit melty. The goat's cheese was drizzled with honey and topped with raspberries (coz I was feeling fancy), chopped walnuts and a few leaves of baby spinach.

For a meaty option I fried half of a chorizo sausage in a tiny bit of olive oil then added 2 chopped roasted red peppers (from a jar), some garlic powder and parsley. After cooking for a couple of mins I used it to top 3 slices of bread.

Bruschetta: tomato and onion; mozzarella and pesto

A few of us recently went to Market Bar for dinner and I got the urge to make bruschetta for dinner. I made 4 different kinds using freshly made sundried tomato and herb bread (courtesy of my fantastic breadmaker). Normally I'd toast the bread, rub it with a clove of garlic and drizzle with olive oil but since the bread was fresh and still warm I just use it as it was.




For the first one I diced 3 tomatoes, 1 red onion and 1 spring onion (totally unnecessary but it was in the fridge on its own going off so I just used it). Then mixed them together in a bowl with a generous drizzle of olive oil and some basil (I only had dried unfortunately) and left them to sit for a while for the flavours to develop.




In the meantime I spread green pesto on another slice of bread, and topped it with slices of mozzarella, and 3 chopped sundried tomatoes. 3 mins under the grill melted the mozzarella nicely.

To finish the tomato and onion one I just topped 3 slices of bread with the tomato mix.

This made 1 mozzarella and 3 tomato bruschetta.

Lemony green salad

This is my favourite salad. My mother makes the best version- she uses lettuce, cucumber, onions and fresh dill (which really adds to the flavour) with a bit of salt, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Since I've no access to fresh dill (I know I can get it in the supermarket but I don't as it tends to go off very quickly) I've modified the recipe a bit to try and make it more flavoursome. I use lettuce, rocket, baby spinach, cucumber,  drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and add salt and lemon juice to taste. It is really light at refreshing.

Tomato, mozzarella, and pesto tart

An ad on tv for jus-rol puff pastry provided the inspiration for this. I rolled out a sheet of puff pastry to fit a baking sheet, spread it with 2 tbsp green pesto, and arranged 3 sliced tomatoes and 3 sliced balls of mozzarella.

The tart was baked at 200 degrees Celsius for about 20 mins (I didn't time it exactly, just judged by how the cheese looked). Next time I'll leave more of a puff pastry border but the pastry was not at all soggy anyway.

Eton mess

This is one of the easiest desserts there is and it can look really impressive (if you don't use too much cream like I did). I regularly make Eton mess and I've found that Tesco finest meringue nests are really great as the texture is good and they are rather large. You could of course make the meringue nests yourself but that sound altogether too much like hard work.

• 400g strawberries
• 500mL cream (totally too much-a 284mL pot would be better)
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 4 meringue nests, crushed

Remove the stalks from the strawberries and cut into quarters. Whip the cream with the vanilla and sugar (adjust the amount of sugar you use according to how sweet the strawberries are). Now just mix everything together and you're done!

Hotdogs for dinner!

This isn't so much a recipe as dinner inspiration. I was quite tired one evening and I always keep some good sausages in the freezer (they freeze really well and the texture remains unchanged) so I picked up some soft rolls on the way home and put some nice big sausages (I think these ones were Tesco finest spring onion) on to grill.

While the sausages were cooking I assembled the various accessories: roasted red peppers, lettuce, onion, spinach, rocket, tomato salsa, BBQ sauce and coleslaw.

After bringing everything to the table everyone was left to assemble their dinner themselves.

Chocolate and walnut breakfast rolls

The sweet dough I made a couple of days beforehand had kept nicely in the fridge and I wanted to make something with chocolate:

• 200g milk chocolate chopped up
• handful of dried cranberries
• handful of chopped walnuts
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp soft brown sugar

Roll the dough out to a large rectangle and sprinkle with all the fillings. 

Roll into a Swiss roll of sorts, slice into rounds, stuff into a round baking dish (or whatever you happen to have handy) and bake for about 30 mins at 180 degrees Celsius. 

I drizzled it with maple syrup before baking but I don't think that's totally necessary or that it added much to the flavour.

Raspberry scones

The people I work with and I have developed a raspberry scone addiction. The ones in Sol are really nice and there's a bakery (/cafe) in the docklands called Valentino that has amazing ones (incidentally this bakery is really great in general). Since it was Sunday (so I had time) and there were some raspberries in the freezer I decided to make my own. I basically made a slightly dry scone mix with a bit more sugar than normal and added some (defrosted) rapsberries. I was a bit worried that the mix was too wet but they turned out fine (though I did slightly overcook them: 20 mins would be better than 25).

• 225g self raising flour
• half tsp of baking powder (I was worried the raspberries would weigh it down)
• 50g butter
• 5 tbsp caster sugar
• about 140 mL milk (add the last bits slowly to ensure the dough does not get too wet)
• a large handful of raspberries (or other fruit)

Stir the baking powder into the flour and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs then stir in the sugar and milk. Gently mix in the raspberries, place large spoonfuls onto a floured baking sheet (this mix made 6 for me) and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 mins. Cool on a wire rack and then eat with butter (the real stuff mind you, not margarine).

Coffee eclairs (of a sort)

I made these a while ago for Karl's birthday but I never got around to putting this up. These are very easy to make but just don't do what I did and let them cool on the baking tray. Those allowed to cool on the baking sheet left the bottom part behind whereas as those I removed immediately remained intact.

So, start by making a choux pastry. There are many, many recipes for this out there and they are all the same in essence. I used the amounts given in Michel Roux's great book Pastry which has a nice recipe for profiteroles. By the way this is a fantastic book containing everything you need to get the hang of many different kinds of pastry and I would not hesitate to recommend it (or indeed his other books: Sauces, and Eggs).
Melt 100g of butter, 125mL milk, 125mL water, pinch of salt, and a small spoonful of caster sugar and bring to the boil. Off the heat mix in 140g of plain flour, dry the mix a bit on the heat then, in a bowl, beat in 4 eggs.

I piped this mix onto a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and baked at 180 degrees Celsius for about 15-20 mins (I was somewhat inconsistent with the size of my eclairs...). It's usual to brush the outside with some eggwash (egg and milk) but I neglected to do this. As I said above don't leave them on the baking sheet, instead transfer to a wire rack to cool.

The icing was very simple:make a cup of espresso coffee and mix some into about 200g of icing sugar a little at a time to make a smooth icing. After filling them with some cream (whipped with some caster sugar and vanilla essence) the ice the buns and you're done!

Soutzoukakia

This is a recipe from my childhood. It is greek in origin (oregano and tomatoes are main ingredients which is a bit of a giveaway). For some reason I decided to cook a dish that requires onions on a day when we had nearly run our of onions. I'll describe the dish as I would normally make it but today I used one onion for the meatballs, one onion and a load of shallots for the sauce.

• 1 onion finely chopped
• 3 slices of bread made into bread crumbs using a food processor or just 3 handfuls of breadcrumbs
• 400g beef mince (or thereabouts)
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 3 onions, sliced
• 2 tins of tomatoes
• 3 tsp or oregano

Mix the chopped onion, bread crumbs, mince, egg, 1 tsp oregano and season. Make this into ellipsoids about the 6 or 7 cm long and 2 cm wide. Brown these in some olive oil in a frying pan then add the sliced onions (if there is not enough room in the pan take out the meat-ellipsoids) and gently fry them too. Add the rest of the ingredients and season generously (remember tomatoes usually need a bit more salt that you'd think). Simmer for about 15-20 mins (the same length of time it'll take you to cook some rice to go with it).

The photos do not make it look as good as it actually is.

Sweet breakfast bread

I made a large amount of rich sweet bread dough in the breadmaker using the following:

• 2 cups water
• 2 eggs
• 2 large spoonfuls of butter (say 3 tbsp)
• 8 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 7 cups plain flour
• 3 tsp fast action dried yeast

This made a lot of dough and I refrigerated half of it and used the rest to make a fruity stuffed bread. 

I rolled out a large rectangle of dough, filled it with some chopped and peeled apples, dried cranberries, crushed walnuts and a sprinkling of cinnamon. You can use pretty much anything as filling: dried blueberries, pecans, chocolate, raisins, sultanas, dates, apricots etc.

Cutting outward from the filling to make radial strips and folding these over resulted in something rather homely looking...

Which was baked at 200 degrees Celsius for about 25 mins to give something no less homely but still quite delicious. This is great as a breakfast bread and I think it would go really well with some custard as a dessert.

Eggy in a basket

I saw this in V for Vendetta (an excellent movie btw and the comic's good too), I tried it the very next morning. That was good while ago and I've made it lots as it's a really hearty breakfast, really easy, and a bit fun too. It works better with decent bread, preferably homemade (remember how I said breadmakers were great) as you need a good thick slice. The hole in the middle can be cut out with a knife or pastry cutters (to make different shapes).

 Butter the bread on both sides and cut a bit out of the middle. Heat a frying pan (best to use a nonstick one and tefal are definitely the best) on a medium heat with a tiny bit of oil. Once the bread is in the pan drop an egg into the centre of the hole (it's easier if you break the egg into a bowl/cup/glass first) and cook gently then flip to cook the other side. Fry the cut out bits too (great for mopping up egg) and possibly some pudding too...