Speedy Spicy Prawns and Chorizo

Spicy Prawn and Chorizo

Here is a delicious spicy dish to warm your cockles, especially in this very wintery March weather. Chorizo is a Spanish or Portuguese spiced sausage coloured and flavoured by red pepper and paprika. It adds a smokey flavour to traditional rice and seafood dishes. The red colouring is released on cooking and this gives a wonderful depth to your sauce.

For a more local flavour try Yorkshire Chorizo! Made in Yorkshire containing British pork.

Handmade Venison Ravioli

Venison ravioli

I have made pasta a few times and each time it becomes a little easier with practice. Making fresh egg pasta takes you back to your primary school days and memories of pulling play dough through a machine to make a vaguely monster like model of your mum. This is far more sophisticated, but just as fun! The trick is to allow yourself enough space and perhaps request an extra pair of hands be on standby. Alternatively, why make it difficult! Just split your dough into smaller lumps. Sometimes the best answers are the obvious ones.

Latvian Honey Cake

Latvian Honey Cake

This delightfully different cake recipe was given to me by a lady on my Bettys cookery course. She was Latvian and very forthcoming with her country's recipes and techniques, even bringing a finished cake for us all to sample and a handout. This additional 'bonus' recipe is actually one of the most interesting and delicious recipes to come out of the course and it proves that sometimes it is the unexpected sources which bring us inspiration. This cake is so easy to make and looks spectacular- a leaning tower of honey.

Steak Bearnaise

I have always been a bit dubious about having any kind of sauce with my steak. If I'm going to eat a steak, then I want to be able to taste every last bit of it without it being masked by some other flavourings. To be honest, I'm not sure what changed in my thoughts, but I decided to try steak with a Bearnaise sauce. I think it was more to do with the desire to practice a new technique rather than the actual final dish. Perhaps not the most sensible of ideas but it did come out really well and we both really enjoyed this.

Sausages with Puy Lentils

Going down the French route with this one. Try to use puy lentils if you can find them, but if not, then green lentils will be fine. I guess you should really use some French sausages such as Toulon sausage, but we just used some standard ones from the butchers. But they must be large ones! This is a dish full of strong flavours and is a real winter-warmer.

Porter Braised Beef Cheeks

My poor camera skills really haven't done this dish justice. I have eaten A LOT of cow in my life, but I think this was probably the tastiest piece I have had. The combination of porter, winter vegetables, herbs, 24 hour marinade time and 10 hours of cooking produced a lump of meat that was so full of flavour, soft and rich. Following the success of our Oxtail Pie, we decided to go to the other end of the animal and try to make something special out of the cheeks. In the same way that the oxtail needs very long and slow-cooking, likewise the cheeks also need similar preparation to be made palatable. Although this recipe does take a long time, nearly all of the time is either the meat marinading in the fridge, or cooking in the oven. So we urge you to give this one a go because it is delicious.

British Sausage Week - Proper Bangers n Mash

So last week was British Sausage Week and so when in the butcher we got a couple of links of big thick Yorkshire sausages. The best way to eat them is surely with a big pile of buttery mashed potato and thick onion gravy - good ole bangers 'n' mash. Apparently we so affectionately call the sausage a "banger" because during World War 2, when food was scarce, they filled the sausage full of cereals and water which would cause the sausage to burst open and "bang" when cooking. So, there you go.

Pear and Vanilla Tarte Tatin

 

"Tarte Tatin" has now become an absolute French classic. It is traditionally made using apples, but I guess due to its huge popularity these days, people are looking for variations on the recipe. Our variety is to use pears in place of the apples. A tarte tatin is a layer of fruit coated in caramel with a layer of pastry placed over the top, with the whole thing being turned over after baking in the oven. We wanted to add another flavour, vanilla, into the finished product. There is no better smell than that of a vanilla pod. It is rich and creamy and works really well with pears. Some recipes suggest to just cook the pears for 10 or 15 minutes in the caramel first before baking in the oven, but we have again adapted this and used a poaching liquid to par-cook the pears and to infuse the vanilla flavour. When we turned over the pan and revealed the tart, we saw a beautifully crisp pastry with soft, sweet and sticky pears. Served with custard, it was delicious.

Apple and Pumpkin Cake - A Halloween Treat

Apple and Pumpkin Cake

This recipe is perfect for Halloween festivities as it uses two of the traditional robust Autumn flavours. I took it from a wonderful book bought for us by my dad and it is really great for finding comfort food inspiration. Tom Norrington's - Just Like Mother Used to Make.

Quark "Ruff Puff" Corned Beef and Sweet Potato Pasties

Pastry is something which eludes many people but if certain rules are followed it is incredibly easy to make at home and a far superior product, plus rolling pastry is very cathartic and a job I would very tentatively part with.

Ruff Puff Pastry

Things to consider;
1) Handle it lightly
2) Keep it cool
3) Bake it in a hot oven

Cool hands, a cold working surface and cool liquid make the best pastry. This is why we are constantly reminded to use only the finger-tips when combining the ingredients together as these are the coolest part of our hands. You don't want to get the dough stuck to your warm palms! Adding liquid should be gradual as common sense should tell you, you can always add more but you can't take it out. A classic mistake is to try adding more flour to bring it back from sticky death which is a recipe for disaster.

Fancy Popcorn

A few different things came together to form this lovely bowl of popcorn last night. A few days ago I was wondering around Lewis & Cooper which is a fine food and wine store in Harrogate. I randomly picked up a pack of Gourmet Popping Corn. This particular version was described as "Rich Ruby Red". I had no idea such popcorn was available! I had just planned to throw it in a pan, let it pop away and enjoy. But last night, as "The A-Team" began on TV, I remembered a little recipe from Heston Blumenthal in his book "Heston Blumenthal at Home", which a friend from work shared with me this week. So all these things came together to produce this delicious gourmet popcorn treat.

A Very Slow-Cooked Oxtail Pie

This one was two days in the making (everybody knows a good curry tastes a thousand times better the following day!) Couple this with the fact that a good pie is my single favourite food, I was sure I would be on to a winner with this one - and I was. Steak pies are a very common thing, but I wanted to spruce it up a little and I did this by using oxtail as the main ingredient. This is a cheap ingredient (one tail cost me about 6 quid) which, if cooked in the right way, is unbelievably full of flavour. It has definitely grown in popularity recently - I guess this is due to its cost during this terrible financial crisis we are in! Whatever the reason, this is a great ingredient and I think this way of cooking and serving it really does make for something pretty delicious.

Rhubarb "Crumble"

Rhubarb and Greek Yogurt Crumble in a glass

Rhubarb pulling is usually between May and August but in early September the rampaging patch in my mum's garden was in dire need of a picking. We twisted off a few stem, discarded the leaves and poached the even 1cm cut stems in a honey and water syrup. I put about 3 tablespoons of honey and the same of water in a saucepan and simmered for about 20 minutes until a soft pulp emerged.

Plum, Pistachio and Cardamom Cake

Today at work we had a "cake bake" to raise money for a local charity. Staff brought in their best efforts and we all bought those sweet treats which tickled our fancies! I was a little daunted by this, mainly because Liz was not here to help me. I am not much of a baker, and it is usually Liz who rules the roost when it comes to cakes. I decided to give it a go though. I decided to stick to a simple cake recipe but spruce it up with an interesting flavour combination. I hoped that the flavour would then cover up any flaws in my baking technique! I started with the idea of using cardamom. This is mainly due to the amazing flavour it gave in Liz's blueberry tart. I then wanted to use a seasonal fruit and I chose plums for their combination of sweet and sour. To add a richness to the cake I then opted to add pistachio. So here it is, my "Plum, Pistachio and Cardamom Cake". (Just to let you know, this was the first cake to completely sell out at work.)

Instant Homemade Bread

 

About 2 years ago, during our time living in South Korea, we were introduced to the concept of "primal living". This is a way of living designed by Mark Sisson based on the more widely known "paleo" diet. The Primal Blueprint was created to offer a general way of living in order to be more healthy. The main focus is on weight loss but it does cover all apsects of health including exercise and how to prevent disease through diet.  Don't get us wrong, we are not a blog designed to convince you to diet and constantly watch what you are eating. I'm sure you can tell that by some of our posts so far! But we have been taking note of some of what Mark says and we do feel it is a very simple and effective way of looking at the kind of foods we eat. One main crux to his argument is that we should remove any kind of grain from our diet. So this means no bread, pasta or biscuits! Trust me on this, by simply cutting grains out altogether for just a couple of weeks will make an amazing difference to how you feel. We do enjoy eating bread though, but this imitation comes pretty close to satisfying our appetite.

Liver and Onions

I love it. Liz hates it. Liver is one of those ingredients that divides opinions. I get why some people don't like it, I really do. It does have a different texture to 'normal' meat and it definitely has a richness that we are not always used to. But I am sure some people don't eat it for slightly different reasons; reasons to do with their pre-conceptions about eating liver and other kinds of offal. People for some reason become squemish or are put off at the very thought of eating these kinds of food. But there is no doubting the health benefits (click here to see a thorough explanation by Mark Sisson) and it is REALLY cheap (2 portions of lamb's liver will cost less than a quid in the supermarket). Add to that fact that by following just a simple recipe you can have a genuinely tasty meal, then I urge you to give it a go.

Lemon Curd Roulade

Lemon Roulade

 

This recipe is a flourless Lemon Roll taken from the previously showcased cookbook accompanying the Great British Bake Off series; ''How to Bake''. This light lemon sponge is best eaten within 24 hours to avoid the cream seeping into the sponge and creating a soggy bottom.

The key to this recipe is to ensure the cake is served chilled as this allows the curd and cream to solidify and act as a cement.

Shaun Hill's Chicken Escalope with Tarragon and Leeks

In our house we have a bookshelf absolutely full of cookbooks. They have usually been bought for us as gifts and, as lovely as they are, we are both guilty of not really putting them to much use. Very often they get forgotten about and we just use the internet as our source of foodie inspiration. With all these great recipes and ideas just lying around, we thought we should make a greater effort to put them to good use. I took the first one I came to (which was literally right next to me on the coffee table) and decided to choose one recipe to cook. The book I picked up was by Shaun Hill and is called "Better gravy and other kitchen secrets". We haven't eaten chicken in a while and so I went straight for the poultry section and went for his "Chicken Escalope with Tarragon and Leeks".

Lemon and White Chocolate Souffle

For Liz's birthday meal, I of course had to come up with a tasty dessert. We have a surplus of lemon curd in the fridge following Liz's exploits last week - I wanted to create a dessert that could use this in a refined and spectacular way. Whenever the word souffle is mentioned on TV, magazines or cookbooks, it is met with trepidation. However, after my unorthdox aubergine souffle last week, I thought a more conventional chocolate version must be relatively simple.

Roast Duck with Passionfruit Sauce

It was Liz's birthday at the weekend and so I did my best to prepare a birthday meal worthy of the occasion. Since her recent conversion from vegetarian to carnivore, Liz has been very adventurous with her food - a whole new gourmet world has opened up to her! One animal that we haven't tried together is duck. So I bought a crown of duck and made a lovely passionfruit sauce to go along with it.