Food: easy entertaining

We were having some friends over on Saturday night so I said I'd make a few snacks.

The thought of feeding quite a few people used to stress me out but now I keep things simple.

Martin and I had been to see Despicable Me 2 earlier in the day which was sadly really disappointing. Despicable Me is my favourite film so I was really gutted. I think part of the problem was that I was looking forward to seeing it so much that I'd watched every single available trailer far too many times and, as such, had already seen all the funny bits!

I didn't want to spend ages slaving over the cooker because that's when entertaining becomes boring and annoying. I therefore picked some easy to rustle up dishes:

- honey mustard sausages
- caramel and burnt marshmallow cupcakes
- garlic, mozzarella and sugar bread sticks
- tortilla chips and salsa
- quinoa salad

I started by making the Hummingbird bakery caramel cupcakes with a burnt marshmallow topping.

I use a special Ikea cupcake trays which make smaller, taller cakes. The tray costs £7. The recipe below makes 24 of these petite cupcakes.

80g butter, softened
280g caster sugar
240g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
240ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
150g dulce de leche

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Place the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Whisk together until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
2. Combine in a separate bowl the eggs and milk.
3. Add half of the egg/milk mixture to breadcrumb mixture and combine. Scrape down the bowl and add the rest of the egg/milk. Stir.
4. Finally add the dulce de leche and combine.

5. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden and risen.

To make the topping follow this Ottolenghi meringue recipe.

Just make sure that once your uncooked meringue is made that you then use this directly i.e. don't bake it in the oven. Don't worry about uncooked egg - the way the sugar is heated beforehand means that the egg white is fully cooked.

Then place the meringue into a large piping bag fitted with any type of nozzle you fancy - I used a simple star and piped Mr Whippy shaped cones on top of the cupcakes. I then used a blow torch to create the toasted effect.

I also rustled up this quick and easy salsa recipe and served it with sour cream and tortilla chips.

I made an old favourite of sausages with mustard and honey which couldn't be simpler to do.

I prefer to use chipolata sausages. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line an oven tray with foil and place the sausages on top. I used 24 sausages. Then, in a small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of runny honey with 1 tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Brush this sticky mixture over the sausages and cook for 35 minutes in an oven - turning half way.

Your end result is beautifully sweet and knarled sausages.

I made some mozzarella and garlic sugar bread. I saw this recipe on the amazing Kitchen Treaty blog. When I saw this recipe originally, I was slightly concerned about the inclusion of sugar, but Karen certainly knows what she's talking about. It was so yummy!

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp freshly minced garlic
1 pack of ready made pizza dough (it comes in a large rectangle)
2 tbsp soft brown sugar
200g grated mozzarella.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. Place the pizza dough on an oven proof tray.
2. Combine the olive oil and garlic and brush over the top of the pizza dough.

3. Sprinkle the cheese and sugar over and bake for 15 minutes or until light golden and bubbly.

I finally rustled up a simple quinoa recipe based on this recipe.

Most of the prep was just assembling and letting the oven do all the work! If you've got lots of people to feed I definitely recommend popping some sausages in the oven and the garlic bread is amazing - you'll never want to buy it again.

We were hoping to have a few leftovers for lunch the next day but everything went, so at least that means everyone enjoyed it!

Do you have any favourite recipes for feeding lots of people? Do you spend all day in the kitchen beforehand or do you prefer to take shortcuts where possible? 

Food: recent eats

praline meringue cupcakes

It's safe to say that it has been a very greedy week so far. I've tried to balance it slightly with gym visits and yoga, but not sure I've cancelled out all the food. I just thought I'd share some pics of what I've been munching on.

Food: What I Ate Today - 8th May

Since I returned from Egypt, I've been back on the healthy diet bandwagon. I just thought I'd share with you the things I've been rustling up.

Firstly, lunch was my current favourite, quinoa. I really enjoyed roasting off some butternut squash a couple of weeks earlier and incorporating that into a quinoa salad, but it was time consuming and yesterday I wanted food, fast! Instead, I microwaved a couple of sweet potates for 10 minutes and scooped out the flesh. I added some cooked frozen peas, freshly chopped mint and a can of black eyed peas, and voila! a super easy, tasty and healthy lunch. I made loads too - Martin's been instructed to take it to work everyday!

quinoa salad with sweet potato, peas, mint and black eyed peas

Food: Dinner Party

We were having two of our good friends over for dinner, Andy and Fi, over the weekend. This meant that I had to slightly relax the ultra healthy food that I've been cooking up recently. I'm sure they would have appreciated it all the same, but dinner parties are supposed to be relatively decadent. As the weather has been so lovely the last couple of days, finally, I wanted to make a more summery dish. I was initially going to make roast chicken but I decided to use the chicken instead to make Martin's favourite dish, chicken and saffron rice. I'd cooked up a large quinoa salad at lunch time, so I added some of that as a side and also a quick carrot and orange salad that I had rustled up. 

For dessert I scanned BBC Good Food for some ideas. BBC Good Food is one of the best food websites around. The number of user reviews means that you're pretty much guaranteed that the recipe will work, it's is been highly rated. I decided to make a reduced fat lemon tart. I'm usually not keen on reduced fat desserts because you can tell that they're the diet version due to lack of flavour or an unusual texture compared with the full fat version. However, because this particular recipe had 38 five star reviews, I thought I'd give it a go, and, with just over 180 calories per portion, how can you go wrong?

I had a bit of a disaster initially, as I stupidly didn't measure the size of my tin, so I didn't make enough pastry. I tried, in vain, to roll it out between two pieces of cling film to make it thinner. But no, the pastry wasn't having any of it and I ended up making a second, larger batch. This time it worked perfectly. However, on blind baking, I sampled a little excess pastry and realised I'd forgotten to add icing sugar. Doh. I was not happy! Having already made a previous attempt, I gave up at this point and just carried on with recipe. Luckily I'd made my pastry nice and thin, and the highly lemony filling more than disguised this error. The end result was a beautifully crisp pastry tart with a soft, moreish, oh so lemony, filling.


Chicken and Saffron Rice

It's hard to describe what this dish is like as it involves such an unusual combination of flavours such as paprika, golden syrup, saffron, tomato ketchup, risotto rice and chicken. But honestly, please take my word for it that it's delicious and give it a go! It's effectively a chicken and rice bake. 

chicken and saffron rice

Food: Initial thoughts on new food changes plus fruit nuggets recipe

It's been an interesting few days giving up refined sugars and processed carbs. It started with our big weekly food shop. On an average week, our trolley starts out healthy enough - a reasonable mix of fruit, vegetables and chicken. Then all my good intentions fail when I inevitably add a mixture of the following to trolley: Kit Kats, shortbread, any Cadbury's chocolate, bagels, Ben and Jerry's etc etc etc. Martin is much better than me. He never craves these high sugar foods, he'll eat them if they're around but he won't be pushing for their inclusion in our trolley.

Our latest food shop

Firstly, I'd like to say that it has been much easier than I anticipated. I thought I'd be craving sugary food but I've realised that as long as I make an effort to make/eat tasty alternatives, then I really don't feel like I'm missing out. It's no wonder people fall off the bandwagon when they only have lettuce to look forward to for dinner. However, if you create a delicious quinoa salad (quick and easy to do), then not only are you rewarded with a tasty meal but you also feel very full. So far I've made homemade quinoa, granola bars, chili con carne and fruit nuggets. With such tasty food, this food change can hardly be called a diet!

First Quinoa Recipe

quinoa

I've been carrying out a lot of research into quinoa. This grain is a complete unknown to me. I've only ever had it in some preprepared MandS salads. Firstly, I wanted to find out if it lived up to all the hype.
Today, the term 'superfood' is constantly thrown about and I've always been quite reluctant to get on board. Many superfoods are over priced and I'm still doubtful as to whether they convey much higher health benefits than their less expensive alternatives. The goji berry is the perfect example. I stumbled across this small pink, oblong berry in a mix of other dried berries. After taking a handful of berries I was surprised by the over riding bitterness and endeavoured to sample each berry individually to work out which one was causing it. It was the goji berry. I've now made a mental note to never eat goji berries again.