Month: April 2019

Easy Meals by Rachel Allen

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Cookbook Challenge Part 8

Sometimes you do just need an easy meal. This book was in my Mum’s kitchen until a few years ago when she passed it on to us. We were still trying to get used to feeding children in the short window of time available between collecting them from nursery and them being so tired they throw a tantrum and then fall asleep in their dinner.

This book promises to help, although I would prefer to enjoy my busy life rather than just “get through” it, but never mind.

I decided to make quesadillas since no-one in my family has ever complained about those. There are three options for fillings in the book and I picked mango with Gruyere, which doesn’t sound particularly Mexican but I thought it would be an interesting combination to try.

I used a bag of ready grated cheese to make it even easier, so the most difficult thing I needed to do was chop and peel the mango. I could have bought that ready chopped too, but those packs are not always as sweet and juicy as I would like.

I know it’s not the best presentation, but hopefully you get the idea of the gooey melted cheese and slightly caramelised mango. It was a really tasty combination, like cheese and chutney, but if I made this again I would use two chilies as my family like a bit of heat.

Dessert was an Easy Lemon cake. This was an all in one recipe that you make in the food processor and then ice with a simple lemon juice and sugar icing.

I think I made the icing a bit too runny! I added the yellow sprinkles just because I had some and otherwise it would have just been a white cake on a white plate. It still doesn’t look that photogenic.

It looked a bit better when it was sliced up. The cake had a good lemon flavour, but was more dense that I would have liked. I think it was overmixed, as I followed the instructions to process for about a minute or until the batter came together. My new processor is so powerful that it was ready in a few seconds, so I should have stopped there. My sons thought it was good though, they are just happy to have cake.

This book was great when our sons were younger and is fine if you are looking for some quick and basic meals. I think stronger flavours are more popular in our house these days.

I haven’t decided which book to cook from next week. I may go back in time again, maybe much further back – we’ll see!

Easter Weekend Cooking

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Sirocco by Sabrina Ghayour

Cookbook challenge part 7

This weekend we were away visiting family for the Easter holiday, which meant I was cooking for the next cookbook challenge in my Mother-in -Law’s kitchen down in Wiltshire. As there were going to be a few of the family around over the weekend, I wanted to make a selection of dishes that we could share on the Saturday and still have some leftovers for Sunday lunch. It seemed like a good opportunity to use this book which I have been wanting to try for a while as it just looks so colourful.

Before we set off on Good Friday, there was time to bake some hot cross buns for breakfast. They came out rather rustic looking, but were still tasty.

Saturday was a beautiful hot sunny day, so we went into Devizes to watch a few people setting off for the Devizes to Westminster canoe race.

And now, on to the cookbook challenge.

I knew I wanted to make these stuffed baby aubergines as soon as I saw the recipe, but I also knew my sons were never going to eat this, or aubergines in any form in fact. Now that I also had another vegetable loving adult to cook for it seemed a lot more worthwhile.

This recipe is very simple, but the tahini really adds extra depth of flavour and makes it more special. One son tried a tiny piece and then his brother took one look at his face and declined! They were very popular with the rest of us though – no leftovers for Easter Sunday.

I needed something a bit more substantial that everyone would definitely eat, so puff pastry seemed like a reliable choice and these Za’atar and Goats’ Cheese puffs were easy but effective. If I had been able to get ready rolled pastry they would have been even easier, but I had to roll mine out – it didn’t take too long but was more difficult to make the puffs all the same size.

They look slightly burnt in the picture, but that’s where the cheese got a bit too well toasted on top and they didn’t taste burnt at all. We had these warm and everyone thought they were delicious. The aromatic za’atar went really well with the cheese too, so it’s worth getting a tin of this.

Next I needed a couple of salads. The first one was apple, sumac, red onion and pomegranate salad. I used sumac before when I cooked from the Ottolenghi Simple book and since then I’ve been sprinkling it on all sorts of things to give a tangy flavour.

This refreshing fruity salad was a great contrast for the rich pastry and aubergine dishes. It was a large portion so there were lefotovers for Sunday lunch (the citrus juice stopped the apple from turning brown). It even looks like the picture in the book doesn’t it?

The second salad was a supposed to be made from Maftoul (Palestinian couscous), but I couldn’t find that anywhere so I used giant wholemeal couscous which I think is very similar, but not identical.

The recipe also included black garlic which I’ve never tried before. This is what it looks like.


It’s been aged in special conditions until it turns black and sticky and it has a sweet mild flavour which is very different to fresh garlic. As it’s mild you usually need to use the whole bulb in a recipe which does make it quite expensive – this bulb cost me about £4. The recipe also included dried sour cherries which seem to be in short supply at the moment as I couldn’t get them in Manchester (or in Devizes, but that is quite a small place), I used ordinary dried cherries which were not too sweet, but not exactly sour either.

This made a huge portion with plenty of Sunday lunch leftovers. All the family liked it, except our youngest niece and nephew but they are not known for their adventurous tastes. I would have this again, although with all the dried fruit, black garlic and fresh herbs it is probably the most expensive salad I’ve ever made.

Here is the full selection of dishes.

Of course there had to be a dessert and we all love a drizzle cake so I made this one which included orange, lime and lemon.

It had a good zesty flavour and a crunchy citrus sugar topping as promised. The ground almonds give this a good moist tender texture.

This was all quite fun to cook and not too difficult even in an unfamiliar kitchen. There was a lot of citrus fruit involved, which made everything taste light and fresh but also meant a lot of zesting. I bought a new mini grater / zester especially for this meal and the cooking would have been a little arduous without it. We enjoyed having a selection of different flavours and textures and this was a good meal for a warm sunny evening.

My Free Wine!

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I received this quite exciting package from @virginwines a few days ago. The delivery driver staggered up the driveway with it and then left it on the front step for me to drag inside. But I wasn’t complaining; 16 bottles of wine are certainly very heavy but that’s not a problem when they are completely free!

If you have read my introduction to the cookbook challenge, you may remember that I bought a new Kenwood mixer in February. A Kenwood Chef Titanium in fact. Well, Kenwood ran a February “wine and dine” promotion which meant that by registering my details and uploading my receipt I could claim a free box of all this wine.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure this was going to work. I thought that only purchases from certain retailers would qualify, or that I would have to sign up for a virgin wines subscription in order to claim anything “free”. But no, the claim was processed and the wine turned up, as simple as that.

There are a few I probably would not have thought of buying so I’m looking forward to pairing them with some recipes.

Cookbook Challenge Part 6 Joe Wicks Lean in 15

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The Sustain Plan

I’m a bit behind with writing this up as last Sunday the washing machine malfunctioned and I spent quite a lot of the day mopping the kitchen instead of writing. That and some work travel down to Slough meant that I am only just catching up, but never mind – I’ve still been cooking, just not writing about it very quickly.

This week we stayed with the healthy theme, but in contrast to last week’s old style wholefoods, we tried something more up to date. This is my younger son’s book which he got for Christmas. He’s into keeping fit, and although I would not encourage him to follow a weight loss plan and worry about how he looks in selfies, I think that learning how to cook some healthy meals and following the exercise routines in the book is great for getting him into healthy habits.

Joe Wicks has 2.6 million followers on Instagram and a website at http://www.thebodycoach.com where you can read about his diet and exercise plan. You may find the style of his writing a bit annoying if you’re not into everything being “banging” and him referring to broccoli as “midget trees”, but there is no denying that he’s successful and the recipes are tasty, easy and fun. My son helped me choose and cook these ones so it was more messy that usual, but also more entertaining.


The main course was sea bass with spiced pea and potato cakes. The recipe is supposed to only take 15 minutes, but that’s just for one person. We scaled it up for 4 and it took a lot longer. For one portion, the recipe says to cook the potato in the microwave, but for our large quantity we cooked it in a pan. That wasn’t difficult, but did take longer. We then mashed all the potato cake ingredients together and fried the cakes two at a time. The potato mixture was really soft and quite difficult to flip over in the pan and we also needed to keep the first cakes warm in the oven while we cooked the rest. It was a bit of a juggling act and it was just as well there were two of us.

The recipe said we should remove the skin from the cooked sea bass, but we left it on, partly because one of his other sea bass recipes points out that the skin is the best part so I’m not sure why you would want to take it off for this one.

It was very tasty anyway and my sons really liked it, apart from the cooked tomatoes which were “too squashy”. OK…

Dessert was peanut butter brownies. This made 16 brownies (well, 8 for us as we’re not into dainty portions) so there was no need to scale it up.

This was very easy to make. I did adjust the recipe a bit as it included chocolate protein powder which you can only buy in large tubs for about £30.  I replaced that and the almond milk with some chocolate protein shake and added some ground almonds which seemed to work fine.

We had this with vanilla ice cream (definitely not part of the Lean in 15 plan) and strawberries, which are out of season but we found some quite juicy ones. The brownies were really good, especially served warm. They had quite a light texture and lots of chocolate flavour without being too sweet and sickly.

We all enjoyed this much more than last week’s meal. The other good thing is that my son spotted a few more recipes in the book he wants to try out. By the way I did drink wine with this, which seems wrong as I don’t think that is part of the plan, but I recently received a big box of free wine – I’ll have to write another post about that!