Saturday night's alright for biting...

Apologies for another cringe worthy title (sorry, not sorry... :) )

The past couple of days I have been suffering from 'slimmer's memory', it's a real thing! ;)
I forget that I've had biscuits, crisps, extra little bits creep in to my meals, and then there are the 'f**k it' moments.  When I remember all the things I've already eaten, know i've gone over my Slimming World syns, but think 'f**k it' and eat more anyway. Might as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb, eh?

Then on Friday night, after a really busy week being back at work after 4 weeks holiday (yes, I know, I AM lucky!) I took myself off to bed early, I think I was asleep by about 10pm-ish and slept til 9am, lovely! And I had a pile of Facebook notifications, loads of them, very odd! However, lovely Clair my current Slimming World consultant had invited lots of people to like the page for this blog, and my numbers had doubled overnight!  How nice, it even prompted me to make my breakfast of wheat biscuits and berries look pretty and take a picture of it to post rather than just throwing it down my neck.  It also really helped to refocus my efforts and stop sabotaging myself this week. So hello! Welcome, and thank you so much for being here, I truly appreciate it!

I had already taken the time to plan my meals for the coming week, so I was almost back on track, but my snacks were the problem.  So today I have been much better. I made a big pot of chicken, leek and rice soup and have been snacking on it throughout the day.  I'm also making a bigger effort to drink more water as I often forget to at the weekends.  But it's Saturday and I know I will need nibbles for the evening ahead.  I'm a grazer in the evenings.

So I've made some hummus and dippy veggies (or crudites for the less heathen like amongst you!), sweet potato skins scooped out and mixed with bacon and spring onion, topped with melted cheese (my Healthy Extra A allowance), and then a mix of fat free greek yogurt and some chopped chives (this was just the result of messing about with what was in the fridge - try it!), and a wee packet of chocolate buttons for 4 syns. There was also a bowl of pickled onions and beetroot but I scoffed them. I'm going to have a cheeky wee Jack Daniels and diet coke too (4.5 syns for 35ml), it IS the weekend :)

That wee lot should keep me going all evening!!

Oh and just to prove that I really do eat a huge amount of food, this was tea from 2 hours ago:

Lamb leg steaks with visible fat removed, marinated all day in fat free yogurt and harissa paste (a tiny 0.5 syns per level tspn!), couscous loaded with red onion, green chillis, tomatoes, lime juice, and fresh mint, coriander and flat leaf parsley. A favourite tea that I had forgotten about til I saw a jar of harissa in Asda last week.

Hope these give you some ideas if you are following Slimming World, but to be honest it's just tasty grub for anyone.

Big love,
Jill xxx

Salads!

I would love to say I haven't written for a while because I'm such an incredibly busy and important person (oh go on, it's a little bit true, in MY world!), but mainly it's because I'm lazy!

I go through phases of feeling the need to write and then once it's out of my system it can be a while before it sweeps over me again.

Today, I just felt like having a wee chat about salad dressings. As one does!

Supermarkets are choc-a-bloc with every kind of salad dressing you can think of: creamy ones, low fat ones, spicy, citrus, herby, fruity... there's just hundreds of the damn things - and the price of some of them, ooft!!!  But my favourite is a good glug of rapeseed oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some cider vinegar (about 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar as a guide), a blob of dijon mustard, some salt and pepper then give it a whisk together or put it in a container with a lid and just give it a good shake.  Tastes better than the bottled stuff and if you have the stuff in the house anyway it costs pennies to make.

Have a play around with it to see what you like: try different oils, even flavoured oils.  I like rapeseed as, aside from just preferring the flavour, it's homegrown and it has around half the saturated fat of olive oil.  There's loads of vinegars, red or white wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar make great dressings too.  Maybe switch to wholegrain mustard, add a teaspoon of honey, pop in some garlic or ginger... the possibilities are endless!

I just finished a bottle of my lovely lemony mustardy one so I don't have any decent photos but here's our lunch from my birthday last week, I wanted a plate full of my favourite things!  We had quesadillas filled with buffalo mozarella, chorizo and taleggio cheese, plus a salad of baby leaves, watercress, spinach, rocket, figs, olives, feta cheese, baby plum tomatoes, grated carrot, and lemony mustardy dressing - a bit of a mish mash on a plate but perfect!!  Salad has come a long way from the lettuce, tomato and cucumber with a blob of salad cream (although I do LOVE salad cream!!), put whatever you love into it.  You get really good jars of veg in oil in pretty much any supermarket now: roasted peppers, artichokes, mixed mushrooms - all sorts. Give them a go, bung a few in with a bag of mixed leaves, put a bit of home made dressing on, just enough to coast the leaves but not drown them, and see what you like.

Other things you might like in your salads are grains - quinoa, couscous, bulgar wheat etc are so readily available these days, and although fairly plain in taste they do take on the flavour of other things well.  I love cous cous with red onion, coriander, fresh chilli, lime juice and a bit of salt and pepper in it - pretty much fresh salsa mixed with cous cous.  But that's lovely mixed in with salad leaves too.

Salad doesn't have to be dull, even with something in it a bit more calorific like a bit of feta and a bit of oil based dressing you can still pack it full of vitamins, antioxidants and all sorts of good stuff.  And just because cheeses and oils are higher in calories and fat, remember that there are good fats out there!

Hope you are all having a wonderful summer, we certainly are!

A little ray of lemony sunshine

School holidays can be...ummm...challenging! I am lucky enough to work term time so although I get lots of time off in the summer, it means my boy and I are with each other 24/7.  And so it's only natural that now and again we need to spend a little time in separate rooms!

So one day last week we had a nice morning but by lunchtime he was getting a little cheeky and I was getting a little short tempered. So he spent the afternoon chilling out watching TV and I spent it in the kitchen trying a couple of recipes I had on my to-cook list.

My last blog post dealt with the bran scones from that day, but I wanted something a bit special and light and zingy to counteract the dark, grey, wet, miserable summer days we were being dealt.  My younger brother (BAFTA award winning, no less!)  is filming a new TV show with chef Peter Sidwell at the moment and so I had a nose around the interweb for some of Peter's recipes.  Peter is the chef at Rheged in Penrith.  If you've never been to Rheged, do make time to pay it a visit if you're in the area, it's a great place... http://www.rheged.com/

There's a nice little bio of Peter on the website, along with one of his recipes which hit the nail on the head as far as I was concerned - Lemon Meringue Posset. A quintessentially British dessert with a twist, lemon curd on the bottom and crunched up meringue on top, lovely!  It got me thinking that I would like to do a regular feature where I take a recipe from a respected chef and make it at home.  A lot of people are scared to try, I'm a bit more haphazard and up for having a go!  So, hopefully, this might encourage someone to have a pop at something that seems tricky at first.

This is the recipe ----> http://www.rheged.com/files/Lemon%20Meringue%20Posset.pdf

And this is the end result:

If you do have a go, the measurements for the cream and the creme fraiche are a bit confusing as one says 300ml = 1/2 pint and one says 300ml = 1/4 pint.  Use 300ml of both and ignore the pint measurements.  For the curd, you need 6 egg yolks.  I used the egg whites to make my own meringues to go on top, they really are easy to make.  When you are separating egg whites/yolks break each egg into a little bowl just in case one of the yolks splits and you end up contaminating all of your lovely clean egg whites. Then add them one by one to a larger bowl.

I have always used Delia's measurements/timings for meringues and they have always been great.  For each egg white you will need 2oz of caster sugar. I like using golden caster sugar as I think it has a more natural taste, and it gives the meringues a lovely golden colour.  In a clean, grease free bowl whisk the egg whites on a medium speed until they start to firm up, then increase the speed and beat them until you get firm peaks.  At this point, add the sugar a bit at a time and whisk on a fast speed until you get firm peaks again that will be lovely and glossy.  Either split the mix into small blobs on a lined baking tray, or make one large meringue.  I made half the recipe for the posset dessert so only made 3 egg white meringue and there was LOADS. Pop it in a preheated oven at gas mark 2 or equivalent, then turn it down to gas mark 1 as soon as they are in the oven.  When the meringues are baked, turn off the oven and leave them in until the oven is completely cooled, this will dry the meringues out and give them a nice crisp shell.

Before:

After, with a lovely golden colour:

Easy peasy, honest!!

The recipe also calls for home made lemon curd which seems daunting but really is fairly simple to make.  Just follow the recipe and, most importantly, once you add the eggs to the bowl keep the mixture moving with a hand whisk so the eggs don't scramble.  I ended up making a double batch of the lemon curd the following day as it's so delicious, I'll never buy shop bought again! It was absolutely gorgeous on the warm home made bran scones that I made the same day.

The dessert really was one of the nicest I've ever tasted.  The very fussy 'wife' even gave it a 10/10!  Time consuming to make, but well worth the effort to make everything from scratch.  It just wouldn't have been as nice with shop bought lemon curd and meringues.  Go on, give it a go, bring a little bit of lemony summer sunshine into your day!

When life gives you lemons...

...make lemon curd! Obviously! Although life did't give me lemons, I bought them in Asda. Lovely big juicy unwaxed affairs they were too. Mmmmmm......

This morning, along with a nice cup of Earl Grey, I had this for breakfast:

And at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I am in heaven!!  It's a home made bran scone, half topped just with butter, half topped with a little butter and a good dollop of home made lemon curd. I had a lovely day playing in the kitchen yesterday!

I had a conversation with my friend, Lynne, about bran scones (oh, yes. We're that interesting!) and how the bakers always seem to be sold out of them.  I've never seen them in the supermarket, so I thought I would hunt down a recipe and have a bash at them.  From Googling it, a lot of recipes suggested that this is a Scottish dish, which hadn't occurred to me. So if you have no connections with Scotland but have had a bran scone I would love to know!

I used the recipe here ---> http://www.food.com/recipe/scottish-bran-scones-117596 and used natural wheat bran, which I prefer to oat bran and gives the scones the nice dark flecking through them.  The dough was very wet and soft (I was a bit heavy handed with the milk!), but I played around with it and added a bit more flour and bran until it was a little more pliable.  It was probably still a bit too wet as I ended up baking it for almost double the time in the recipe, but it was well worth it!

The scones are lovely and soft.  I warmed one for my breakfast earlier and it was just lovely.  I'll definitely make them again.

As for the home made lemon curd, I made that as part of what turned out to be one of the most delicious desserts I have ever tasted, and that deserves its very own blog post!  Watch this space...

Tea and sympathy...

Actually, tea and shortbread, but I'm feeling a little bit sorry for myself.  I never really get ill, and if I get a cold I just get on with life and ignore it.  But this week I have been floored by Supercold! I've had no voice, streaming eyes and nose, headache, aching limbs, can't keep my eyes open...generally feeling absolutely dreadful.  It's now Thursday afternoon and I've been in my bed or on the sofa pretty much since Monday afternoon. Rubbish.

And the weather is awful, which makes me feel even worse. Mainly because I have no biscuits in the house and there's no way I'm going out to buy some!!  And let's face it, when you feel rotten and it's pouring rain outside, you NEED tea and biscuits!

So I had a rummage around the kitchen and came up with 1 slightly soft chocolate Digestive (whoo hoo!!), plus some flour, sugar and butter which screamed "MAKE US INTO SHORTBREAD!!!" at me.  Who am I to refuse the demands of 3 simple ingredients when they seem so desperate. (yes, I may have overdone the ibuprofen and lemsips today...)

I dug out my old Great Auntie Jean's book of Plain Cookery Recipes from The Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy.  I don't think Auntie Jean actually attended the school, she probably bought or was given the book:

I love reading old books like this! There were also a few recipes cut out of 1950s newspapers tucked in the back for various sweets, jams and marmalades - lovely!  However, their shortbread recipe called for rice flour which I didn't have today so I ended up using an old recipe I have scribbled down that uses 175g butter (at room temperature), 250g plain flour and 75g caster sugar.  I only had 170g butter in the fridge but I'm not much of a stickler for exact measures anyway so just bashed on.

Auntie Jean was the sister of my Gran Blair - Agnes Irvine Blair.  My son has the same middle name as her.  She always appreciated that I had an interest in our family history and in passing things down through generations so she gave me her old cook books amongst other things dear to her,  I still miss the chats we had in front of her old fireplace in Dundee :(

One of my fondest memories of my gran is making shortbread highlanders with her on rainy afternoons whilst the boys were at the football.  So in her memory, that's what I made today.  If you come round for a cuppa and I offer you one, don't worry, I DID wash my germ ridden hands first!

It's such an easy recipe.  Heat the oven to about gas mark 3 or equivalent, so a fairly cool bake. I cream the butter and sugar together then sift in the flour.  Then just get your hands in and combine it all. Use a little drop of milk or water if it's a little bit dry.  I also added a teaspoon of vanilla extract.  Roll the mix into a long sausage about 2" in diameter.  Then put some demerara sugar into a baking tray and coat the whole roll in the sugar, making sure it's pressed in and that the ends are covered too. Pop it into the fridge for about 30-40 mins til it firms up.  Cut it into 1/2" thick rounds, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, or 5 mins longer if you like them darker.  Cool on a wire rack then get the kettle on and make a cuppa!

Even with a runny nose and achey body, who wouldn't feel just a little bit better after a cup of tea and a crisp, buttery shorty highlander?! Thanks to my Gran Blair for the memories xxxxx

A cheeky little tart

Who doesn't love a tart!? Or a pie? There's something lovely and comforting about crisp, warm, buttery pastry and you can fill it with all of your favourite things. Scrumptious!

A while back I decided that I had avoided making pastry for far too long.  I have a nice easy to use silicon tart case and I was determined to overcome my fear of pastry making and put it to use.  Pastry is one of those things that lots of people assume is going to be very tricky and time consuming, so they don't bother doing it. I was one of those people!  However, after trawling the interweb for a while one weekend, I realised that it probably isn't as challenging as I first thought.

I quite fancied making a mainly vegetable based tart and came across this blog post: http://food52.com/recipes/10062_potato_tart_with_gruyere_bacon_and_rosemary#

The recipe uses a butter pastry and I would definitely use it again, it was beautiful.  The key is to keep everything very cold.  I used my shiny new food processor that my brother and his wife bought me for Christmas and this made it super easy.  I weighed out the butter I needed about half an hour before I planned to make the pastry.  I chopped it up into little cubes, put it in a dish, and put it back into the fridge to re-chill it.  I also put a glass of iced water in the fridge so the water I was using would be really cold too.  When I came to make the pastry, I added the flour, sugar and salt into the food processor and gave it a quick whizz.  Then i added the chilled cubes of butter and pulsed the processor blades until the mixture formed crumbs.  I then added the chilled water and blitzed til the pastry mix started to come together in a ball.  Once it's in a ball, wrap it in cling film and chill for about an hour before rolling it out.  Don't work the pastry too much, just roll it then use it and you will get a lovely buttery, short pastry.

Now, the filling.  Honestly, what is not to love about potato, cheese and bacon encased in butter pastry??? Heaven!?  But I thought potato and pastry might be a bit carb heavy together for my personal taste, so although I used the pastry recipe, I tweaked the filling a little.  I opted for sliced sweet potato (counts towards your 5 a day, unlike starchy white potatoes), sliced leeks fried in a little butter with some chopped chives, fried off pancetta lardons, and a mixture of mature Scottish cheddar and Gruyere cheeses.

I lined the tart case with the rolled out pastry and layered all the filling ingredients inside, with a bit of black pepper.  It was a bit hit and miss knowing how long to cook it for.  The recipe called for 45 mins at gas mark 5.  I ended up with it in for just over an hour.  I got a bit impatient waiting for the sweet potatoes to become tender so I ended up drizzling a little olive oil over the top towards the end, hoping it might increase the temperature in the filling a little.  However, this resulted in the tart having a bit of a soggy bottom.    I plan to make it again but will try either roasting the sweet potato slices for a while before layering them in the tart, or possibly par-cooking the sweet potatoes as well as blind baking the tart case first.

Soggy bottom or not, the end result was lovely and the sides of the tart were beautifully crisp and buttery:

Yes, as usual our bellies needed to be filled so badly that I forgot to take a photo of the entire tart before we devoured it!!  But at least this way you can see the layers, and my soggy bottom ;)

So, go on, give pastry a go - and let me know how you get on!!