Strawberry Leather

I decided to make one last (well maybe last) batch of fruit leather. I wanted to make some strawberry leather and a punnet of stawberries were only £1 on the stall this week so I bought them and got mushing!

I cooked down the apples and strawberries with lemon juice and then put them in the food processor before sieving the fruit to get rid of the seeds. I spread it out on the baking trays and popped it in the oven.

Unfortunately this batch was very runny and I had a little disaster as the purée spilt over the edge and I had to make a tin foil dam. It turned out very well though. Very tasty indeed. 

Saturday Stir Fry

Friday Saturday after getting stuck in traffic on the way back from the supermarket we needed something quick and tasty because I had lost my mind! We had stir fry with quorn pieces and toasted cashew nuts. It went down pretty well!

Quorn Burgers

On Friday Mr VST and I went to the supermarket, while we were there were talking about what to have for dinner and Mr VST said he fancied some burgers and bread rolls. My heart sank but I was very tired and couldn't be bothered to cook so that it what we had. 

As we picked up some granary bread rolls from the shelf I could see a message on the shelf next to it full of while bread rolls. It said that additives and agents may be in bread on that shelf and not listed in the ingredients. We got home and ate the burgers, the bread was tasteless fluff and thankfully Mr VST thought the same though he did request some bread rolls be made. This afternoon we went to Otterton Mill which was lovely, we had a cream tea there and picked up some granary flour to make our own bread rolls with. 

Thursday

Thurday, Thursday, Mr VST was out and I didn't bother cooking for myself as I wasn't that hungry. Think I nibbled on a sweet potato brownie and drank lots of tea.

Sweet Potato Brownies

The wonderful Dan Lepard has been publishing delicious recipes in the Guardian each weekend and last weekend it was a recipe that replaced some of the sugar and butter in brownies was baked sweet potato. Recipes with unusual ingredients pique my interest and so I decided to give it a go. 

I baked my sweet potatoes and the skin peeled off quite easily. I scooped out the flesh as described in the recipe. I beat it together with the soft brown sugar.

...and then added the melted chocolate and butter.

I don't usually believe in nuts in brownies but this time I happened to have a packet of pecans in the cupboard and so I mixed them in with the chunks of chocolate.

When they came out of the oven they didn't quite look cooked but I trusted Dan and he was right about the cooking time.

They were good, nowhere near as good as my fall back, full fat, Nigel Slater recipe, but they were worth a try.

Bangers, Sweet Potato Mash & Onion Gravy

On Wednesday I used up the rest of the boiled new potatoes and baked sweet potato as mashed potato and added our usual Linda McCartney sausages, carrots, peas and the wonderful Anna's Onion Gravy. 

Leek and Feta Frittata

Once again I find myself nearly a week behind on the old blog! So, going back to last Tuesday I made an old favourite that I haven't made for a while. Leek and feta frittata with lots of lovely salad, including some leaves from our own garden.

I made it with five rather than four eggs this time as Mr VST was hungry!

It was a lovely healthy meal. The broccoli is there because I had to use it up, strange addition I know!

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Bake

After having such a crazy weekend I hadn't managed to plan our meal for the week. I found myself with a load of veggies but not wanting to make another curry or Mexican. There was also a tub of crème fraîche in the fridge. I decided to roast up the veggies, you can't really go wrong with roasted veggies, and mix them with some cooked pasta and top with cheat's cheese sauce from the Summer Lasagne recipe.

You take 300ml of crème fraîche, season it, grate some nutmeg in and grate about 50g mature cheddar into it and mix.

I mixed up the roasted veg and cooked pasta with a tin of tomatoes, spread the crème fraîche mix on top, added a bit of extra grated cheese and popped it in the oven for about 15 mins.

Big Veggie Breakfast with the Family

My Mum, her partner and my little sister have been in France for the last two weeks. Their ferry got in at 7.30am this morning and our place was on their way home so they popped in for breakfast. We started with Mr VST's home made granola, which went down very well and then followed this with some potato waffles (I'd like a recipe to make these myself), home made baked beans, real bread toast, scrambled eggs and Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages. It all went down well with a pot of French coffee and several pots of Earl Grey tea.

 

After that lot we were quite full up. We had a nibble on some delicious orange dark chocolate the Mum had brought back for us and went to visit Mr VST's brother, wife and our new niece. We went for a lovely stroll with them and had lots of cuddles and an ice cream. When we got back I had some cheese and crackers and Mr VST made himself easy macaroni cheese, cooked pasta with grated cheese mixed in, both lovely. 

Mr. VST's Home Made Granola

While I have my ready brek every morning with various toppings (rhubarb is the current favourite) Mr VST usually has granola cereal. After finding out a bit more about cereal from watching "The Foods that make Billions" a little while back and reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen (even the British version is spelt this way, if you want to find out more about what it says about cereal you can do so here) I haven't been so impressed with breakfast cereals. I never really was, they're not that filling or satisfying. They don't give you much for the calorie count and most of them are packed with sugar, especially the ones you assume are healthy, like muesli and granola. 

Anyway Mr VST has taken to switching between a supermarket own brand Maple and Pecan Crunch, Quaker Granola and lately some Jordan's Granola too. A couple of weekends ago we were discussing how quickly he gets through it and how expensive it is too so I googled granola recipes and came up with this one.

The recipe calls for lots of maple syrup we went to get some but it was £5.60 for 350ml so we decided we'd use honey instead of the maple syrup and a little dark brown sugar instead of the honey in the recipe.

Mr VST also decided to use raisins instead of dried berries as he doesn't really like them very much. So he got his ingredients together and started trying to mix the oats and honey, as honey is a lot thicker than maple syrup it was a bit difficult to mix so he put it in a saucepan to warm it up a bit so that he could mix it.

The warming worked and he managed to mix it together. He didn't use desiccated coconut in his either but the pumpkin seeds were an awesome idea.

He spread it out quite thickly on two baking trays, he had made double the quantity so he had no choice!

He popped it into the oven for 30 minutes and added the raisins afterwards.

It was absolutely delicious. Much nicer than the stuff you buy. I had been busy on call through the previous night and day and didn't get to eat my lunch until 4.30pm.  I had saved myself a small piece of beetroot tart and had this with some new potatoes and beetroot, feta and quinoa salad. After that I didn't really fancy any dinner so I had a small bowl if this granola and it was so good!

This recipe is so versatile and full of goodness, Mr VST put loads of different types of seeds in it and we were talking about toasting some nuts and adding them into the next batch. I think this is the future of cereal!

Filo Pizzas with New Potatoes and Salad

Love this quick, easy tasty alternative to pizza and we had it on Friday night with some lovely quinoa, roasted beetroot and feta salad and the creamy Lil Christow Devon new potatoes. Lovely.

Beetroot, Feta and Quinoa Salad

I had been meaning to roast some beetroot this week but wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I also had half a slab of feta and some quinoa in the cupboard and started to get an idea! I googled it and found it wasn't so weird to put them together and so I did. I made a little dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, cider vinegar and lemon juice with a bit of salt and pepper. It was lovely and pink (see filo pizza post) but I'm still not a great fan of beetroot, especially not in such big chunks.

Fruit Leathers

This is another recipe from The River Cottage Handbook No. 2 Preserves I was going to make some plum leather when I made the tasty but now over set plum jam but I didn't have any apples. This week Mr VST brought home a massive bag of cooking apples and so I decided to buy some plums and try this out. It's SO EASY to make. You need 500g (1lb 2oz) cooking apples, the same amount of plums (or nectarines, berries etc), the juice of one lemon and and 150g honey.

Plums & Apples

Nectarines & Apples

You put the fruit and lemon juice into a pan on a medium heat for about 20 minutes until it goes soft. The second batch I made I put the apples in for about five minutes before adding the softer nectarines as I had had to put the apples back on the heat when making the plum mix. 

Step two says to add the honey and mix in well before putting the cooked fruit through a sieve or 'mouli', a food mill. This was the worst bit about making the first batch. For the second batch I just put it all in the food processor.

You then spread the puree quite thinly onto greaseproof paper, I used silicone baking sheets which worked perfectly, and put in the oven on a very low heat (60 degrees C) for 12-18 hours. I left mine overnight and both times they were done by the morning (about 12 hours) but I have a fan assisted oven. 

I really wasn't quite sure what to expect but I was really pleased. The result is a sheet of chewy, sweet fruit which is an amazing colour. 

I cut mine into strips with scissors and wrapped each roll in greaseproof paper before putting them all in jars.

They are like sweets only better, they are quite chewy and as I said very sweet. You can eat them as they are as a snack or chop them up and put them in your porridge or muesli. I am hoping to keep some for my ready brek in the winter, that is if they last that long. They are also extremely low in calories, I cut mine into 26 strips which makes them 37 calories a strip (for the nectarine ones). Fantastic. I'm so glad I tried these.

Beetroot and Caramelised Onion Tart

We have about 20 pots outside with a beetroot in each and now they are just starting to be ready for eating. I did a search on the BBC Good Food site for beetroot recipes and came across this one.

For the pastry you need:
175g wholemeal flour
100g porridge oats
100g butter
100g grated carrots

You put all of these in a food processor apart from the carrot which you are supposed to add once you've processed the rest of the ingredients to 'breadcrumbs'. I didn't do this I just put them all in together bit it turned out fine.

The pastry was really thick and quite difficult to roll out and I had to patch it into the dish.

Home grown beetroot

For the filling you need:

3 large onions , sliced

3 medium beetroot , peeled and grated

3 medium eggs

250ml milk (either cow's, goat's or oat milk)

While the onions were caramelising I grated the beetroot into the pastry case and beat the eggs and mixed them with (oat) milk, a bit of salt and pepper and some freshly grated nutmeg. Once the caramelised onions were added and the egg.milk mix I grated a little mature cheddar on top.

I popped the tart along with two mini tarts into the oven for 40 mins, adjusting the temperature as the recipe says and they all came out looking fantastic.

We had the tart with a few slightly strange accompaniments, stir fried cabbage and beansprouts and roasted turnip. It was just one of those weeks where I had strange random ingredients left that needed eating. The roasted turnip was lovely, like a cross between a potato and a parsnip and went quite well with the tart. The cabbage on the other hand not so great with this dish!

The tart itself was delicious. The pastry was the star of the show, I would definitely use it for other tarts and quiche type dishes. The filling wasn't full of flavour, the onions seemed to get a bit lost and the sweet beetroot flavour was quite subtle. I would definitely make this again though one I've thought of a way of jazzing up the filling a little bit more. I would also consider blind baking the case as it was a bit soggy in the middle.

Curry

A simple curry for dinner this evening which was what I needed as I was playing with the plum and apple leather, making the pastry for tomorrow's beetroot and onion tart and also a quinoa, beetroot and feta salad - phew! 

Stir fry with Noodles

Quick stir fry veggies with noodles, cashew nuts and quorn chicken style pieces. Nearly had a disaster as there wasn't much soy sauce left, still tasty though. 

Fusilli Bolognese

Had a surprise visit from the in-laws this evening. They emailed Mr VST this morning to say that they would be in the area and might pop in and see us. He specifically asked them if they wanted dinner and they said no. When they arrived I had already cooked dinner for Mr VST and I with enough left for lunch tomorrow. I didn't make a huge amount, just enough for healthy sized portions today and little ones for lunch. I didn't have enough linguine so I cooked up some fusilli as well. Mr VST got hungry while they were here so then asked them if they wanted to eat with us which of course they did. Small portions of fusilli bolognese were had by all. Thankfully I had taken some rhubarb cake out of the freezer on Saturday to see us through the week and so we had that for pudding with custard as well.

Wedding Weekend

Mr VST and I were invited to a wedding this weekend in High Wycombe, it was of a friend of ours Big J and his lovely fiancée, now wife. We were fed fantastically well all weekend. At the reception we were greeted with fizz and canapés, including Yorkshire puddings with roast beef and horseradish sauce, I was gutted as I love a good Yorkshire but there were no meat free ones. The wedding breakfast was really tasty too. To start we had a vegetarian tart and salad, simple but tasty and then for the main we had the most delicious, creamy butternut squash risotto. There were speeches and then desert which was individual lemon meringue tarts with strawberries.

 Later in the evening there was a buffet, which I couldn't face but I had a bit of Mr VST's cheese and crackers! There was also wedding cake. The mother of the groom made the fruit cake (which was delicious) and the bride with a little help from the groom, iced it. As you can see it was beautiful.

Someone also made them this wonderful top table cake with each of the members of the wedding party made in icing.

We then got up this morning and had an amazing buffet breakfast with fruit, yoghurt and cereal followed by a fry up. After a short stroll there was lunch served at the bride's parents' house, another packed out buffet and then this evening I made a tomato and pasta bake, which Mr VST and I nibbled on but I really made it so that we would have some lunch tomorrow.