The Tap House, St Agnes, Cornwall

I love surprises! I'm probably not that easy to surprise myself but I love surprising other people. On Tuesday Mr VST and I got the chance to join in and surprise one of our good friends in Cornwall who was celebrating her 30th birthday. There was a good group of us and it was a lovely evening. There weren't very many vegetarian options Mr VST went for a 12 inch Greek (pizza that is) and I went for the spinach and feta pie with sweet potato fries. Mr VST was a little challenged by my choice as it is his signature dish. The pie was very nice, there was a lot of feta in the pie and it was deep with spinach too, lovely. The sweet potato fries were a little too sweet for a savoury dish though. Mr VST said that his pizza was a little dry. 

The pub seemed lovely and everyone enjoyed themselves but I can't recommend the place because the manager berated me in front of a room full of customers for bringing birthday cupcakes in. He said that it was akin to bringing a bottle of wine in or a steak, I disagree, nevertheless I offered to put the cakes away, he declined that offer and continued in the same vain. Given that my friends and I had probably spent a fair bit of money in his pub already and that my friend's husband had in fact phoned ahead and checked that it was OK I thought that it was out of order.  I understand that running a pub is hard work but that is no way to treat your customers. 

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.

Pie Minister Heidi (Filo) Rolls

I randomly signed up for a newsletter for Capricorn goat's cheese and they sent out a recipe for Pie Minister Heidi Rolls. I have never tasted them but the recipe looked tasty. To make it slightly healthier, I used filo pastry instead of puff pastry.

Ingredients:


1 large red onion

4 garlic cloves, peeled and halved

500g sweet potato, peeled and cubed

1 tablespoon of olive oil

120g spinach

160g goat's cheese

4 sheets of filo pastry

1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)

75g sesame seeds

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 180C/356F/Gas Mark 4. In a large roasting dish, add the onion slices, garlic, sweet potato chunks and drizzle over the oil, salt and pepper. Give a good mix. Roast for 20-25 minutes until the sweet potato is just tender and the onion is nicely caramelised. Allow to cool.

2. While the veg is roasting, wilt the spinach in a pan gently with a splash of water. Remove from the heat and strain the spinach to remove any excess water. Roughly chop and set aside.

3. Cube the Capricorn Somerset Goats Cheese into small dice and mix into the drained spinach. Roughly chop any large pieces of sweet potato and mix the sweet potato, onion and garlic into the spinach mixture. Mix well, taste the mixture and season. Place in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes.

4. Take a sheet of filo pastry, brush half of it with egg wash and fold in half, then cut the sheet into three. The filo sheets I used were 39cm x 30cm. I folded the longest edge over.

5. Egg wash the long edge and both short edges, place 1/12th filling in a straight line, in the middle of the pastry.

6. Fold the short edges over, onto the mixture and then roll the non-egg washed edge over rolling until the the egg washed edge makes a seal.

7. Place seam down onto a lightly oiled baking tray (or silicon sheet), brush the top with egg wash.

8. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

They make a really tasty snack. The combination of the inside ingredients is a great one. 

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Honey, Strawberries & Ice Cream

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I had some left over sweet potato so made these lovely sweet potato pancakes as a pre-dinner snack which were delicious with some local honey. Unfortunately they only made me more hungry!

Spinach and Potato Bake

Ever conscious that us veggies must ensure we have enough iron (and this can't all come from dark chocolate) I was browsing spinach recipes on the BBC Good Food website when I came across this recipe for sweet potato and spinach bake. It is a bit like a potato dauphinoise and is something that I would usually avoid making because they are usually packed with cream and cheese and therefore also packed with calories too. Using Elmlea instead of single cream I worked this recipe out to be just about 350 calories per quarter of the dish, not bad at all. I also decided to use half plain baking potatoes and half sweet potatoes. 

So the ingredients I used were:

284ml (1 carton) Elmlea alternative to single cream
2 garlic cloves , peeled
1 sprigs each of  thyme or rosemary
150g fresh spinach
freshly grated nutmeg
15g Bertolli spread , for greasing
450g sweet potatoes and 400g baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (about 3mm thick)
25g mature cheddar cheese, grated

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Put the cream, garlic and herb sprigs into a small saucepan and slowly bring to just below boiling. Turn off the heat, season and leave to infuse.

2. Grease an ovenproof dish generously with butter and spread half the potato slices across the bottom. Top with a layer of spinach, season and grate nutmeg over the spinach, then add the remaining potato. 

3. Pour over the cream mixture, through a sieve to remove the garlic and herbs, then sprinkle with cheese (I was concerned that there wouldn't be enough cream but there was plenty).

4. Bake for 45-55 mins until golden and tender.

I served it with salad but I reckon it would be great as a side for some fairly plainly cooked quorn fillets and some veggies too. The flavour was really quite sweet, I'm glad I didn't use all sweet potatoes as I think this would have been a bit too much. I would infuse the cream for much longer next time as the garlic and herb flavour wasn't very strong at all. 

The One Eyed Cat, Truro

After another day on the beach Mr VST and I were at a bit of a loose end. We decided to go and watch a film, Arthur, in Truro, which was very light hearted and easy to watch. We wondered the deserted streets and came to the One Eyed Cat, Truro's only bar and brasserie, apparently!

We browsed the menu and were delighted to see that not only was there more than one vegetarian option but none of the options were a goat's cheese, balsamic and red onion tart.

We started with some drinks and I chose the very refreshing mocktail Virgin Mule which was made with ginger beer and apple juice and had lemon and mint in it. Mr VST went for a pint of Cornwall's finest, Tribute.

Mr VST went for the risotto of the day which was leek and sun blushed tomato. It was plentiful, thick and creamy with just the right amount of leek.

I chose the stuffed field mushroom. It was stuffed with spinach, sweet potato and some delicious, sweet glacé red onion on top. Mine was served with sautéed potatoes and sun blush tomatoes.

Both meals were really tasty. The other options were a nut roast with all the trimmings (as it was Sunday) and a feta bubble and squeak. The One Eyed Cat was lovely with excellent service and a relaxed atmosphere. We might have to go and have to back and try the other options....

Friday Night Curry

An easy cook on Friday night. Everything that was left in the fridge went into the curry! It was an interesting mix of mushrooms, aubergine, sweet potato and spinach.

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Strawberries and Honey

After my disaster with the vegan blueberry chocolate cake I thought I'd return to something tried and tested. I made these lovely sweet potato pancakes again this evening. This was a pancake day recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and it's a good one. These were lovely served with honey and strawberries.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I made these for pancake day and they were delicious. I fancied making them again and as the veggie stall gods had it sweet potatoes were on special offer this week. I used some of them yesterday in my spinach and sweet potato dahl and had just the right amount left to make these pancakes. I exchanged the melted butter for 100ml of semi-skimmed milk to bring the calorie count down a bit. They worked pretty well and were delicious with a bit of honey on them.

Pancakes

I have decided that Pancake Day is the best 'holiday' of the year. There's no big build up, no expectations, no stress of present buying and no day off work. Not even lots of planning necessary for the food. A simple flour, egg, milk mix is more than enough. Then when they come along, the pancakes, they always exceed expectations. Even if you end up sticking them to the ceiling it's still good simple fun.

I have tried to do something slightly different with them the last few years. I make my spinach pancakes with cheese sauce a good few times over the winter. Last year I think I tried some kind of Quorn fillet with cheese and spinach wrapped in pancakes. This year I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's sweet potato pancakes and decided to give them a try.

I first whipped up a classic batter this morning before I went to work. I use the best recipe I know which is from the Winnie-the-Pooh cook book that I bought my Mum one Easter (I think) when I was about 8 years old. 4oz flour, 1/2 pint milk and one egg. I doubled it and put it in the milk carton to transport it to work along with some oil, a frying pan, wooden spatula, lemons and Nutella.

Pannier Pancake Kit!

I set up my kit on the conference room table and my boss brought in his gas stove. My work day was nicely interrupted by requests for pancakes. Great way to spend the day!

The Pancake Batter was labelled so that no one accidentally put it in their morning cuppa!

Pancake day continued after my run with the sweet potato pancakes as designed by Hugh but with one minor change. I really don't like ground ginger, I think it has a horrible flavour so I added some mixed spice instead. The result was some very light fluffy Welsh cake type things that didn't really taste of very much but that were delicious with whatever you put on them! I guess that is the point of batter, it's a really good base for everything. 

I then moved onto the normal pancakes. I am a great lover of the traditional lemon juice and sugar but having tried a crepe with Nutella in France during my recent snowboarding trip I have to say I was converted. It helped that Nutella was on special offer in the supermarket when we last went. 

Of course I ate far too many pancakes of all types! Everyone always has pancakes on pancake day, says how great they are and that they should be eaten more than once a year but then we don't eat them again in the same way until the following year!

Winter Vegetable Stew and Dumplings

The VSTs had guests last night, a fairly rare occurrence! Veggie stew and dumplings was on the agenda anyway, having bought one of my super winter stew packs (3 onions, 6 carrots, a parsnip, a swede for £1.50) so I just suped it up with a couple of sweet potatoes and an additional couple of parsnips so that it would feed four and then two for lunch tomorrow which it did! I made one and a half times the dumplings too, I didn't think that any more would have room to grow in the pan and as you can see they were quite successful. Lovely evening.

Cottage Pie with Sweet Potato Mash

I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow in the hope that I have shifted the last of the layer I put on over Christmas. My clothes are certainly back to fitting better anyway but I would quite like the scales to confirm it. This is all before I go away next week on a snowboarding holiday which is fully catered and as I understand it we will be fed breakfast, tea and cakes on our return from the slopes and then a three course meal with wine each evening. I'm not sure if the snowboarding will cancel out the calories consumed but I'm not really that bothered either!

Anyway back to today. Cottage pie made with Quorn mince and half normal potato and half sweet potato mash has to be one of the more filling low calorie dishes that I make at about 235 calories a portion and when I am counting that makes it a winner!

Veggie stew and dumplings

A lovely Sunday night supper using all the veg in the fridge. Quick, easy and tasty too with plenty left over for lunch.

Cottage pie with sweet potato mash

Thursday night saw the return of the cottage pie with sweet potato mash, very tasty and filling for only about 235 calories a portion. Served with carrots and broccoli.

Cottage pie with sweet potato mash

Made this before going out for a walk and then ate it when we got back and it was really yummy. The mash was a little sweeter than normal though. I bought my sweet potatoes from the 'Continental Shop' which is packed full of delicious and exotic goodies. The potatoes were labelled sweet-potatoes but had a darker skin than normal and when I peeled them they were white inside rather than the usual pale orange colour. I've googled it and I'm not sure whether they were a different kind of sweet potato or whether they were yams?!Whatever they were they made a cracking sweet mash for my cottage pie.

Sweet potato and chilli soup with home made spelt bread

Two new recipes tonight. The one for spelt bread was printed off ages ago and never got around to making.

I also got a bit over-enthusiastic on the sweet potato buying last week as they were on special offer at my local market stall. I found this recipe for sweet potato and chilli soup on the BBC Good Food site to go with my bread.

I made a schoolgirl error with the bread in that I didn't grease the loaf tin well enough. The three minute preparation was very easy. I didn't have all the seeds but made a plain loaf instead. The problems came when I tried to turn the loaf out before putting it back into the oven for the last 5-10 minutes. I destroyed it getting it out of the tin and patched it together before putting it back into the oven. It came out a bit hard on the outside and doughy on the inside but that might be because I didn't make adjustments for my fan assisted oven. It was still tasty though and went well with the soup and mature cheddar.

The soup was really more like a sweet potato purée. Mr VST likes it this way but I think I would add more stock if I made it again to make it a bit thinner. I made it with chilli flakes and it had a nice kick. Good for a chilli Autumn evening.