Back to school!

Yes, here in sunny Scotland the kids are all back to school, just in time for the weather to brighten up a little as per normal!

Little Pots of Love will be back soon with Round 2 of Chip Wars, but in the meantime I thought I would do a quick post about school dinners/packed lunches.  School dinners north of the border used to be well regarded, even by a certain Mr Oliver in his TV series to overhaul the sorry looking offerings dished up to kids.  I never used to mind if Alister wanted to have school dinners as they usually had a really good choice of hot meals, baked potatoes, salad bar etc etc.  Even if he didn't fancy something hot he would choose salad and a ham baguette, he's good at making healthy food choices.  But over the past year or so there seems to be more food being bought in and less being made from scratch by proper school cooks, which is a shame.  A few times when he had school dinners I found I was paying £1.75 for him to have a tiny hot dog and a yoghurt. I'm sure he could have chosen more but who would want hot dog and carrots, for example??

He's always preferred packed lunches anyway, but last term we both got a bit lazy.  He always asked for a wrap with cheese spread and ham, and it was easy to do so that's what he got. Pretty much EVERY day! So this year it's changing.  Packed lunches can be healthy, tasty, varied and cheap so I have bought a few different sized tubs and I am trying out some things on him.  Thank goodness I have brought him up to enjoy pretty much everything!

Today was his first day back.  Last night I cooked some pasta and stirred some green pesto through it, I toasted a few pine kernels and added them plus a handful of halved baby plum tomatoes.  He had that plus a yoghurt, some fruit squash, some grapes and a little biscuit for afterwards in the playground.  He loved it, except there was far too much pasta!

For tomorrow I have just made this:

Pasta again, although if I had any I would have used noodles instead.  I stir fried some sliced carrots, yellow pepper, green pepper and cooked pork in a little rapeseed oil, added some teriyaki sauce to warm ti through then added the pasta back in.  It smells lovely, or so the boy shouted from his bed anyway!

My next change I need to make is to stop giving him a bag of crisps for tuck at breaktime.  We've agreed he can have crisps on Fridays for a little end of the week treat but otherwise it will be something healthier.  He's a good fruit eater, but for a bit of variety I think I'll try some breadsticks, or cheese twists, or maybe make some mini muffins with fruit in them.  Apple and cinnamon muffins sound good!

All of your suggestions for healthy lunches and snacks are welcomed,  I have a lot of packed lunches still to make!!

Crisp... crunch... CHIPS! (round 1)

Hi, I'm Alister, I'm 9 years old and I'm Jill's son.  I would like to do a post about... CHIPS!

I've been going around Dunfermline trying chips from lots of places.  Not only on this post am I going to talk about chips, I'll also tell you about my lunch today at The Inn at Carnock, near Dunfermline.

But first... CHIPS!! About 2 weeks ago I went to Grill48 but we forgot to take pictures but we will go back!     The chips were lovely and golden with a lovely flavour.  They were so crisp on the outside that you could hear them crack as you bit them, and the middle was lovely and fluffy.  The steak ciabatta that I had with them was gorgeous.

Moving on to chip sample number 2!  At The Inn at Carnock, they looked amazing but the flavour wasn't as nice as the chips at Grill48. They were crunchy, but not crunchy enough.

So Grill48 wins Round 1.

My lunch today at The Inn at Carnock was a minute steak baguette with red onion marmalade.  Even though I'm a kid I ordered from the adult menu but was still surprised when 2 baguettes appeared!

I didn't really mind because the bread tasted so good!  The bread was nice and fresh, it was very soft, it was very crisp on the outside (maybe a bit too crispy for me) and had a lovely doughy flavour.

The red onion marmalade was too sweet for my liking (and my mum's!) but I did enjoy my lunch.

I'm going to try lots more chips to see if anyone can beat Grill48.

To be continued...

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!!

In a bit of a pickle...

...and over the moon about it!  Oh dear, I've found a new addiction, and it's yellow!

Anyone who has had the pleasure of dining in my company will know that I have an obscene passion for condiments.  Lamb must have mint sauce, fish must have tartare sauce, fried eggs must have brown sauce (preferably Daddies but I'm pretty free and easy and will take what I can get!), lentil soup must also have brown sauce and tomato soup must have curry powder and worcestershire sauce (blame those last two on my wonderful Grandad, Aly Keir!).  Everything has a condiment to go with it and if something contains vinegar it's pretty much a winner with me.  A couple of months ago I discovered a local Fife company called Chillilicious who make chutneys as well as a gorgeous range of glassware.  You can find their lovely stuff at http://www.chillilicious.co.uk/shop and their Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/Chillilicious.Products.UK

When I first started Pots of Love they very kindly sent me a sample of their red pepper chilli chutney.  I can take or leave peppers, and as much as I love anything pickley and chutney-ish I wasn't going to be an easy one to bowl over since it had peppers in it.  But my word, what a delicious surprise!  The peppers were really plump and sweet and still nice and chunky, I hate it when chutneys are too fine so this was onto a winner.  The vinegar wasn't too overpowering, the sugar wasn't too sweet, the chilli gave a lovely warmth to the chutney without it taking over completely.  A beautifully balanced chutney that was heavenly on some oatcakes with a big slab of tangy Anster cheese.  Gorgeous!

Not long after that, Chillilicious had a stall at a craft fair in Dunfermline.  Alister and I toddled down and finally decided on a jar of cheeky chilli piccalilli and some chilli and coriander oatcakes.  I LOVE piccalilli, always have done.  I reckon I would pretty much eat anything if it was pickled first!

Here's my jar of yellow heaven:

Divine. I could eat this with everything, I am completely hooked.  Actually I would be quite content eating it from the jar with a spoon!  The veg was crisp and chunky, the sauce had a tangy mustardy vinegar hit that I adore, the chilli heat in the background gave it a little special something - it's just flaming LOVELY!  I had it on the chilli and coriander oatcakes with some mature Lockerbie cheddar and it was phenomenal.  The oatcakes leave a lovely warm glow in your mouth and are nice and rough, just the way I like them.

Unfortunately this jar of yellow heaven is now very much empty, but it's such a pretty jar that it now holds some paper clips on the desk in my little office!

I was planning to go and visit them during the recent Open Studios North Fife weekends to see where they grow their chillis (yes, all Fife grown!) and also their glass studio.  Unfortunately far less interesting things got in the way of this and I never did make it to Ceres to see them.  Next year, for sure!

So another fantastic Fife company making high quality products, how fantastic! And there are still lots more for me to discover, my mouth is watering already!