The Lunch Challenge - Part 3

This next recipe was a real hit with me. Easy to put together, tasty and healthy - a real winner all round. As part of my lunch challenge I decided to try the Bulgar Wheat Salad with Feta, Pomegranate and Lots of Herbs from In The Mood for Food by Jo Pratt.

This book must surely be a contender for the prettiest cookbook award. Call me shallow but I do particularly like cookbooks that look nice, with lots of enticing pictures, and this book definitely falls into that category!

I had never tried Bulgar Wheat before as it just didn't sound very appealing and I nearly substituted it for couscous. I was worried that it would be a bit like brown rice, which I find a bit of a chore to eat, but I'm pleased to say that my fears were unfounded. It just tasted like a slightly larger version of couscous and, mixed with all of the other ingredients, was a pleasure to eat. I'll definitely be making this salad again.

Bulgar Wheat Salad with Feta, Pomegranate and Lots of Herbs

(adapted from In the Mood for Food by Jo Pratt)

100g bulgar wheat

125g feta cheese, finely crumbled

seeds from 1/2 pomegranate (I used half a tub of seeds from the fresh fruit section of the supermarket)

1 large handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped

1 large handful of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

2 ripe tomatoes, deseeded and chopped

1/2 bunch spring onions, finely sliced

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1) Cook the bulgar wheat according to the packet instructions and the rinse under the cold tap to cool it down. Drain really well and tip into a large bowl

2) Add the remaining ingredients and mix together well. Serve straight away or keep in the fridge overnight. I found this tasted nicer when it was closer to room temperature so you might want to take it out of the fridge half an hour before you plan to eat it.

Serves 2

Sometimes only macaroni cheese will do...

Mmmmm

Pasta, cheese sauce, a bit of salty bacon - what more could you ask for?

(and yes I know it's not actually macaroni!)

The Lunch Challenge - Part 2

The second recipe I chose to try out as part of my lunch challenge was the Spanish Omelette from Nigella Express.  It took a little while (compared to making a sandwich anyway) to gather all the ingredients together, boil the potatoes, mix it all together and cook it but on the whole it was all pretty straightforward.  Plus it can be made the night before and stored in the fridge until needed.  The end result was really good and I've been left with three more good sized portions, so enough for a few days of lunches!  As you can see I served it with a bit of salad on the side and it all went down very nicely.  

(My light box is coming in useful already!)

Spanish Omelette

(adapted from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson)

225g baby new potatoes (Jersey Royals please, if at all possible!), halved

4 eggs

75g chopped caramelized or flame-roasted peppers from a jar (I used a handful of ready-chopped and roasted frozen peppers, defrosted first of course)

3 spring onions, finely sliced

75g grated Manchego or cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon butter

drop of oil

salt and pepper to taste

1) Preheat the grill.  Cook the potatoes in a pan of boiling water for about 15 minutes until cooked through.

2) Whisk up the eggs and then add the peppers, spring onions, cheese and season with S & P to taste.  Mix in the potatoes.

3) Heat the butter and oil in a small frying pan and then pour in the egg mix and cook gently for 5 minutes.

4)  By this time the bottom of the omelette should be set, but if not just leave a little longer. Then sit the pan under the grill for a few minutes to set the top.

5) Turn the omelette upside down on to a plate and leave to cool to room temperature before eating.  Don't worry if it feels a bit wobbly in the middle - it will continue to cook as it cools.

Serves 4 or more, depending on what else is available.

What a difference a light box makes....

Since I started up my blog and while reading the some of the many other amazing blogs out there it has become more and more apparent that one of the secrets of a good food blog is good photography.  I've come to the conclusion that some of my earlier efforts were really pretty poor and that I Must Try Harder!  So I've been playing around with different angles, close-ups etc and I think I have made some improvements however it has also become clear that the three most important elements of a good food photograph are lighting, Lighting and, of course, LIGHTING!  

Unfortunately I don't have the funds to invest in a lot of new photographic equipment (a proper DSLR camera will have to wait until another day!) so I have no option but to just do the best I can with my little point-and-shoot.  Luckily, there is a lot of good advice out there in www land and I recently happened across a step-by-step guide to making your own light box.  So, make my own light box is what I did and I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the results.  

Regular counter-top shot

Light box shot (with a little bit of editing)

It's not perfect, but it's a start.  Plus it will give me a lot more scope to play around with different coloured backgrounds etc.

The DIY light box instructions can be found here.

My next challenge - lunches!

I have been set another challenge!  This time I need to find some easy packed lunch solutions - another task which I am more than willing to undertake.  Lunches, and particularly ones I need to take to work with me, are a bit of a bugbear with me. I spend so much time thinking about dinner, what to feed the children, the next cake I want to make that lunches don't tend to get much of look in.  Homemade sandwiches can be a bit uninspiring and more often than not I don't even bother to make one and instead opt for a slice of bread and an egg to scramble in the breakout room microwave.  Cheap and simple no doubt, but interesting? Hardly.

So, the criteria are - easy to prepare, ideally the night before (fine by me), suitable for taking to work or out and about, healthy if possible and vegetarian or easy to convert (or my friend who suggested this challenge won't be very impressed!)

My first port of call was Nigella's recent book Nigella Express (I do use other author's books I promise....maybe my next challenge should be "No Nigella for a Month"!) as there is a whole chapter dedicated to just this sort of thing.  I have earmarked a few recipes from the book, the first one being Peanut Sesame Noodles.

This certainly filled the criteria mentioned above.  It was very easy to make (just mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl) and can be prepared in advance.  I think it's pretty healthy too - I know peanut butter is quite high in fat but there's only a small amount in each portion.  

Due to larder limitations I made a few tweaks to the recipe.  I only had crunchy peanut butter but figured this probably wouldn't make much difference (it didn't) and, instead of using raw pepper which I'm not very fond of, I used a handful of ready chopped and roasted pepper from a  bag in the freezer.  Oh, and I didn't add the chopped coriander at the end because, frankly, I think it's the work of the devil.  

The recipe apparently serves eight so I thought I'd make half the amount to start with.  However, the portion sizes weren't particularly generous (the picture below shows one portion).  For those of you who have the book, I reckon the three very well filled tubs in the picture probably contain the full eight portions.  I think next time I might add more beansprouts and peppers.  Nevertheless I really liked the end result and will definitely be making it again.

The recipe can be found here on the BBC website.

The Daring Bakers - April Challenge

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abby's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As part of my foodie blog project I decided to join The Daring Kitchen. This is an online group for keen bakers and, more recently, cooks as a whole.  Each month both the bakers and the cooks are given a recipe to make and report back on at a later date.

This month the challenge was to take a basic cheesecake recipe which consisted of a cream cheese filling with a graham cracker crust (the US alternative to a biscuit base) and elaborate on it.  I have to confess I can't really take all of the credit for the final recipe I used as I decided to base it on a recipe I've been dying to try for ages - Nigella Lawson's Lime and Chocolate Cheesecake.

The base consisted of the usual biscuits crumbs and butter mixture, but instead of digestive biscuits (or Graham Crackers) I used double chocolate chip cookies.  These were whizzed into crumbs, mixed with melted butter and pressed into the base of a spring-form tin.

Then, to make the filling it was simply a case of mixing together the filling ingredients and adding the juice of four limes.  This was then poured in the tin and the whole thing baked in the oven for about an hour until the cheesecake was almost set, with just the hint of a wobble remaining.

The cake was left to cool in the fridge before removing it from the tin and serving.  

I have to say this recipe was definitely a big winner.  The chocolate chip biscuits added, not surprisingly, a lovely chocolate flavour to the base and the limes provided a wonderful balance to the cheesecake filling which can sometimes be a little too rich or sickly for me.  As you can see, the cake browned on the top a bit but it had no impact on the flavour as far as we could tell.

The original recipe can be found here on Jenny's blog.  Nigella's recipe for Lime and Chocolate Cheesecake can be found in Nigella Bites.

Some more pretty cakes

My cupcake experiment continues!

This time, though, I thought I'd try mini cupcakes and use my icing syringe for the piping.  And instead of using double the weight of icing sugar to butter I've used a recipe that uses four times as much sugar compared to butter (plus a splash of milk).  The end result is much stiffer (possibly a little to stiff?) than the one I used previously and is a lot easier to work with.  Not surprisingly though this does make a VERY sweet buttercream.

I also used a slight different recipe for the cake this time - the standard 2 eggs and 4oz of everything else PLUS an extra teaspoon of baking powder.  They came out very well but I still think the 4, 5, 6 recipe (see here for a previous discussion on this subject) is the best if you want a really light sponge.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out but I'd still like improve consistency of my piping skills - it's so hard to make them all look the same!