Leon Poached Egg Pots

I love the breakfast egg pots at Leon. Have you come across Leon before? They are largely based around London with branches at airports as well as a couple of other cities and their motto is 'naturally fast food'. I first went to a Leon at Heathrow airport but now there are several around where I work.

I still remember how good the egg pot was that I had at the airport three years ago - it was simple but a combination I hadn't come across before, with a poached egg, cheese sauce and chopped ham served in a little pot. I decided to make it for my husband and me for brunch last weekend and found this recipe on Lovefood, written by Leon founder Henry Dimbleby.

I didn't follow the recipe that closely as I didn't have any truffle oil to put in the cheese sauce and to poach the eggs I cheated and used 'poachies' - little bags that you crack the eggs into and put them in a pan of boiling water. I have an egg poaching pan, and a microwave egg poacher that I use sometimes at work, and have tried various ways to poach eggs and have found these to be the best by far, so I recommend them if you have trouble getting perfectly poached eggs!

So all I did was whip up a quick cheese sauce from a roux of flour and butter and then milk and melted cheese, poach the eggs and fry some chorizo. I served them in ramekins with the egg on the bottom, some salt and pepper, then the cheese then the chorizo on top - I can't begin to tell you how good these are!

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Butterfly Thinking of You Cards

While I was sorting out my craft cupboard - which is a narrow (single) wardrobe from Ikea, with shelves and two drawers instead of a hanging rail - I came across some cards I made ages ago (probably a couple of years).

Sometimes you need a card for a sombre or sorry occasion, or sometimes just to wish people well and let them know you are thinking of them. All the elements on both of these cards came from one big pack; the butterflies are die cuts that I thought went well with the patterns of the backing paper. The 'thinking of you' sentiments are also both die cuts, with gold words and edging on white card; I mounted them on the cards with adhesive pads so they would stand out.

I'm entering this in the Butterfly Spot Challenge where the theme each time is a butterfly and a colour or something beginning with a particular letter; this time it is navy. The butterflies have navy blue in their wings and though you can't quite tell, the dots on the background of the bottom card are navy blue.

I'm also sending it to the Crafty Boots challenge as the theme is 'things with wings'.

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Cowboy Pie

This pie is based on an idea I saw in a Slimming World book or magazine a while ago but isn't actually particularly Slimming - I wanted an excuse to use my cow print rolling pin again! It came from Etsy and was a Christmas gift last year I think but I've only used it a few times. The rolling pin leaves an imprint of a cow pattern on anything you roll out!

I decided to theme a pie around it and use it to roll out the pastry to go on the top. The cow theme would work for cottage pie (which uses minced beef) but I decided to make what I call a cowboy pie - based on sausage and beans which have associations with cowboys sitting around a camp fire!

Preheat the oven to 180C. First fry or grill a couple of sausages per person until they are just cooked and cut into chunks. You can also add some diced chorizo or pancetta to the pan and fry. Put into a pie dish (either an individual dish or a large one - I did an individual one for my husband) and pour over half a tin of baked beans and mix together.

You can see how the rolling pin leaves the cow pattern on the pastry. I used ready-made shortcrust pastry though you can make your own.

Top the pie with the pastry and trim the edges; make a small hole for any steam to escape

When baked the pastry should turn golden brown (though it doesn't look very brown in this picture)

You also can't see the cow pattern very well any more in this photo, but it was there!

This is what the pie looks like inside - my husband said it was good. It's a nice change to the way you might normally serve sausage and beans, anyway!

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Meal Planning Monday 2016 - Week 46

I was supposed to be away for three nights this week but have cancelled as my cat is very ill and I don't want to leave her on her own. It's been a very upsetting few days as I'm so worried about her. I don't much feel like eating but know I need to eat proper food and not live off junk food, and we are going back to the vet on Wednesday so hopefully will get some better news, otherwise the rest of the week's meal plan might go out the window.

Prior to my cat being ill I was trying to declutter and found a huge folder of Weightwatchers recipes torn out of their magazines. I haven't followed Weightwatchers for a long time and have probably enough recipes to cook something different every day for the rest of my life, but wanted to use a few of them before getting rid of the rest! So these recipes are from various magazines from several years ago - I will share some of my versions of the recipes on my blog over the coming weeks, if I get back into blogging - giving my kitty cat some extra love has been my priority recently.

Monday - curried fish pie from Weightwatchers magazine for me, with chicken for him as he doesn't eat fish.

Tuesday - tortelloni pasta with pumpkin and sage from Weightwatchers magazine - but I think I will use butternut squash

Wednesday - teriyaki salmon from Weightwatchers magazine for me, with beef medallions  for him

Thursday - chicken in a creamy tarragon sauce from Weightwatchers magazine

Friday - tuna polpette in red pepper sauce from Weightwatchers magazine; spaghetti and meatballs for him

Saturday lunch - soup with crusty bread
dinner: chicken fajitas and enchiladas I was going to do last week but didn't
dessert: pear and hazelnut crumble for me, from Weightwatchers magazine; chocolate crumble from this recipe for my husband as he doesn't eat fruit

Sunday
lunch- spicy prawn pockets from Weightwatchers magazine for me, with pizza filling for him
dinner - chicken basque from Weightwatchers magazine

This is a blog hop, join in!

An InLinkz Link-up

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MidWeek Coconut Fish Curry

I love prawns, and think they work really well with pasta or curry, so when I came across this recipe for a coconut fish curry on the BBC Good Food website, where the prawns took centre stage, I knew I had to make it. The flavours are inspired by both India and Thailand and doesn't take that long to cook -the part that took longest was probably finding all the ingredients in the cupboard! So it makes a great mid-week meal.

The shrimp paste in the recipe is not the kind that you may have had n your sandwiches as a child; it is an essential ingredient in Thai cooking. These days it is easy to find in supermarkets like Tesco though, in the speciality ingredients aisle.

To serve 4, you need:
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 small red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
2 lemongrass stalks, split and bruised with a rolling pin
1 heaped tbsp. medium curry powder
1 heaped tbsp. light muscovado sugar
small bunch of coriander, stems finely chopped
400g can coconut milk
450g skinless hake or other white fish fillets, cut into large chunks
220g prawns
1 lime, halved
cooked rice to serve
I also served mine with some broccoli

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the onion for 5 minutes until softened. Stir in the ginger, garlic, shrimp paste, chilli and lemongrass and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the curry powder and sugar and stir until the sugar starts to melt, then add the coriander stems, coconut milk and 2 tbsp. water. Bring to a simmer.

 

Add the fish and prawns and squeeze in half the lime. Simmer for 5 minutes until the fish is cooked, scatter over the coriander leaves and serve.

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GBBO Pistachio and White Chocolate Churros

I treated myself to the latest Great British Bake Off recipe book since it was only £7 at a Book People book sale at work. This was when the series was only part-way through and I wasn't sure what they would be making each week though the recipes in the book do give a clue. I really liked the look of the pistachio and white chocolate churros, which I think I remember were made by Jane, the eventual runner-up of the show.

The full recipe is available on the BBC Food website which is helpful as it would have taken me ages to write out everything I did! I consider myself a fairly proficient baker, but I found these really hard - not to make as much as to assemble.

The book had a good explanation of how to shell pistachios; after you remove the hard shell there is still a brown skin covering the green nut. Bring the pistachios to boil in a pan of water and simmer for ten seconds; drain them in a sieve then rub with kitchen paper or use your fingers and the brown skins come off easily.

When I made the pistachio custard and pulsed the nuts in a food processor, I just couldn't get them smooth enough, so my custard was quite lumpy, even after I sieved it.

 

Making the churros was fairly easy but the largest star nozzle I have isn't that big - I wasn't aware that they come in bigger sizes but it meant that the churros that I piped were pretty thin. This wouldn't normally be a problem - I just rolled some of them in sugar and served them with chocolate sauce and they were brilliant. However, the idea is to pipe the pistachio custard inside the churros which I found absolutely impossible as they were so thin, and my custard was quite thick. I ended up splitting them down the middle and serving as a sort of open churro!

 

 

These did taste really nice but were quite fiddly to make with the various stages and I couldn't work out how to pipe them big enough to fill. I won't be making these again, or applying to go on the Great British Bake Off any time soon!

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Sticky Sausage, Carrot and Cous Cous Bake

Sausages are a great family food at this time of year, perhaps due to the association between bangers and bonfire night. It's also nice when you can just throw things into a pan in the oven at this time of year and enjoy some warming flavours.

I came across this recipe on the Tesco website for sticky sausages with carrots and couscous - not things I would have thought to combine, but it was really good and something I will definitely make again.

To serve 4 (or fewer, depending on how many sausages you want per person) you need:
8 pork sausages
150g Tendersweet carrots, halved lengthways - I used regular carrots though Chantenay carrots would also be good
1 red onion, sliced
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp clear honey

for the couscous:
200g couscous
1 tbsp. fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 lemon, juiced

For the harissa yogurt

1 tbsp harissa paste

150g pot natural yogurt

 

Preheat oven to 200C. Line a roasting tin with foil and put the sausages, carrots and onions in the pan and toss with the cumin, coriander and oil. Roast for 30 minutes, turning halfway, until cooked through.

 

 

 

Make up the couscous according to pack instructions and leave to stand until all the water has been absorbed. Mix in the herbs, oil and lemon juice.

 

To make the harissa yogurt, mix the harissa paste into the yogurt. When the sausages are cooked, drizzle over the honey and toss the sausages and vegetables until they are coated. Serve with the couscous and harissa yogurt on the side.

 

 

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Meal Planning Monday 2016 - Week 45

I had the whole of last week off from work and did a lot of decluttering and organising around the house, plus a day of card making - some of which you will start to see on the blog soon! It was really nice to have time to cook nice meals and a couple of desserts as well, but I got so complacent that when I turned to this week's meal plan on Sunday I realised I hadn't actually done it! I did a huge online grocery shop at the beginning of last week and did try to buy a lot to go in the freezer so I am going to plan as many meals this week as I can that don't involve doing any more grocery shopping. I also need to get back onto the diet wagon though!

For lunches this week I am going to have the broccoli cheese soup left over from the end of last week (which was really nice - recipe coming soon) and I'm going to aim to make the cream of sweet potato soup from 'America's Favourite Recipes' (p.214) - though with a couple of nights out this week I may not get time.

Monday
The plan was for spiralized carrot and butternut squash with prawns for me, chicken chargrills and mashed potato for him - unfortunately there were massive train delays this evening thanks to a trespasser so dinner was a ham and cheese croissant at the station!

Tuesday
Out at the theatre

Wednesday
tuna and rest of spiralized veg for me, lasagne and garlic bread for him

Thursday
I'm out for drinks after work (following an award ceremony in the afternoon where I've been shortlisted for two awards), my husband will probably go to his mum's

Friday
sausage and chips

Saturday
Lunch: Leon egg pots (recipe here) with baked beans on toast for him as I don't think the eggs will be enough
Dinner: chicken fajitas and enchiladas

Sunday
Lunch: bacon sandwich for him, jacket potato for me
Dinner: I'll have Shrimp Marinara (America's Most Wanted Recipes p.232) with broccoli bites (p.26) that was on the meal plan for last week which I didn't do and he can have toad in the hole as he doesn't eat those things.

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Restaurant Review: Pitcher & Piano, Monument, London

For a pub chain, Pitcher & Piano has a really unusual menu. I don't think I've ever seen a quinoa and cauliflower burger on a menu - and I was quite keen to try it but didn't really want a burger and chips even if it was meat-free - and the rest of the menu is a combination of classics and a nod to current trends. Everyone seems to be obsessed with avocado at the moment, and at Pitcher & Piano you can enjoy a mozzarella and avocado brioche or a bacon and avocado salad, or a chicken and kale salad, and sweet potato fries as a side. Or if you want a classic pub meal there's steak, sausage and mash, fish and chips and the like.

I was there for lunch with work colleagues and there was something to keep everyone happy - even one person who avoids carbs completely and had a selection of dishes from the starter section instead of a main. We were in a hurry to order so without much time to think I plumped for the fish finger brioche - something I haven't had in ages.

It was quite nice but ended up feeling more like a fish burger and chips - I'm used to fish finger sandwiches being made with doorstep bread and not coming with chips. In another twist on the norm, my pot of tea came with an espresso cup - I assume that was deliberate and not a mistake, but it was a bit odd to keep having to pour myself tiny cups of tea. It did come with an iced ring biscuit on the side though!

This is a City centre bar that I can imagine is quite busy in the evenings but we had no problem fitting in a big group at lunch. The food was good even if it wasn't quite what I was expecting!

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Cauliflower Pizza: gluten-free pizza with a cauliflower base

When I was doing sugar-free September I cut out gluten and so wasn't eating bread or potatoes. I decided to make pizza for lunch one weekend - my husband had a normal homemade pizza base, while I decided to try something I'd kept hearing about - cauliflower pizza.

That's not pizza with cauliflower on top (though I did once share a pizza with a vegetarian many years ago that had nothing but broccoli on top) - but where the pizza base is actually made of cauliflower. Have you heard of cauliflower rice? The pizza base is made in a similar way with the cauliflower riced and then baked in the oven. It tasted surprisingly good - cauliflower normally has quite a strong taste but it is masked somewhat by the pizza toppings.

To serve 2, you need:
1 whole cauliflower
1 egg
30g pepper
pinch of salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Pulse the raw cauliflower in a food processor until you have crumbs that look like rice.

 

Tip into a large frying pan - you don't need to add any oil - and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cauliflower loses some of its moisture.

 

Allow the cauliflower to cool then mix in a large bowl with the egg, cheese and salt and pepper.

Line a flat baking sheet with greaseproof paper and spread out the cauliflower mixture on top. Push down with the back of a spoon so you have a fairly packed down layer. Bake for 30 minutes until the cauliflower has turned golden brown.

If you can, get a spatula under the pizza base and turn it over in one piece and bake on the other side for ten minutes.

Remove from the oven and spread with tomato puree. Top with grated mozzarella and whatever pizza toppings you enjoy, and return to the oven for a few minutes until the cheese has melted.

Why not give it a go if you haven't tried this before?

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Mascarpone Orange Streusel Slice from Burnt

 

I'm hosting Food 'n' Flix this month and the film I have chosen is Burnt. (If you haven't seen the film - spoiler alert!). There are so many wonderful scenes that centre around food - at the beginning when Adam has gone to work in obscurity in New Orleans, as a self-imposed punishment for his bad behaviour, he is shucking oysters and only once he has done 1,000 will he stop.

When he returns to London there's a great sequence where he's eating different foods including a lamb wrap and another where he is cooking food late at night in a friend's flat where he is staying. His friend and the guy's girlfriend are surprised to find him cooking in the middle of the night but happily tuck into mussels, summer veg on a bed of ricotta, and smoked mackerel on duck egg.

When Adam is trying to persuade Sienna Miller's character Helene to work for him, he arranges to meet her in a Burger King; she refuses to eat there and there is a conversation around the consistency you get in a Burger King which they hate.

Adam meets Uma Thurman, a top restaurant critic, over a cooked breakfast in a café and when he takes over the restaurant, there are beautiful montages of cooking and food being plated up.

I thought about making turbot for my Food 'n' Flix recipe as in one scene, Helene messes up cooking a piece of turbot and Adam humiliates her by making her apologise to the fish; we then see a sequence where she is repeatedly cooking the fish for her daughter at home (even for breakfast) in an effort to perfect it. I did look at the major supermarkets to see if they had turbot but none of them did. There's also a scene later with Adam at Billingsgate fish market but I wasn't going to go there to buy fish!

Ultimately it's Helene's idea to bring in a sous-vide cooker that changes the way the restaurant cooks food, to great acclaim. A sous-vide seals food in a packet and poaches it slowly at a low temperature to seal in the flavour - you can buy the cookers from Lakeland but I don't have the space or think I would use it that much.

While I was trying to decide what to make, I googled the film to see what recipes were already out there and found an official site for the movie, that actually had recipes on it! Needless to say they were really complicated recipes, sometimes involving things I'd never even heard of (trimolene, anyone?) - but as I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, and I was at the start of a whole week off work, I decided to have a go at this recipe for mascarpone blood orange streusel.

I'm not going to re-post the recipe so do have a look at the link. It was very time consuming and complicated involving four different elements - not including the ice cream which I decided not to make. I had varying degrees of success with each one!

I started by making the mascarpone mousse which should have been fairly straightforward. I mixed the mascarpone, cream cheese, crème fraiche, sugar, vanilla, orange and lemon zest and juice and slowly added the Cointreau, which I already had in the cupboard. I softened the gelatine in water, but when I melted in the pan I had a slight concern that I couldn't get it all out of the pan. I added it to the mousse and blended it but when I strained the mousse, I could see that some bits of the gelatine were left behind in the sieve where it had already congealed. I suspected that the mousse might not set and I was right, so after a couple of hours in the fridge I put it in the freezer to harden. Failure number one.

The blood orange gel was easy enough, other than the fact that I couldn't get hold of blood orange juice and had to use regular OJ. I actually had some agar agar powder - it's a vegetarian alternative to gelatine and was part of a molecular gastronomy kit I was given once, similar to this:
Molecule R-Evolution Cuisine Kit plus Molecular Gastronomy Book with 40 Recipes Introductory Package

 

I simmered the juice and added the gelling agent, and spread the resulting liquid onto some clingfilm. It set quite quickly and I was able to slice it into strips easily. Success!

I was excited about making the honeycomb as it's something that I love to eat and the recipe didn't look too complicated. I put the honey, sugar, liquid glucose (which I already had from making marshmallows) and water into a pan and let it caramelize, then whisked in baking soda which made the whole pan froth up. Apparently all I needed to do was 'pour onto a baking sheet.

Allow to set and then break into pieces'. I ended up putting it in the fridge and even then didn't set - it firmed up a bit, but I had to scrape it up with a spoon and it looked nothing like honeycomb! Another failure.

Finally for the streusel layer which is somewhere between a crumble and a biscuit - I mixed the flour, ground almonds, sugar, salt and butter, moulded it into a block and put it in the fridge. But even after two hours it was still really crumbly and difficult to roll out without breaking. I baked it in the oven for longer than the given time, since after 10 minutes it was still soft and crumbly, but I ended up over-baking it and when it came to cutting up, the strips I cut broke into a couple of pieces. Partial success.

So when it came to assembling the dessert, I laid pieces of the broken streusel on the bottom, a thick slice of the semi-frozen mousse, then a slice of the gel, and a few pieces of the sticky in-set honeycomb on top. I added some crumbled streusel on the side and a few dots of the gel layer on the plate.

 

 

And how did it taste? The streusel was nice but a bit overcooked; the mousse had a delicate flavour and didn't come out too badly from the freezing (it had the consistency of soft scoop ice cream) but I didn't like the gel layer - the texture was just a bit strange. The amount of effort this took meant it is definitely not something I will be making again - it also shows me how skilled chefs in places like the Langham actually are!

If you want to join in Food 'n' Flix you don't have to make anything this complicated - there are lots of ideas you can take from the film! Find out how to take part here.

 

 

 

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The Life in your Years Birthday Card

Do you know the quote "In the end it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years"? I was familiar with it but hadn't realised it was attributed to Abraham Lincoln! I had a sheet of die cuts from a card making kit that had various sentiments and quotes on them, including this one.

The die cut was quite large so I decided to make it the centrepiece of the card on its own - but as it needed something else to create interest, a gatefold card was ideal. This is a card that is split in the middle of the front of the card and each side opens outwards.

I covered both parts of the front with blue spotted paper and covered the inside with a different piece of blue paper from the same pack - since when the card is standing the inside will be partly visible. I glued the die cut onto one side of the front so it would sit across both parts but allow the card to open, and added a 'happy birthday' outline sticker inside.

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Food 'n' Flix - Burnt

I'm hosting Food 'n' Flix again this month - a challenge that turns movies into food. The film I have chosen this month is entirely about food so there should be no shortage of inspiration for things to make!

Burnt stars Bradley Cooper as a chef, Adam, who has ruined his career and needs to start over, so gets a job running a friend's restaurant in a luxury hotel and devises a new menu, via trying out all sorts of eateries and street food stalls around London, in an effort to get a Michelin star. He hires Sienna Miller to work in his restaurant, which is shown to be in the Langham Hotel. I know the head of PR at that hotel and she had a great time watching the movie being filmed and was even in it as an extra, though I didn't spot her when I was watching the film!

I really enjoyed this film - it was impressive to watch the restaurant scenes (Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller both had to learn to cook and I've seen interviews where they talked about the lengths they went to and how good they now are at filleting fish!). It's also a great one to choose for Food 'n' Flix as there is so much to take inspiration from!

How to participate in Food 'n Flix:

• Watch the chosen film (Burnt).  Taking inspiration from the film, head into the kitchen and cook or bake or make something.
• Post about it on your blog with a link back to THIS post and a link to Food 'n Flix.  Use of the logo is optional.
• Alternately, post a photo of the dish you made on Instagram (public accounts only). You must include the following in your caption: short intro, recipe, #FoodnFlix and tag (@carolinemakes).
• You must post must be current (during month of film). And of course we don't mind if your post is linked to other events...the more the merrier.
• Have fun with it!
• Email your entries to me at caroline@carolinemakes.net  and cc heather@foodnflixclub.com and include:

                     -your name
                     -name of blog as you want it written
                      -name of the dish/drink you created AND a direct link to your post (blog or Instagram)
                      -attach a photo or give permission to pull one from your post
                     -indicate "Food 'n Flix Submission" in the subject line

Deadline for submission is: November 30, 2016

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