Feta and tomato pasta plus

Bout time I posted a recipe.

The title doesn't really say it, but I can't think of something more imaginative or descriptive. I used chicken but it would be equally nice without it (or with Quorn or whatever) if you fancied a veggie version.

Anyway, this serves 2.

1 chicken breast (optional), skinless and boneless, cut into small pieces.
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper (or whatever colour you like), in 1cm squares
1/2 courgette, in 1cm cubes
8 sun-dried or semi-dried tomatoes in olive oil, cut into small pieces
1 or 2 medium tomatoes, cubed
2 or 3 good handfuls of fresh young chard leaves or spinach, torn in half
75g feta cheese, broken into pieces
2 tbsp fresh oregano or marjoram leaves, or 2 tsp of dried (use other herbs if you like - mint, thyme, parsley or basil would all be good)
10 black olives, halved
150g dried pasta (I use a chunky sort of pasta rather than spaghetti or tagliatelle, but use what every you like)

1) Put the pasta on to boil, according to packet instructions.

2) Heat 1 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in a medium saucepan or frying pan and fry the chicken pieces (if using) with the garlic until mostly cooked. For the veggie version, fry the garlic for a minute then move to step 3.

3) Add the pepper, courgette and sun-dried tomatoes and fry until the veg is slightly softened and the chicken is golden. Add the fresh tomato and continue to cook until the tomato is mushy.

4) When the pasta is nearly done, add the chard or spinach and herbs to the sauce and stir until just wilted.

5) Add the feta and olives and stir, then drain the pasta.

6) Place pasta and sauce in the empty pasta pan and stir to combine.

Serve with a green salad. Should taste like summer in the Mediterranean.

Catering for 50!

I mentioned last year that I'm in charge of the food for SingSoc's formal meal this year (it's in March).

This means, as the title suggests, that I'll be catering for 50.

Which is a bit scary and daunting, but I'm really excited.

You know me, I love cooking, and I really enjoyed cooking under Pete's direction last year, but I've never been in charge of a kitchen before, let alone had to do budgeting and portion control and menu design and all the other essential jobs that go with it. So all new experiences.

The formal will have a Spanish theme, mostly because I fancied having a crack at tapas. I've spent the last two days planning the menus and budgeting for the ingredients (mySupermarket has proved invaluable already, saving me around 15%).

Here's the provisional menu... basically each table will get enough of every dish for everyone to have some, for vegetarians I'll reduce the portions of meat/fish on the table and increase the veggie portions. Far too complicated to ask everyone to order individual dishes. Once I get all the recipes up, they'll all be linked to here. Bout time I posted more recipes anyway.

Meat
Lamb meatballs in tomato and pepper sauce
Chicken in lemon and garlic

Fish/seafood
Salmon in Canary Island green sauce
King prawns with lime

Veggie
Baked tortilla
Deep-fried manchego cheese
Stuffed garlic mushrooms

Salads
Rocket salad
Orange and fennel salad
Roasted pepper salad

Potatoes/rice
Spicy potato wedges
Saffron rice

Dessert
Orange and mint flaó (Spanish cheesecake)
Fresh fruit

Also bread and marinated olives served with sangria when the guests arrive! Marinating olives is fun and tasty. :)

Good news is that it's inspiring me to get off my arse and do something that isn't watching TV, reading, playing Pokémon or cross-stitching.

Greek stuffed peppers, for OC

I mentioned this in chat ages ago, and just remembered that I promised to post it!

So here we go. This is very simple, healthy, and probably my favourite veggie meal ever. It serves 2.

2 bell peppers (that's just the normal peppers you get in the supermarket), whatever colour you like - I tend to use two different colours
100-150g halloumi cheese
Zest and juice of one lemon
4 tbs pine nuts
1 tbs dried oregano
1 tbs dried mint
Olive oil

1) Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.
2) Cut each pepper in half lengthwise through the stalk, and remove the seeds and white stuff. Leave the stalks on, as they look pretty. Pop them into an ovenproof dish, cut sides up.
3) Cut the halloumi into small cubes, and divide between the pepper halves.
4) Sprinkle the lemon zest, pine nuts, oregano and mint over the cheese.
5) Pour over the lemon juice, and drizzle some olive oil on as well.
6) Roast in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, until the peppers are tender and the cheese has browned a little on the top.

Serve with rice cooked in vegetable stock, and a green salad. There you go, 3 portions of veg with no effort at all!

I love the way the halloumi keeps its shape when cooked - it doesn't melt like normal cheese. It's also excellent sliced then grilled or fried until brown, and you can even make kebabs with it. But it doesn't make good cheese on toast. ;)

Both ways fruit cake

When I was a kid, we always used to visit my Auntie Lorna and Uncle Keith for Sunday tea.

It was the traditional English working class Sunday tea, with sandwiches - open sandwiches made with bread cobs (or bread rolls if you're not from round here), crisps, boiled eggs, pork pie, sausage rolls, salad, trifle, stuff like that. And always cake.

We brought the cake, every week. From the age of about five, the cake was my Sunday morning job. I'd do all the measuring and mixing and mum would do all the oven bits. From seven I could do the whole thing myself.

It was my great-grandmother that taught my mum, and she taught me. And the love of baking has stayed with me ever since. I've always liked the enjoyment it gives people. Plus - cake, yum!

And so back to Sunday tea. Usually I'd make a fruit cake, because that's Uncle Keith's favourite. He'd eat huge slices of it at tea, and if there was any left he'd take it to work to eat with his lunch.

I remember Mum finding a new recipe for fruit cake in a magazine. Basically you just mixed everything together and chucked it in a tin. I thought this was cheating - cake tastes better if you've had to work hard to make it! I'll admit though, that method is much easier and quicker and still tastes pretty good... so I'm going to share both with you.

6oz sugar (brown is best, but white is also fine)
6oz butter or margarine, softened
3 eggs
6oz mixed fruit (raisins, sultanas, currants, candied peel)
2oz glacé cherries, halved
2oz chopped mixed nuts
12oz self-raising flour
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon

The Hard Way

You'll also need 1 teabag.

1) Make a cupful of strong tea, and leave to cool. Soak the fruit and cherries in the tea overnight, stirring a couple of times. Drain the fruit well and reserve the tea.

2) Grease a 1lb loaf tin and pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.

3) In a large bowl, cream together the butter/margarine and sugar until slightly paler.

4) Beat in the eggs one at a time, getting as much air in as possible. It isn't as critical as when you're making a Victoria sponge because a fruit cake will never rise as much, but a little effort will make a difference. Don't worry if it curdles, it's not the end of the world! Happens to me all the time.

5) Put the drained fruit in a sieve over the bowl, add a few tablespoons of flour and shake until all the fruit has a covering of flour (this apparently stops the fruit from sinking to the bottom of the cake as it cooks), then add it to the mixture. Sift in the remaining flour, the nuts and the spices.

6) Fold everything into the mixture with a metal spoon. You'll need to use some of the leftover tea to get the mixture to the correct consistency, that is so a lump of it falls off a spoon with minimal encouragement.

7) Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

8) Cool in the tin on a wire rack.

The Easy Way

You'll also need milk or orange juice.

1) Grease a 1lb loaf tin and pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.

2) Melt the butter/margarine.

3) Put all ingredients into a large bowl and mix until combined. You'll need to use milk or juice to get the right consistency, as above.

4) Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

5) Cool in the tin on a wire rack. See? How easy was that?

I recommend this in the afternoon, with a nice cup of tea. I like to spread the slices with a little butter.

Chicken in lemon and garlic

I love books. Especially cheap books. And I'm always on the lookout for recipe books, since I'm so food-obsessed.

So I was happy to pick up some cheap books yesterday! Two small ones (Greek and tapas) with 100 recipes, £2 each. A different tapas one, £2.99. And a gorgeous book on feeding birds and what trees to plant and such, with great pictures, £5.

As soon as I spotted the tapas ones I had to have them, because tapas rules. I love that you order maybe 3 or 4 dishes each, and share. It means you can try stuff you wouldn't normally order in case you don't like it, plus you get to experience loads of different tastes. Yum.

And inspired by my new books, I attempted possibly one of my favourite tapas dishes - see title. As is quite common for me, I used the recipe for inspiration and modified it a fair bit. And it turned out good. So here it is. This serves 2 as a main dish, or 4 as part of a tapas meal.

4 chicken thighs, skinned (you could use two breasts (or breast halves if you're American), but to me the dark meat tastes better and has a better texture for this dish - breast is too dry)
3 tbsp olive oil (Spanish would be best)
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced (I use the stuff from a jar because I'm lazy)
250ml white wine (medium or dry)
Grated rind of one lemon
Finely pared rind of one lemon
Juice of the two lemons
2 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaved parsley
1 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
1 tbsp fresh thyme
(You could use all parsley instead of the other herbs. Whatever, it would work fine)

1) Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the onion gently for 5 minutes until soft but not coloured. Add the garlic and cook for another 30 seconds.

2) Add the chicken and turn up the heat a little. Fry for 10 minutes until browned, turning occasionally.

3) Deglaze the pan with the wine, scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan. Simmer for 20 minutes or until the chicken is tender - you may need to add water if the pan gets dry, but you want the wine to have mostly evaporated by the time the chicken's cooked.

4) Add the grated lemon and the juice, and heat through. Let it bubble for a few seconds. Remove from the heat and stir in the parsley, then transfer into a warmed serving dish. Sprinkle with the pared rind.

I served this with brown rice cooked in chicken stock, steamed asparagus and a mixed leaf salad. Boiled baby new potatoes, roast potatoes, French beans and spinach (just wilted) would all work very well too. Or just a green salad and crusty bread. Yummy and healthy, but be warned, this will cause some serious garlic breath.

The book says you could use rabbit, turkey or pork instead of the chicken.

The famous lavender cake recipe!

This is the cake that I have the most requests for. It's not actually my recipe - I found it on Allrecipes (fantastic site by the way, with a very useful ingredient search function), submitted by Judi. It's technically a tea bread, but it's so like a cake I just call it a cake! Besides, few people know what a tea bread actually is, and assume it's something you'd make a cheese sandwich with.

180 ml milk
3 tbs finely chopped fresh lavender leaves (it looks like a LOT of lavender but the flavour is fantastic)
85 g butter or margarine, softened
200 g white sugar
2 eggs
250 g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt

1) Preheat the oven to 165C/325F. Grease and flour a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
2) Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat to a simmer, then remove from heat, and allow to cool slightly.
3) Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg until the mixture is light and fluffy.
4) Combine the flour and salt; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk and lavender until just blended. Pour into the prepared pan.
5) Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a skewer inserted into the crown of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.

If I make this for myself I don't bother to ice it because it's already quite moist and sweet, but if I make it for a special occasion I'll add some kind of topping. I never seem to make the same one twice! This one works very well.

Mix 100g of cream cheese in a bowl until smooth. Add 50g of softened butter and 1tsp of vanilla extract and blend well. Pass 3tbs of strawberry or raspberry jam through a sieve into the mixture and stir in. Sweeten to taste with icing sugar or granulated sweetener (I prefer Splenda). The icing will be on the runny side - just spread it out on the top of the cake and let it drizzle down over the sides. Tell yourself it looks rustic. ;)

Prepare for some funny looks when you tell people it's lavender cake. Until they taste it, that is. I've never known anyone taste it and say they didn't like it. Seriously.

Actually I'm completely in love with lavender. It looks great, smells gorgeous and tastes fantastic. I love it in cakes, biscuits/cookies, scones, as a jelly, and strangely enough, with chicken (I'll post my very simple lavender chicken recipe soon). I don't understand why my mum hates lavender, it actually makes her feel sick. Bizarre.

Chocolate leaf cake

I went out for a meal with the guys from Socii last night, which was really nice. I made a special chocolate cake to say thanks to Harriet for all her hard work this year, and we then proceeded to make pigs of ourselves with it.

I'd seen a picture of chocolate leaves in a cake book a while ago, and thought they looked cool, so it was a good excuse for me to have a go at making them. The recipe that went along with it was awful though, it took ages and came out really rubbery and tasteless, so I used my own chocolate cake recipe instead. It serves 16.

For the cake:
8oz white sugar
8oz margarine/soft butter
4 eggs (large or medium)
2 tsp vanilla essence
6oz self-raising flour
2oz cocoa powder
2 tbs Bailey's or other similar cream liqueur

1) Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. In a large bowl, cream together margarine and sugar with a wooden spoon until mixture is paler and feels much less "gritty".
2) Beat in the egg yolks and vanilla, then beat in the whites a little at a time. The mixture should end up about the same consistency as before the eggs were added. Bear with it, it's a great workout for the upper arms!
3) Switch to a metal spoon. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together into the mixture, add the Bailey's and fold in very gently until completely combined.
4) Grease a 9-inch round cake tin and spoon the mixture into it. Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes until the middle of the cake springs back when touched, and the sides are starting to come away from the sides of the tin. Remove from tin and cool on a wire rack.

For the filling:
200ml double cream (I use Elmlea, because I can't tell the difference)
200g white chocolate, finely grated
75ml liqueur (raspberry, vanilla, banana, peppermint, orange or toffee flavour would work well, or even more Bailey's - I used raspberry in the cake last night)

1) Whip the cream and liqueur in a bowl until it is thick, but doesn't stand in peaks when you lift the whisk. Another arm workout, unless you have an electric whisk.
2) Fold in the white chocolate. Easy, huh?
3) Once the cake is completely cool, cut it in half horizontally and sandwich the halves together with the filling. Stand the cake on the wire rack with a large plate underneath it.

For the icing:
200ml double cream (see above)
200g plain chocolate

1) Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a small saucepan with the cream. Heat gently until the chcolate has melted.
2) Stir until well mixed and glossy. Leave to cool and thicken a little.
3) Pour the icing over the top of the cake. It will run down the sides of the cake to cover it, you'll need to encourage it a little with a teaspoon or table knife so every bit of the side is covered.
4) Carefully transfer the cake onto a serving plate.

For the leaves:
75g plain chocolate
75g milk chocolate
25g milk and 50g white chocolate

This is the fun bit.
1) Find some leaves - you'll need about 45 smallish ones. I used a mixture of oak, apple and holly leaves. Rose, mint, geranium, or other fruit trees would be fine. The apple leaves were too thin and tended to tear when I peeled them away from the chocolate. The oak leaves worked perfectly and looked great, and the holly leaves were very fiddly to peel off (peel the corners first if you try them) but did look fantastic.
2) Wash and dry your leaves well.
3) Melt one batch of chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave (but be careful not to overheat it).
4) Using a small paintbrush, apply a layer of chocolate on the underside of 15 of the leaves. I added another layer once they'd cooled, the chocolate needs to be thick enough not to break when you remove the leaves. Chill in the freezer until set.
5) Repeat with the other batches of chocolate and the remaining leaves.
You could try using the different shades of chocolate to make patterns, dark in the middle and light at the edges makes the leaves look variegated.
6) Carefully peel the leaves away from the chocolate, and gently press the chocolate leaves into the icing of the cake.

It would be rather nice to add some drained canned black cherries or fresh raspberries to the filling of the cake to make it even more special!

Harriet had made certificates for everyone, and presented them last night. Mine was for "Best Cake Baker". I guess my 22 years of baking experience counts for something, anyway. ;) I'm going to miss the guys over the summer, it'll be a long time before we sing together again.

Jelly cake!

I've been on a bit of a baking kick recently. I discovered that you can make cake flavoured with jelly (all right, Jell-o if you Americans insist) crystals, which works out rather well. I usually have loads of packets of sugar-free jelly in the cupboard because it's an easy low-cal dessert.

Choir people especially have been begging me for recipes, so I thought I'd start with the jelly one I eventually settled on. It's a simple basic cake mix, it makes 12 buns/small cupcakes. And it's in ounces - I always make cake in imperial measures because it's easier to remember that way, plus it's the way my mother taught me, and her grandmother taught her. Convert it yourself if you need/want to.

4oz granulated white sugar
4oz soft margarine
2 packets of jelly crystals (enough to make 2 pints of jelly)
2 eggs (medium or large)
4oz self-raising flour, sifted
A little milk or fruit juice

1) Cream together the sugar, margarine and jelly crystals with a wooden spoon. Keep going until the mixture is slightly paler, and feels less gritty.

2) Beat in one egg. Keep beating until the mixture is almost as thick as before you added the egg. That might sound a bit odd, but it makes sense when you're doing it. The more air you get into the mixture, the more your cakes will rise and the lighter they'll be. Repeat with the other egg.

3) Sift in the flour, and switch to a metal spoon. Gently fold the flour into the mixture, using the side of the spoon rather than the front or back. I use a figure-of-eight motion. Take your time, if you're rough now you'll lose all the air you beat into it in. Once it's nearly mixed in you'll probably need to add a little liquid - maybe a couple of teaspoons - to get it to a "dropping" consistency, that is it should drop off the spoon with just a little encouragement.

4) Divide the mixture between 12 paper bun cases in a bun tray, and bake in the middle of a preheated oven at 200C/400F/Gas 6 for 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack. Let them cool completely before you add any toppings.

Flavour suggestions...

Strawberry and raspberry mixed, with a teaspoon of vanilla extract (NOT vanilla essence!) added with the eggs. Top with melted chocolate.
Orange with two teaspoons of mixed spice or cinnamon added with the flour. Top with cream cheese mixed with a little honey, and sprinkle with cinnamon.
Lemon/lime with 1/2 teaspoon of ginger with the flour. Add a cream cheese topping as above.
Blackcurrant with two teaspoons of rum added with the eggs. Mix up a packet of butterscotch or vanilla Angel Delight (pudding mix) with 100ml of milk (and a bit more rum if you like) to make a thick creamy topping.

Damn. Now I've revealed how easy this is, no-one with think I'm great anymore! ;)