Claire's Cake Bake & Other Foodiness

I am loving my Magimix -its letting me make and try new things and it speeds up others. For example:

New things

I quite like fish, but don’t eat much of it – with the reason mostly being that Mr C doesn’t really like fishy fish. He enjoys the Tuna Burgers I make but has never really enjoyed any of the salmon dishes I have tried.

Today, however, with the help of a fish booklet that fell out of Delicious Magazine we may now have a salmon dish to add to our menu. The salmon fillet is coated in a Chermoula which was very tasty and served with a light accompaniment of couscous…

Ingredients (For 2)

• 2 salmon fillets
• 1 small garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• just less than 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp chopped red chili
• Pinch saffron strands
• 1/2 tbspn lemon juice
• small handful coriander & same of mint
• 1 tbspn olive oil
• small pinch salt

For the Couscous:

• 1 red pepper
• 175ml chicken stock
• 140g couscous
• 1 tbspn extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 knob of butter
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 1 tbspn chopped mint

How to Do It

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°c (fan)
2. Roast pepper for 30 mins & the pop in bag to cool – once cool remove skin seeds – chop finely
3. Once pepper is cooked tun oven up to 210°
4. Make the chermoula – put all chermoula ingredients into magimix & blend
5. Line baking tray with baking paper.
6. Season skin side of salmon with salt & pepper then spread with some chermoula.
7. Turn fillet over, season again and add chermoula.
8. Cover the baking tray with tin foil – seal tightly
9. Pop salmon in over & set timer for 12 minutes
10. As soon a s salmon goes in the oven, make sure the stock is in a pan & boiling. Take it off the heat, add the couscous & cover (keeping it off the heat).
11. After 5 mins, fluff up the couscous, add butter & olive oil and mix well – popping back on heat briefly to ensure its warm through.
12. Take off heat again and add lemon juice, roasted pepper, chopped mint and season well.
13. Serve couscous and salmon for a very tasty meal…

Speedy things

I’ve used the magimix to make cakes twice. The first time we weren’t impressed by it but yesterday, due to time constraints, I used it to make some cupcakes and they worked much better. I did take a photo but the camera isn’t brilliant so you’ll have to wait until next time ;)

Its Mr C’s birthday on Tuesday though so I will be baking again but I think I’ll stick to my Dualit hand mixer for that!

Today I made some more bread & the magimix comes with a dough hook so I thought it silly not to give it a go. The outcome was a tasty fresh loaf and hardly any mess. All the ingredients are thrown in the magimix, it forms a dough ball and then you leave it in situ for half an hour. After this time you need to pulse the magimix 3 or 4 times and effectively, knock the dough back. The mixture then gets transferred to a big bowl and left to rise for 2 hours in the airing cupboard.

After two hours the dough is tipped out, gently moulded into a rectangle and placed in a loaf tin. I left it settle and rise again for 10 minutes whilst the oven heated up to 200°c. It cooked for about 35 minutes and produced a really nice loaf…

Yesterday I turned 30.

However, as depressing as it seemed, it turned out to be a very good day. For starters it was a Saturday! and my day started at a 9am appointment at the hairdressers – as we were going out she finished it off in a flicky out – going out style. Hubby dropped me off at the hairdressers as he ‘stuff’ to do then picked me up & we went home for a nice cup of tea & some very tasty buttery croissants.

Whilst I’d been at the hairdressers he’d nipped about in the car to collect my birthday presents which he’d kept out of sight at his mum & dads. So I can home to a nice few surprises. The first two presents were Nigella books – Feast & the new one, Nigella Express – this is a really nice book with lots of pictures.

My third & main present was this…

The one I have is cream & it perfectly matches my Nigella bread bin & other paraphernalia so I was very excited and very happy as you can imagine.

My fourth present was a bottle of

The first (& only) time we drank this champagne was on our wedding night in Malmaison. Even at midnight we thoroughly enjoyed it so this was an extremely nice present and I cant wait to open it!

Apparently there is also fifth present that the postman is yet to deliver… I have no idea what it is!!

I also got an array of presents from friends and family- the highlights of which include two more bottles of champagne, a rather nice block with 5 knives (Anolon) and a knife sharpener, a pure pamper session, two bunches of beautiful flowers and some money & vouchers.

In the afternoon I had a nice relaxing bath & then we headed out to my mum & dads where we met up with my brothers, their girlfriends & my Gran and we headed out to Ego Restaurant in Heswall. We’ve been quite a few times as the food is always fresh and tasty. We weren’t disappointed. Another restaurant we’d always recommend.