250g – 300g Tuna Steaks
2 slices brown bread, crusts off (& magimixed into bread crumbs)
1/2 egg white
1 shallot or small chunk of red onion
Tablespoon dill
Salt & Pepper

1. Put bread into magimix & made breadcrumbs
2. Add red onion, and dill & blitz
3. Season
4. Add tuna (cut into chunks) & egg white – pulse magimix so small pieces of tuna remain

Turn the mixture out & shape into 2 ‘burgers’ – cover them up and pop them in the fridge for 1/2 hour

Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan and lightly fry for around 3 or 4 minutes (depending on the thickness) on either side until cooked through in the middle

We served this with some organic mayonnaise flavoured with a little garlic, a squeeze of lemon juice & touch more dill.

We also had some homemade chips courtesy of ‘Cook with Gordon‘ -
2 Desiree potatoes scrubbed (skin left on) cut into eighths & parboiled for 3 minutes. Season, add a touch of olive oil & chilli flakes & pop on a hot baking tray in the oven set to 200°c for around 40 minutes until crisp.

To start, we enjoyed some Champagne & Sloe Gin Cocktails We then enjoyed some simple tomato & basil bruschetta care of a Jamie Olive recipe – it was really delicious…
Followed by a traditional Christmas dinner: Turkey, The Best Ever Stuffing ™, pigs in blankets, roasted potatoes and parsnips (in goose fat, again) and some glazed carrots with caraway seeds. Of course we also had some gravy (the best I’ve made yet!) and my homemade cranberry sauce which was fantastic… the photo doesn’t really do it justice as the battery went…For dessert I made Simon Rimmers Bounty Profiteroles. Need I say any more…
Hubby quite simply said that if we weren’t already married, he’d ask me there & then after sampling this pudding (if only I’d have known that years ago ;o))

We finished off with an espresso made in our new espresso pot, the rest of the Moet and maybe a dash of Viognier.

Mmmmm. I love Christmas dinner.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Santa brought you some nice gifts. He certainly stopped here as I am now overwhelmed by lots of glorious & mostly foodie presents. To mention, but a few, I am now the proud owner of Simon Rimmers the accidental vegetarian which I cant wait to use. I also have (having arrived today!) the Best-kept Secrets of the Women’s Institute Jams, Pickles & Chutneys. I have a spoon rest, a new super-dooper set of scales, a years subscription to Delicous magazine, the very large & new Gordon Ramsay book and a beautiful Nigella cake stand in cream.

I also got my very own website which I will be moving to soon (I very much hope you’ll join me there). All I can say for now is Hubby is a lovely and very talented man – I have a new logo already – we just need to work on the website layout & content. So keep your eyes peeled for that!

Food-wise, we enjoyed a fantastic (as usual) Christmas day dinner at my mum & dads. We had smoked salmon blini with avocado, mango & chilli salsa. It was really really nice. Hubby had a sausage (its a long term joke in our family) as he doesn’t really like smoked salmon.

The main meal was Turkey with sausages, the-bestest-ever-stuffing (this is my favouritest part), roasted potatoes & roasted parsnips (in goose fat) so they were really crispy, carrots, sprouts (or for me, just one for tradition, I’m really not keen), bread sauce & cranberry sauce (i forgot to take mine, duh!).

Pudding was either Christmas pudding & brandy sauce or my mums triffle – loaded with sherry.

I will be making a smaller version of our feast, hopefully, at the weekend just for Hubby & I.

Oh, and our main present between ourselves was our lovely new digital SLR camera. My Gran was amused as I just took photos of anything that didn’t move all day long! So here are some of our snaps…

We* have been quite busy recently though so if you’ll allow me, I’m using that as my excuse. You see we moved into our two bedroom flat just over two and a half years ago. But until now it’s really been a one bedroom flat with a spare room so full of junk you couldn’t move in it. So we’ve emptied it, bought some carpet, have had a trip to Ikea, built some furniture, put pictures & blinds up and generally had a big clear out and have then (in a tidy manner, of course) have put back in what we need.

Its a really nice room now, even if I do say so myself. There is just one thing that’s missing and that’s a small 2 seater sofa. So another trip to Ikea is needed but we just need a vehicle bigger than out ickle C2.

(*I say we but I’m sure Hubby will disagree. But seriously, nothing ever gets done with out a project manager/supervisor/general all round bossy boots…)

Since making the Christmas cake I have cooked, I just haven’t had enough time to blog about it. So here is a little summary with pictures:

My first ever Toad In The Hole (Jamie recipe) – severed with the suggested red onion gravy it was delicious and I was very proud of my yorkshire pudding.

We followed this up with some Toffee Apple Crumble – in fact we’ve had this twice. Once made with normal eating apples and once with bramleys (rather than the 50/50 mix suggested by Simon Rimmer). We both much preferred the bramley only one as the sweet sauce is more than enough sugar to match the tangy bramleys.
I also turned this pile of chopped vegetables…

into one of our favourite soups – Lentil and Chestnut Soup

Ingredients

• 1 small onion
• half leek
• 1 carrot
• 1 stick celery
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 225g red lentils
• 1.5 litres vegetable stock
• 225g cooked chestnuts
• double cream to serve (optional & not really needed)

How To Do It

1. Finely chop the onion, leek, carrot and celery.
2. Heat the oil in the pan, add the chopped vegetables and let sweat until soft.
3. Add the lentils and stir, then add the stock.
4. Bring to the boil and simmer until the lentils are very soft (about 40 minutes).
5. Add the chestnuts and simmer for a further 20 minutes or so.
6. Liquidise (I used my hand blender) until smooth.
7. Sprinkle each full bowl of soup with parsley and lace with cream as required.
8. Consume with lots of crusty bread and butter.

Its truly delicious.

Whilst I’ve been AWOL we also had Children In Need day at work and that means one thing – cakes, cakes and more cakes. I made my cupcakes with pink & white icing with flowers and I also tried some vanilla shortbreads – they were ok but a little soft & not quite as nice as I’d expected. Here they are among some of the other cakes brought in by my colleagues…

And last, but not least. Here is a lovely sunrise we had the week before last.

Over the last two weeks I have made a tomato curry, took my first (self-taught) lesson in sugar craft, made more soup (roasted tomato and pepper with tarragon) and made up a claire original butternut squash tart. So here goes…

Tomato Curry – it turned out ok but definitely needed more sauce to it..

I made the curry on a Friday night & I will add the recipe when I can lay my hands on it. It was tasty just a bit too dry.

Cake Art – this is something I hope to play with more over the coming months. I’d really like to be a able to bake and decorate some really nice cakes. Anyway this was my first attempt at icing sugar paste and making flowers…

And the final product… (they did taste good!)

Next on my list of accomplishments is another soup (sorry if I’m getting boring here, but it’s that time of year).

This time it was Slow-roasted tomato and red pepper soup – it was really tasty & we have 2 servings in the freezer…

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 4 Red Peppers, halved lengthways & deseeded
• 3 tbspn extra virgin olive oil
• 1kg vine tomatoes
• 2 garlic bulbs – halved horizontally
• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 400ml vegetable stock, hot
• 1 tbspn sundried tomato paste
• 1 tbspn chopped fresh tarragon

Serving suggestion – toasted baguette with a slightly melted topping of Crottin de Chavignol AOC (Goats Cheese)

How to Do It

1. Preheat oven to 200 °c
2. Put peppers in a roasting tin & drizzle with 1 tbspn oil
3. Put tomatoes and garlic in another roasting tin, drizzle 1 tbspn oil & season
4. Put peppers on top shelf of oven with tomatoes & garlic underneath – roast for 30 minutes
5. Transfer the peppers to a plastic bag, seal & leave for a few minutes to allow the skins to peel off
6. Heat remaining oil in a large pan, add onion and gently fry for 5 minutes
7. Squeeze in the roasted garlic and add the tomatoes
8. Discard the pepper skins & add the flesh to the pan
9. Add the stock, sundried tomato paste and tarragon – bring to the boil & then reduce the heat

We served with crusty bread & butter.

The tarragon added a creamy sort of taste – it really was very nice. Possibly one of my favourite tomato soups.

Lastly we have my original Butternut Squash Tart… based on Simon Rimmers Feta & Spinach Free-form pie in Septembers Delicious Magazine. I made it to use up the left over butternut squash from the soup the other day.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 1/2 packet of filo pastry
• 3 tbspn melted butter
• 1 butternut squash
• 1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped
• 1 tbspn olive oil
• 100g feta
• 5 shallots, cut into quarters
• 3 tbsn balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sugar

How to Do It

1. Preheat the oven to 180 °c
2. Cut the butternut squash into about 8 large chunks (spooning out the seeds)
3. Place the pieces of squash on a baking tray, drizzle with the oil & sprinkle over the rosemary + a pinch of salt
4. Roast the squash for 45 minutes then take it out & leave it to cool down
5. Once cool, scoop of the flesh & cut into smaller sized chunks
6. Mix the butternut squash with 2/3 feta cheese, season with pepper
7. Meanwhile 1tbspn melt the butter in a small saucepan & add the shallots
8. Once the shallots are glossy and starting to warm through add the sugar
9. Leave for 2 minutes but keep an eye on them and mix them about
10. Throw in 2 tbspn of balsamic & keep the shallot pieces moving until the balsamic has thickened to a glossy coating
11. Put the shallot pieces in with the main mixture & add the last tbspn of balsamic vinegar. Put to one side.
12. Heat up 2 tbspn butter
13. Using a loose bottom cake tin – firstly brush the tin with melted butter, then add a layer of filo pastry brushing on butter in between each layer
14. Add the butternut squash mixture & crumble the remaining feta over the top.
15. Lift the overhanging pastry on top of the tart & scrunch it up
16. Cook for 20-25 minutes

We started with some homemade Bruschetta – one shallot, a good handful of organic cherry tomatoes, a tiny amount of garlic & a few leaves of basil – all finely chopped and left in the fridge for a little while. Then served on a few slices of ciabatta and a drizzle of some grassy olive oil.

The burgers were made just the same way as the salmon burgers and this time I left them in the fridge for an hour or so before cooking them. I also coated them in a small amount of flour too & this gave them a good golden colour once cooked. Served on a ciabatta bun with lettuce, cucumber and lemon mayonnaise with a side serving of rustic chips and the obligatory glass of white wine. A perfect Friday night tea.

Mr C said he’d quite like a tomato salsa type accompaniment next time so maybe we’ll have to try it again in a few weeks.

I didn’t make anything for pudding but we accidentally picked up 2 slices of blueberry cheesecake which went down very well.

In the pan we have some colourful carrot, onion, celery & pepper…

Throw in some lentils, stock & a few more bits & bob and after 20 mins add an egg or two…

Served with pita bread (as we didn’t have naans) & some yoghurt with cucumber.

It turned out ok, I’d like to try it again but remember to wash & drain the lentils & maybe cook them until they are a bit softer…