Pork burgers & sweet potatoes.

A super quick, super healthy, super easy, super delicious dinner. SUPER!
If I had been bothered I would have made a tomato sauce, but for some reason the meal still didn't feel dry or incomplete. To keep the burgers moist and give them a lovely texture moosh together a slice of bread (any type, I used wholemeal cos that's what was lying around), one egg and a splash of olive oil into a smooth paste and mix into the pork mince.
To clear the fridge out a bit I also chucked in a yellow pepper, a red onion, coriander, spring onions and a few spices. Chop everything as finely as possible so the burger holds together well.

Bitches be jealous of my mad chopping skills.

Why are sweet potatoes regarded as being so much healthier than white ones? This bad boy had such a high sugar content that it was leaking caramel as it baked.



To make up for being lazy and not making a sauce some tomatoes were roasted. Salt, pepper, olive oil, oven, done.


To make sure you've seasoned correctly, cook off a small amount of burger mixture. Raw pork doesn't taste too good.



Beautiful golden coins of sweet potato and deep red beetroot discs. All these colours mean it's healthy. But also delicious - healthy is good but being tasty is as equally important.

Basil, minestrone & veg box fury.

Mother is on the verge of cancelling the organic veg box we get every Wednesday.
I would believe her but for the fact she has said this every week for about 2 months now. Granted, it is rather annoying - it's summer and we're still getting rubbish potatoes, wizened carrots and massive smelly onions, just with the odd gnat-infested lettuce chucked in as a sign of 'summer' produce.
I know for a fact that not all organic produce is as crappy as this. We used to have an allotment, and the stuff we got out of there was 100 times better. It's just a theory, but we're almost certain they save the best produce for the market - everything was so fresh and crisp and enticing enough at their stall to make us sign up for the scheme in the first place.
That being said, we did get some utterly charming little broad beans this week, so maybe we'll hang on in there and see if it gets any better!
They were shelled by little hands (sibling no.4) and added to the minestrone.


Weirdly, I've never actually made this before, but I wasn't too worried since soup is one of the easiest things to cook.


I sauteed one large onion and three cloves of garlic and added two courgettes, a red pepper, two carrots and a handful of wholewheat spaghetti. On top of that went a whole load of water, one chicken and one mushroom stockcube, and a tin of tomatoes.
The ubiquitous squirt of ketchup and dash of soy (in my cooking at least!) also went into the pot.
Our purple basil is growing wonderfully, so a handful was finely chopped into lovely ribbons and added last of all. Yes, yes, I know - never chop basil, always tear. But to that I say CODSWALLOP.


I won't give a step-by-step recipe as it seems a bit condescending to be honest. Soup is lovely and forgiving because it is completely open to interpretation, so is pretty hard to get wrong.
Please forgive the photos, it looks rather awful but tasted fantastic - savoury and tomato-ey and fragrant with basil which was intensified with a little pesto and handful of freshly grated parmesan. Even the veg hater of the family managed a whole bowl! (And no, that's not me..)
I just wished we had an old hunk of parmesan rind to chuck in the pot, because it makes the broth lovely and silky and provides a beautiful savoury undertone.



I'll definitely be making more of this in the future. It's a fantastic way of using up odds and ends, tastes great and is exceptionally good for you.
Huzzah!

Orange cake and summer eating.

Tonight two American scientists came to our house for dinner.
I think their accents are funny.
They have trouble understanding mine.
It's silly, at school I was teased for my accent being too 'English' and 'posh', but to the rest of the world I might as well be wearing a kilt and swilling whisky.

It was really hot here today, round about 25°C.
Dinner was simple as mother had no time to shop or cook, because she came home straight from work with the Americans in tow.
As an impromptu starter, we had houmous with a dusting of paprika and a drizzle of olive oil, olives, vividly pink radishes, crusty baguettes and a pressed ham hock terrine.




As the 'main course' there were prawns with garlic, red chilli and finely shredded basil, fish done on the barbeque (which unfortuently managed to fall apart spectacularly) and potatoes baked in cream and shallots which contrasted rather oddly with the otherwise light meal, but in my defence I had no idea what was happening and was instructed to make something, anything, with the mountain of spuds that had arrived with the veg box on wednesday.


For dessert it was yet another concoction I managed to bluff my way through - a rosewater, almond and orange cake with a honey and orange syrup poured over it. Very similar to the orange and poppyseed one in fact, but better.
It was extraordinarily dumb of me to completely make up a recipe when I was supposed to be impressing guests. Ah well, it ended up being delicious so that's all that really matters I suppose. I have no idea what the measurements were, but I basically creamed together butter and sugar (not too much sugar, as it would have been hideously saccharine with the syrup), added two egg yolks, ground almonds, rosewater, the juice of an orange + the zest. Flour was folded in and then the egg whites were beaten and stirred in gently. The syrup was the juice of one orange, half a lime, muscavado sugar and honey.


Annoyingly, there was an absence of any icing sugar in the house, so I had to serve the cake all covered in holes from where I had poured in the syrup, with no way to disguise them. Ugh.
It's an ugly looking creation, but one that tastes so, so gooooood.

The cookie saga continues! (And possibly ends)

Today I was reflecting. Reflecting upon my failure to bake a proper cookie. Yeah, yesterday's were okay but they just weren't good enough.
Well, I decided that this pitiful character flaw cannot go unchallenged so I tried a new recipe today.

Ingredients:
2 cups + 2 tablespoons plain all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 & 1/2 sticks (170g) butter, melted
1 cup soft light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg +1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate chips

How to do it:
Preheat oven to 325°F/Gas mark 3
1. Combine together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside.
2. Combine the melted butter, two sugars and vanilla extract and beat together. Add the egg and egg yolk and beat until thick and homogenous.
3. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar/egg mixture until combined.
4. Stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Roughly shape into balls - the craggier the better - and bake for roughly 15 minutes.
6. Take out when the edges are lightly browned. You want them to look slightly underdone in the middle - they'll harden slightly upon cooling and still be soft and chewy.



I don't know exactly how many this recipe makes since I only baked one as a test run and froze the rest of the uncooked mix in logs. Since mother reads this blog I thought it best not to be gorging myself on dough. However, I would guesstimate it to make about 15 chocolatey circles of delight. (UPDATE: It makes 12 large cookies.)
And, yes, these are about as near to perfect that I'll probably ever get. They're thick and chewy and soft and pretty amazing.
I implore you to make these as soon as possible. In fact, just go and do it now. Yes, you. Make them. Make them now! And tell me how you get on (:


NOTE: The dough will seem really crumbly and won't mix together easily, but do not add more liquid! Persevere and squidge it together with your hands.
Also, the recipe specified unsalted butter + 1/2 tsp of salt. I used salted butter and also the extra salt. Possibly because I am a disgusting human being, but whatever. They taste goooood.

Original recipe here.

Chilli con carne pt. 2

Wanted to make guacamole. Cut one avocado open and it was brown. Cut the second one open and it was brown. Dammit.

Ah well. We had salsa, grated cheddar, sour cream, tortillas and rice. Some disgustingly decadent individuals even had a mix of chilli and rice within a tortilla.
Personally I find the texture of the mince with the tortilla too soft, and with rice too same-y, so I compromised and toasted my filled tortilla (chilli, cheese, salsa) in a dry pan. I had it with salad and dipped the wrap into sour cream. It was okay - I guess I'm just not that into chilli. Except of course two days later, when the flavours intensify and everything is just a heck of a lot better. The photo is unfortunate in the way that the lovely black beans in the chilli aren't visible.
And is it just me or does that blob of delectable sour cream look a little like an albino fried egg?

A very basic salsa recipe:
Chop two tomatoes, a red pepper, a little coriander and one spring onion finely. Make garlic paste by crushing one small clove with salt under a knife. Mix everything in a bowl, squeeze some lime juice over and mix again.

Cupcakes.

There seems to be a huge following for cupcakes nowadays, which is attracting more and more people every day. It is understandable - they're sweet and cakey enough to feel like a treat but, crucially, small enough to not feel like you're pigging out. They also now come with a plethora of pretty designs which helps matters somewhat.
I've always liked cupcakes, so the other day I made a tray for my younger sister's tennis match. I reckoned it's what a bunch of preteen girls would like. Safe bet indeed - they were a hit, and had the mothers angling for one, too. I used the usual equal butter-flour-sugar & two egg mixture, and topped with a generous amount of vanilla buttercream.
Unfortuently, I was using my mother's oven and the cupcakes got a little more brown, and rose a little more unevenly, than I would have liked (said oven has a door that leaves a 2-inch gap, and only two temperatures: warm gently & blitz).
However, the most best part was when one girl ate the blossom flower, thinking it was intended to be consumed, and proclaimed it to taste 'a bit funny'. In hindsight, it would probably have been a good idea to point out that the decoration was not edible.
Ah, fun times!