Easy-Peachy-Pudding

Over the weekend I made this ridiculously easy but very scrumptious pudding when we had a barbeque with friends. I just halved and de-stoned some ripe peaches (easily done by running a sharp knife all around the middle of the peach, then twisting the halves in opposite directions to prise them apart, then just digging out the stone with a spoon), sprinkled on some sugar, wrapped them in little foil parcels, and put them on the barbeque. They took around 25 minutes to heat through and soften and I served them with a choice of mascarpone cheese or extra thick double cream.

Although we put these on the barbeque you could just as easily bake them in the oven. I reckon 20 minutes at about 200c should do it.

Mushroom and Savoy Cabbage Pasta

It was one of those ‘what shall I have for lunch, the cupboard is bare?’ days. A pasta day, in other words.

Fortunately the cupboard, or rather, the fridge, wasn’t entirely bare and I did manage to put the field mushrooms, half a savoy cabbage and half a small tub of sour cream sitting in there to good use.

Onto the hob went a pan of salted water for the pasta and then I turned to making the sauce. I finely chopped a shallot and sautéed it in a knob of butter and olive oil with a sliced garlic clove, then chopped the mushrooms and added them. When they were about half cooked I sliced some of the cabbage leaves and added them to the pan. Next I stirred in the sour cream and a dash of the pasta water, and simmered it until the sauce was a good consistency. A grinding of black pepper and sprinkle of sea salt finished it off nicely.

Despite the rather dreary grey colour the mushrooms turned the sauce, it was really rather good!

There’s a New Rat in Town

The other week I was invited to a press screening of the new Disney Pixar film, Ratatouille, which is due to be released in the UK on 12th October.

Ratatouille follows the story of Remy, a rat with a refined palate and an unlikely dream - to become a chef. Remy finds himself on an adventure that takes him to the heart of Paris and to the kitchen of the most famous 5-star restaurant in the city, where he teams up with Linguini the garbage boy and together they create dishes that dazzle and delight.

The film has everything you’d expect from Disney Pixar - lovable characters; fantastic animation; warmth; fun and adventure, along with an exploration of emotions and values as Remy is torn between his family and following his dream, giving real meaning to the story.

The characters are full of life, robust and memorable. They include the punchy Colette, the sole female chef of the kitchen who gives as good, if not better, than the guys; Auguste Gusteau, the deceased-yet-cheery restaurant owner who becomes Remy’s guide; the somewhat goofy Linguini and the dark and dusty restaurant critic, Anton Ego, ‘The Grim Eater’.

With Paris as a backdrop this is a beautiful film. 4,500 photographs were taken to help create the realistic Parisian scenery like you see in the following still from the film:



Now, to the food. The film makers spent a huge amount of effort in bringing gourmet food and the workings of a professional kitchen to the big screen. They consulted with the highly acclaimed chef and owner of The French Laundry, Thomas Keller, on French Cuisine, they took cooking classes where they learned knife techniques and they visited the kitchens of restaurants in Paris. The film’s director, Brad Bird, even spent two days on an internship at The French Laundry in order to see how a restaurant kitchen really works. Thomas Keller explained “Brad wanted to see what a real kitchen looks and feels like, the energy, the dynamic, how people work together and move around the kitchen – “the dance” as we call it in our restaurant”. Clearly it paid off, as Brad certainly managed to create that movement and energy in the kitchen scenes of the film.

Of course the real challenge with making an animated film about food is with making it life-like and edible-looking. As supervising technical director, Michael Fong, said “The only way to recreate what the dishes look like when the sauces are bubbling and the steam is rising off them was to actually cook the dishes on a real stove and then photograph them”.

The efforts of the film makers have resulted in enthralling kitchen scenes and stunning looking food, probably the best seen in animation yet. Ratatouille is sure to be a big hit with food-lovers everywhere.



Here’s a sneak preview for you to enjoy, along with a couple of films of members of the film crew talking about the film and creating the food:

Sneak Preview
About the film
Creating the food

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Bake these as you would white potatoes, just for a little less time - about 45 minutes, depending on their size. Prick their skins with a fork, wrap them in foil and put them in the oven at 200c. When they're cooked, slit them open and grind over lots of black pepper, add a sprinkle of sea salt and a good dollop of sour cream or cream cheese. They are very sweet and very comforting and would be great with sausages or grilled chicken on a cold and dreary night, like the ones we seem to be getting at the moment.

Fantastic Four

Having been tagged by not one, but three bloggers, for this meme I felt I really couldn't refuse. Thanks to Kat at Something Yum...., Jules from Domestic Goddess in Training and Hannah of Hannah's Country Kitchen.

4 jobs I have had in my life

Well I’ve had 4 different jobs within the IT industry. I started life in IT in a Product Marketing department, assisting the Product Managers with administration tasks such as database maintenance and producing Unix quotes for customers. From there I moved into Lotus Notes software development and progressed from there to become an Application Development Manager. I’m now an IT Project Manager involved in all sorts of things such as office moves, web development projects and telephony migrations.

4 Places I have lived

This is rather boring really as I’ve always lived in London or Kent. There have been several moves around Kent and I’m quite close to London at the moment. Rob and I have a dream of moving much further out at some point, but at the moment the London commute doesn’t really allow for that.

4 places I have been on holiday

Hawaii. Exploring these stunning islands was an amazing experience. I hiked up to the top of the famous volcanic crater, Diamond Head, on Oahu, took a helicopter tour of the live volcanoes spilling lava into the sea on Big Island, and saw lush vegetation and waterfalls on Kauai.

Mauritius. This was my honeymoon destination and it was simply dreamy. Oh, and the Green Island rum is to die for.

Cyprus. Rob and I soaked up the sun on this Mediterranean island the year we met.

The Bahamas. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the hot, white sand between my toes. Ahhh.


4 of my favourite foods

How to choose, how to choose? Um…ok, let’s think about this.

Well I’ve got to have roast chicken top of the list. It’s not just the taste that I love but also everything I associate with a roast chicken. The happy preparation of the bird for Sunday lunch, the heavenly smell of it roasting in the oven, the family around the table, the slowly simmering stock made from the bones.

Seafood. I adore seafood and nothing is likely to make my eyes pop more than a platter of fresh king prawns, lobster and crab with mayonnaise and lemon slices on the side. I have to move on now, I’m drooling over the keyboard.

Pasta. Give me a huge plate of spaghetti or linguini coated in sauce, a hunk of parmesan cheese and a grater and I will be very happy indeed.

Cold meats. Rare roast beef, glazed ham, roast chicken, all fantastic as they are, but add creamy coleslaw and pickled onions and you have a feast. In some ways I think I look forward to the cold meats at Christmas time more than the main culinary event itself.


Four places I would rather be right now

On a sun-drenched beach.

Reading a book whilst lying in a hammock in a garden full of summer flowers.

Having a picnic in a meadow.

Snowed-in in a log cabin with a blazing fire and enough good food and drink to last for days.

Now, who to tag? Who hasn’t done this yet? I hope I’m safe with:

Anne's Food
Figs Olives Wine
Lucullian Delights
Porcini Chronicles

The Healing Power of Soup

I’m feeling under the weather with flushed cheeks and a burning throat, so this evening I wanted a bowlful of nutritious soup made with fresh vegetables to perk me up and sooth.

I heated a good glug of olive oil in a large pan and threw in half a fairly large onion, finely chopped; a crushed garlic clove; 2 carrots and a courgette, diced; and a sliced leek. I softened and lightly coloured these in the oil and then topped-up the pan with fresh chicken stock. A little chopped flat leafed parsley, sea salt and a good grinding of fresh black pepper provided final flavouring before the soup was left to simmer.

The smell alone was comforting enough and the soup itself eased my throat as it went down, making me feel just that little bit better. Home made soup should be bottled and sold alongside the paracetamol and cough mixture at the chemist.

Proper Burgers

I think there’s something really rather exciting about making your own burgers. Certainly the first few times you make them you get a real sense of achievement – ‘wow, I made those; they weren’t shop-bought’ – and the great thing is that they’re so easy to make.

Use the best quality lean mince you can find for your burgers and you’ll be rewarded with succulence and fantastic flavour. Once you’ve got that good starting point anything you add is just going to enhance the flavour that’s already there. For these burgers I added to 500 grams of beef mince a big handful of flat leafed parsley which I snipped with scissors, a finely chopped red onion and a generous sprinkling of sea salt and black pepper.



Once you’ve mixed everything together you just need to firmly squeeze and mould the mixture into round patties. Some people add breadcrumbs or an egg to bind the mixture but I find I don’t need to so long as I firmly squeeze the mixture together when moulding it.

If your burgers end up quite fat like my ones cook them on a low to medium heat, quite slowly, so that they cook right the way through, although a little pink in the middle is fine if you like them rarer, providing your meat is fresh of course.



Once you make your own burgers you won’t want to buy ready made ones again. You can make them exactly how you want them and add into the mix whatever takes your fancy, minced garlic; chilli; cheese; mustard. And why not get the kids involved; they’ll love making, and of course eating, their own burgers and you’ll know exactly what’s gone into them - the burgers, and the kids, that is.

Wake up and Smell the Coffee

The British cuppa this tea-loving nation has always been famed for has grown out of favour in recent years with the rise and rise of the American-originated coffee shop. Coffee is now the number one fix of the bleary-eyed London worker - count the number clutching lidded cups of it during the morning rush and the percentage of those with is highly likely to be higher than those without. Skinny; wet; triple-shot; tall, there’s something to suit all tastes. And now we’re even buying our very own espresso makers so that we can get the real thing at home. You can see the attraction; it hits the spot, it wakes you up, and it tastes good too. But what exactly is all this coffee doing to our bodies?

The affects of caffeine on our health is often brought into question and many hours of research has gone into scientific studies to establish just how bad, or good, it is for us. But Jasmine Willis, 17, carried out her own unintentional study with horrifying results. The teenager drank seven double espressos, thinking they were single shots, in just four hours, resulting in her overdosing on caffeine and being rushed to hospital. Her symptoms included crying and laughing uncontrollably, palpitations and hyperventilation. Thankfully she is fully recovered but the experience has left a bad taste in her mouth, if you’ll excuse the pun. So remember, dear reader - everything in moderation, everything in moderation.

Peas in a Pod

One of my earliest, and fondest, food memories is of sitting at the kitchen table with my sister in the summer as we shelled fresh garden peas while Mum prepared the meal. I remember the delight in prising open the pods and teasing the peas out into the big bowl, I remember their sweet taste and Mum gently telling us not to eat them all.

Summer peas fresh from their pods are delicately and sweetly flavoured, and the process of podding them can be immensely pleasurable and therapeutic. All the family can join in the fun, creating life-long memories like the one I’ve just described. I look forward to creating such memories with my own children when the time comes.

Sadly the rain and devastating floods the UK has seen this summer have destroyed vast amounts of the pea crops so there are fewer to go around. I was fortunate to pick some up at my local farm shop at the weekend and I value them all the more.

The peas were a lovely accompaniment to the fantastic pork, apple and cider sausages we bought at the weekend, which I cooked slowly until sticky. To finish the meal I boiled some halved new potatoes for a potato salad, made by smothering the potatoes with mayonnaise and mixing through flat leafed parsley. It was a very homely and very satisfying dinner.

Sun Fruits

Sweet, ripe fruits like these peaches and honeydew melon are luscious on a hot summer’s day. These particular ones were ripe almost to the point of being over-ripe, which made their flesh gloriously sweet and meltingly tender and their abundant juice burst out with each bite.

The aptly named honeydew melon does indeed have a honey-like sweetness to it with what I a can only describe as an underlying hint of banana, while the golden, red-orange flesh of the peaches is simply exquisite.

These fruits cry out summer and demand to be eaten greedily like a child, with juice running down you, whilst lying on the grass outside in the sun.

Just a Perfect Day

The wash-out of the past few months was long forgotten today as I lounged in my garden on a true midsummer’s day. Doors and windows were thrown wide open to bring in the fresh summer air, washing was hung out to dry - which it did in no time in the heat of the sunshine flooding the garden - and elderflower cordial provided the refreshment.

This afternoon Rob and I took a trip to our local farm shop for the week’s provisions. Our seasonal hull included pak choi, peas, blueberries and what is likely to be the last of the strawberries. I also picked up a bunch of lily stems with a heady scent to adorn our living room.

We’re very fortunate indeed, as our farm shop is blessed with the presence of a mobile butcher and fishmonger on a saturday. The butcher travels up from his farm in the heart of Kent and the fish monger from the coast. We bought a large free-range chicken for sunday lunch, some lean mince and half a dozen irresistible-sounding pork, apple and cider sausages. From the fishmonger we bought two beautiful plaice, clown-like with their bright spots, which were filleted for us and wrapped in paper, ready for dinner tonight.

I teamed the fish with fresh spinach and new potatoes and a creamy white wine sauce with spring onions. It was quite delightful and the perfect end to a perfect summer’s day.



Plaice with Spring onion, white wine and cream sauce

Ingredients
2 plaice, filleted (1 per person)
4 spring onions
Wine glass-full of white wine and an equal amound of double cream
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Season the fillets with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, then sauté them in a little olive oil until cooked through. In a separate pan make a sauce by sautéing 3 or 4 chopped spring onions in a knob of butter for a few minutes. Add the white wine and simmer until reduced by half. Next add the cream and simmer until the sauce thickens. Season and check the taste. Add more wine or cream as necessary and allow to thicken again, then serve spooned over the fish.

Serves 2.

Sweet Little Blackberry Pavlovas

These little treats are so easy to make, especially if you buy the meringue nests as I did. Then it’s just a case of assembly; whip up some double cream, fold through a little caster sugar and some fruit like the luscious blackberries that are in season now, dollop it on top of the meringues and top with more fruit. They’re quick and dreamy, and perfect for a mid-week dessert.

In Need of Chocolate

Perhaps surprisingly for a girl and a food-lover, I’m not overly fussed about chocolate. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m certainly no chocoholic. That said, even I can acknowledge that there are times when only chocolate will do. Times when it is craved, times when you’re in need of something and only chocolate will hit the spot. On those occasions I want the good stuff and I want to be pampered with a little luxury. For this, Hotel Chocolate has got it just right.

Check out, for instance, these Goody Bags. They have everything a girl (or a guy for that matter) needs when they feel a real choc-attack coming on. Luxurious little truffles, caramelised milk chocolate drops, real hot chocolate, a slab of chocolate and even chocolate dippers for your hot chocolate or tea.

Or for a seasonal feel-good factor how about some Summer Citrus Soul Food? This large milk chocolate slap swirled with white chocolate, lime, tangerine fruit flakes and candied orange, is bursting with flavour and it certainly brings a little of the zing with it. And we could all do with some of that.

Apple and Strawberry Ice Lollies

With the weather finally heating up over the weekend I had the opportunity to try out the ice lolly moulds I recently bought. Rob went off to the farm shop for berries and came back with a selection in varying shades of red - strawberries, redcurrants and raspberries.

I chose the strawberries for my first experiment and blended a punnet-full. Into the puree went a tablespoon of caster sugar then, after a tasting, another spoonful. It tasted good, but needed another flavour so I added a peeled, cored and chopped apple to blend in. The resulting puree was quite thick so I watered it down with half a litre of water then poured it into the moulds. Well that was the fun bit but then I had to wait. And wait. As I’d started the lolly-making in the evening I had to wait until the next day (today) before they were frozen and I could try them.

Now, I don’t know if it was these particular moulds that I’d bought or if they’re all sent to try us, but the fight I had trying to get the bloody lolly out of the mould was ridiculous. I certainly needed cooling off once I did eventually get it out! It was all worth the effort though; it tasted great and, despite the sugar, was a healthier and fresher alternative to any ice lolly you can buy in the shops. If I were to be critical I’d say the apple was a little overpowering so I’d be careful to balance out the flavours next time by using less of it, although I guess how much would be needed for flavour would depend on the type of apple. I’d also like to try it without the water, as there was some crystallisation of the ice. And finally I must remember to sieve the pips out next time!!

Summer’s Back...For Now at Least

After endless heavy rain and flooding I think the British public had just about given up all hope of any sunshine this summer. Shorts have been swapped for trousers, flip flops for trainers, vest tops for jumpers. All in all it’s been pretty miserable here in the UK.

Now let me be clear - I love rain. I love walking in it under a huge colourful umbrella; seeing it bounce up high as it hits the ground with force; hearing it drum on the windows as I curl up with a book, warm and dry inside. I even love summer rain, refreshing and welcoming after long, hot, dry days; feeling the raindrops on my skin, awaking my senses. But I don’t love it every damn day in the height of the summer; the rain clouds forming a permanent covering under which we must miserably go about our days wondering where all this freak weather has come from and if we’ll ever see sunshine again. I don’t love it when it causes the devastation the UK has seen in recent weeks; the homes wrecked, the lives lost.

Thankfully over the past few days we have seen a dramatic change with blazing hot sunshine. The weather seems to have realised it’s got the wrong time of year and the sun has chased the rain clouds away. For how long though, remains to be seen. If the weather forecasts are to be believed perhaps it will be a short-lived break. But for now I’m making the most of the sunshine while it's here.

In the Bag: Cooking the Month of July - The Round Up

We went vegetarian for this month's ‘In the Bag’ event with sunny Aubergines, Peppers and Basil.

Fred and Ginger from Dinner Diary created these mouth-watering Aubergine, Pepper and Halloumi Stacks



Valli from More than Burnt Toast cooked up this creamy Roasted Eggplant Soup with Mozzarella Croutons I'm dying to try:



This colourful creation, Courgettes stuffed with aubergine and red pepper ratatouille, came Antonia from Food, Glorious Food:



Last but by no means least, our very own Cherry from Cherry's English Kitchen gave us her work-in-progress Cherry's Green Curry:



Thank you all so much for your entries!

"In The Bag" is a monthly food event run by Julia from Cherry from A Slice of Cherry Pie, Cherry's English Kitchen, Scott at Real Epicurean

Smokin’

For sticky, smoky, lip-smacking ribs, chicken, steak - whatever you want - Marks & Spencer’s Sticky Barbeque Marinade is the business. Rob and I love it and I just had to share it with you. Of course it’s great for barbeques, but also for no-effort, quick and tasty mid-week meals. All you need to do when you come home is heat the oven, open the jar, pour the marinade over meat, leave it for 5 minutes or more and slap it in oven. Open a bag of salad leaves to serve it with and dinner is ready. Fantastic.