Crumble Topped Ocean Pie

 

Hey folks, what’s up? It’s been a week since my last post on these EXTREMELY cute mini vanilla doughnuts and boy has a lot happened!

Every now and then you get one of those crazy weeks where it all seems to kick off.

Highlights of my week include a mini-school reunion with best friends from primary/secondary school/sixth form!!! A curry with Mr KG and our friend who has been working out in South Sudan for the last 4 months – he just headed back out there yesterday so it’ll be a while until we see him again. I also got my law school results – I passed with Distinction :D every single exams I got a distinction in so I’m a VERY happy girl. Shame no-one is planning to go to graduation, what with us all out working.

Then there was the not so good part of the week – I’ve been complaining of strange aches and pains most of the week. On Friday this turned into excruciating pains in my stomach as well as arms and legs. In the evening it hurt so much it was making me feel sick! So for the last couple of days I’ve been laid flat out either on a sun lounger, sofa or bed. It is seriously boring being ill and not much fun being in pain!!!

It has meant though that I’ve been able to catch up with lots of blog posts from you lovely guys!

 

This evening I’m thinking about getting back in the kitchen – or perhaps should I say instructing my Mum in the kitchen. It’s probably not a great idea I get stuck in with the food prep being ill and my Mum could do with a bit of practice. There’s still no news on our flat but hopefully we’ll have all the paperwork signed in the next week or two. Keep your fingers crossed for us!!! In the meantime I’ve got to teach Mum how to cook (or just get more confident) in the kitchen.

This recipe is one we cooked together a week or so ago. We’ve had it quite a few times and each time she’s helped out a little bit more. I reckon she’ll be able to whip this up for her and Dad in no time now!

The key with this dish really is the fish. I’ve chosen to use white fish of your choice as the base – think Cod, Pollack, Gurnard or anything else mild and flakey. But it also includes prawns and smoked haddock and this is really where much of the beautiful ocean flavour comes from so please, please, please don’t leave these out! My Mum was never a big prawn lover but she enjoys it in this pie so just give it a go and I’m sure you’ll surprise yourself.

I also love this recipe because it’s another great one for hiding vegetables from my Dad!!! Brocolli, peas, leeks and sweetcorn can all be hidden in the sauce from grumpy old folk and children.

 

What I love the most about this recipe though is the crumble topping. Mash potato and puff pastry are great ways of topping off a fish pie but this cheesey breadcrumb top is lighter making for a healthier pie and something more suitable for the summer evenings.

Banana and Coconut Smoothie

 

 

We are all guilty from time to time or not taking a moment to stop and reflect. Modern life can feel like one big whirlwind that picks us up and whizzes us around before dropping us off sometime in our 60’s/70’s leaving us to a hopefully peaceful retirement. Or at least right now that’s how it feels to me…

On the 1^st of January everyone was full of hope and excitement for what the New Year would bring; fresh starts, new challenges and the like. For me however I had important exams, exams like Solicitors Accounts and Professional Conduct and Regulation – really fun sounding exams… I took these on the 3^rd of January and told myself that me “new year” would come a little bit later. I tried celebrating around Chinese New Year when I posted my Tea Smoked Duck and Rice Noodle Salad and although things had calmed down a little, with another set of important exams just around the corner I never quite got the chance to take a step bake and reflect.

I still haven’t quite got there. After a couple of half-hearted attempts to “spring clean” and the odd weekend away I still haven’t quite cracked the art of me time. In the week I am an LPC student, I attend roughly one networking event a week at the firm, on Saturdays I work 9-6 in a shop for a few extra pennies and on Sundays I catch up with family. There really aren’t enough hours in a day or days in a week!

I have however got the hang of mornings… This may sound a little strange, but until recently I’d been a firm believer in waking up at the latest possible moment, getting ready and getting out of the door. It only takes me 45 mins from bed to car so the morning is just another part of my fast paced life. However, recently I have been taking time out to make myself a morning smoothie.

I decided to get back into smoothies after I had a horrible cold. When I have a cold the last thing I want is fresh fruit and veg so instead I gorged myself on carbs. Carbs are not my friends. So with the cold gone I’m back to stocking up on all the good things in the morning.

I take out my fresh fruit and veggies (more on green smoothies in a week or so) chuck them in my blender and off they go. For once it’s not me whizzing around but the fruit! I get 5 mins to simply stop and knowing I’m doing something positive for my diet at the same time is a big plus!

Now this won’t initially strike you as the “healthiest” of smoothies, but it is certainly one of the tastiest!

Smoothies often use bananas as a base as they offer a subtly sweet, creamy base on which to build other flavours. However, I for one LOVE bananas, and I can’t always get my fix in banana bread!

Bananas may also be better for you than you think! IncredibleSmoothies.com lists a number of benefits of including bananas in your smoothies, from being a great source of energy, promoting cardiovascular health, their natural antacid effect, and immune system support thanks to vitamin B6 to name just a few!!! So with all of this in mind I decided to come up with a smoothie recipe that made the banana a star.

Traditional Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns,
Hot Cross Buns,
One-a-penny,
Two-a-penny,
Hot Cross Buns.

The tune to this little ditty was one of the first things I learnt to play on my recorder at primary school! I went to a local C of E school and so the links between hot cross buns and Christianity have never been in doubt in my mind...until now!

Any good Christian family will teach their children that the cross on top of a hot cross bun is directly linked to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. As long as I can remember before heading to church on Good Friday morning, for the stations of the cross, we would all gather on Mum and Dad’s bed for a breakfast of hot cross buns. But, as I started looking around the internet for a recipe this year I found a few things out about the hot cross bun that I didn’t know...

Although there seems no doubt that hot cross buns are English in origin, they may have been around long before this country became Christian. In fact, it seems they might be another example of a pagan tradition that Christianity took over. There is some suggesting that the spiced buns were eaten when celebrating the goddess Eostre. Now even I can see (or hear) that Eostre sounds a lot like Easter... coincidence I think not!!!

Regardless of whether they are Christian or not, there are also some rather cool superstitions surrounding the hot cross bun. So the story goes...if you bake hot cross buns on Good Friday they will not spoil or go mouldy!!! I’m actually quite tempted to try this one out. Another superstition is that hot cross buns can protect sailors from shipwrecks. I’m afraid I can’t test this one so we’ll just have to trust the internet!

After spending just 20mins surfing the internet, I soon realised that the origins of the humble hot cross buns weren’t quite as straight forward as I originally thought! I just hoped that baking them would be easy.

The fact that they have been around for hundreds of years also brings its own challenges. Do you know just how many varieties of hot cross bun you can get now? I’m talking chocolate, toffee, apple, cinnamon, earl grey, orange blossom – you name it, a supermarket makes it! I’m particularly a fan of the GIANT hot cross bun loaf that Asda do but that’s a whole other ball game!

I decided to begin with I would try a traditional recipe from none other than Mrs Beeton. I’m not a big bread baker as I find no matter what tip or trick I use to kick start my yeast into gear I never quite get it right. BUT by just tweaking the traditional recipe a little bit I was able to SUCCESSFULLY bake my first batch of traditional hot cross buns!!!

The spice balance really is quite a personal thing so feel free to adjust this to your taste: I used a little less than Mrs Beeton calls for and also adjusted the dried fruit used.

Now that I’ve managed to master this traditional version next I will have to take on the supermarkets and attempt a twist on this classic.

Creamy Stilton Pasta with Garden Greens

Hello my lovely blog readers! I am back! After nearly a month of killing myself over my final law exams I am finally finished! Now, that’s not to say I’m never going to look a case again, to the contrary! I’ve already started hunting down extra reading before I start the LPC in September; law is perhaps the one thing I love more than cooking. Though I am happy that my exams are over.

During exams most people get “the fear” – for those of you who don’t know it’s the uncontrollable feeling of terror at the thought of failing your exams if you don’t revise. For most people this kicks in a week before the exam itself where they realise that “day off” shopping, or that crazy night out probably could have been better spent revising. But me, I get “the guilt” – if I am not revising, sleeping at sensible times, getting up early etc I feel uncontrollable guilt. I’m not sure what’s worse!

Now although everyone has to eat during exams, any time spent developing recipes, taking photos, and blogging regularly would’ve just made me feel super guilty, so most of the posts you saw over the last few weeks were a few cheeky scheduled posts I’d managed to back up over Easter!

Anyways...I did treat myself once or twice during exams, and this recipe was one of them! My local store had stilton on offer and I couldn’t resist. I am a sucker for stinky cheese. The stinkier the better! I love cheese so much one of my favourite presents this Christmas was a Scottish cheese Slate complete with chalk! (Maybe I need to get out more.)

This recipe isn’t great for anyone on a diet, with not one but two types of cheese, but it is great for anyone trying to eat seasonally! Simply grab from the garden (or the green grocers) and seasonal greens and they will cut perfectly through the cheesey sauce.

Here’s the recipe...

Turkey Supreme Leftovers!

I my house, it is not the turkey curry that reigns supreme the week after Christmas, but...Turkey Supreme!

The rest of the year this is my Mums go to dish when there's chicken in the fridge and she's been forced to cook, but it never tastes as good as it does when it is made with leftover turkey!

It is also a good dish to kick-start those healthy eating habits! Minus the butter in the roux, the rest of the dish is relatively low fat! Especially if you use skimmed milk to make the white sauce.

So if you're still looking for ways to finish off the last of that turkey, this is the recipe for you!

Ps. Don't be afraid to put the dark meat in, that just makes it taste EVEN better!!!