[Burger recipe] Build Your Own Tex-Mex Burgers

 

I have a new found love. A love for all things round and patty shape. The best thing is that you can make them out of almost any meat and vegetables and pulses too! (Watch this space for a spicy bean burger recipe soon...)

My love for burgers started with an attemp to make a healthier option out of turkey mince. It's now one of our go to recipes in the summer months. The inspiration behind these burgers however was a little different.

Mr KG and I have lots of couple friends (or friends in couples), most of which have begun moving in together and luckily for us inviting us round for dinner. This weekend we're returning the favour.

I wanted to cook something classic, that everyone loves, but also offered the chance for each individual to customise their meal. Many people these days have specific dietary requirements. Out of just the four of us one is lactose intolerant, one is vegetarian and one doesn't eat onions. So, I came up with a simple yet tasty burger which everyone could eat!


Alongside a basket of sesame buns and juicy beef burgers we served the following:

• Sliced beef tomato
• Sliced green jalapeños 
• Cajun mayonnaise (2 heaped tbsp mayonnaise mixed with 1 tsp paprika and 1 tsp cayenne pepper)
• BBQ sauce (Jack Daniels)
• Gherkins
• Lettuce 
• Mexican spiced cheese slices
• Monetary jack cheese slices

By giving our guests lots of options they could build their own Tex-Mex Burger! 

[Review + Recipe] LovePickle and Low Fat Chicken Korma

NB. A jar of this product was given to me free for me to review. All opinions are my own!

Hey everybody! Today I’m brining you a double post – half review half recipe. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that I’ve been quite quiet on the blogging front recently, and not without good reason. Throughout February I was taking some very important law exams. Results don’t come out for ages yet, but I don’t think I had any disasters. I’ve also been on holiday! Just two days after I finished the last of my six exams, Mr KG and I hopped on a plane to Prague and I’ve just got back from a lovely long weekend filled with food, drink, sightseeing and Jazz. I hope to do a post on my trip soon as I discovered lots about the city that I would like to share (and not just restaurant recommendations). I’ll also be trying to recreate a dish I had while I was out there.

Over the last month or so I’ve also been inundated with requests from brands and PR firms. There have been so many I couldn’t possibly (and wouldn’t want to) say yes to them all. LovePickle however was a brand I was more than happy to give a try...

I was instantly intruiged by LovePickle because they looked like a fresh and funky company selling one of my favourite things – Indian pickles. They kindly offered me a (free) jar to review: all I had to do was decide the heat! (Mild, medium, hot and extra hot). I went for hot, and was pretty confident I could stand the heat.

One of the things that instantly drew me to the pickle, was that I wasn’t bombarded with an array of fancy flavours. Now they say variety is the spice of life, but it’s never a good thing to be a jack of all trades and master of none. The LovePickle pickle is handmade from ripe tomatoes, fresh chillies, garlic, ginger, mustard oil and seeds plus a selection of carefully selected quality herbs and spices. They have perfected their recipe only ever tweaking the heat of the finished product so that they know the taste is the best it can be every time.

LovePickle stress how it can be used in a whole variety of ways – either served with poppadoms and naan bread, as an accompaniment to main courses or as an alternative to chutneys, relishes and ketchups. So far I’ve served it up alongside a variety of home-made currys, and it goes particularly well with the korma which I am sharing with you below.

So what did I really think of the pickle? You can most definitely tell that it is a tomato based pickle, and I must admit I usually opt for lime or other fruit based pickles with my meals. However, unlike some, this pickle is not too sweet. You get a rich, deep tomato flavour as a base which the spices and chilli heat is built on top of. It is a very well rounded pickle and I think this is what makes it so versatile! I would happily serve this as a dip for crisps at a party, or alongside poppadoms and curries at dinner time.

Priced at £2.95 a jar it is a little more pricey that the likes of Patak’s or Sharwoods, but the quality is far far far superior. I couldn’t fault the sample I was given. (Except that it didn’t automatically refill itself! With a hungry family I think the jar only last 4 meals.)

If you want to try the pickle for yourself you can find the whole range on the LovePickle website. or follow their facebook or twitter pages (@Lovepickle_uk).

Now, on to the korma I’ve been serving alongside this pickle!

The Indian takeaway is one of the nation’s most loved dishes. But with many recipes including ghee or copious amounts of oil, the kind of curry that gets delivered to your door is also filled with extra fat and calories you just don’t need.

I’ve been cooking my own curries for years now, but never have I even tried to recreate a “take-away” style curry before, until now. Low-fat creamy sauces have become a bit of a ‘thing’ of mine recently and I’ve been trying to find ways to recreate indulgent dishes with less of the fat. This korma is another attempt at doing just that!

It is delicately spiced, with all the traditional spices you would expect to find in a take-away korma, however, by replacing cream with crème fraiche, and by using a food processer to get a thick and creamy base for my sauce I am able to bring a taste of India into your kitchen.

The tumeric and saffron give the sauce a brilliant yellowy colour in true take-away style so you don't feel you're missing out on any part of the experience.

This recipe also creates a good helping of the creamy sauce, so is great for mopping up with a sweet peshwari naan, wholesome chappathi or vegetable stuffed paratha!

Sound too good to be true? Give this recipe a go and let me know how you get on.

Baked Spanish Eggs

As quick as it came, the Shake Up Your Wake Up campaign is almost over and breakfast week will soon be a distant memory…

Ok so there’s probably no need to be quite so dramatic. Especially considering that you’re all going to eat breakfast every day from now on! Right?

The campaign this year has been fab in my opinion, with hundreds and hundreds of people sharing their breakfast pictures every day using the hashtag #breakfastwatch.

I was pretty proud of myself as I managed to send in a picture 5 out of the 7 days! Looking back on the week I had some pretty cool breakfasts!

Monday: Black cherry jam on wholemeal toast

Tuesday: Porridge with berry compote

Wednesday: Breakfast detox smoothie

Thursday: Bacon jam on toast

Friday: Spanish Baked Eggs!

It probably won’t come as a surprise that I won’t be able to keep up that level of variety much longer! With two jars of jam now open in the fridge I’ll probably be living off of jam and toast for the next month or so.

Hopefully you’ve all been just as inspired as me to try to add a bit of variety into your morning routine, so with that in mind I’m going to share with you my Spanish Baked Eggs recipe!

This recipe is guaranteed to put a smile on your face as the little egg yolks look like sun shines in your brekkie bowl (/ramekin!)

They’re also packed full of flavour which is guaranteed to wake you and your taste buds up.

Chicken and Avocado Pizza

What happens when your break through the chains of authenticity and break the rules?

Chicken and avocado pizza that’s what!

Ok...so we all know what a pizza is. Doughy base, smothered in delicious tomato sauce, topped with cheese and various other toppings.

This dish isn’t too far from that norm. It has a doughy base, is smothered in A sauce just not a tomato one, and is topped with cheese, and various other toppings!

It still counts as a pizza...right?

While I’m not here to debate what truly makes a pizza, I am here to convince you that once in a while swapping tomato sauce for avocado is a fun, exciting and TASTY thing to do!

Over Christmas I made a DELICIOUS salmon and avocado terrine. When buying avocados we’d somewhat overestimated how many we needed and we soon found ourselves with a drawer full of avocados in the fridge. After weeks of avocado salads and homemade guacamole served with crisps I had to come up with something different for fear of becoming sick of the soft green fruit.

One afternoon when craving something cheesy, doughy and well...pizza like. I found myself stuck. We had not tomatoes, pureed, tinned, fresh or otherwise but I really really wanted a pizza! The only way to give in to my quite frankly bizarre craving was to mix it up a little and to come up with a twist on a classic.

Baked Pasta Florentine

These last few weeks really have been all about clearing out the cupboards and fridge – partly in preparation for all of the yummy Christmas food that we’re slowly starting to build up. Over the last two weeks I’ve posted two risotto recipes, one for Chicken and Tomato Risotto and another for Sausage and Asparagus Risotto both of which went down really well! But with Christmas shopping, Law Exams (Im officially two exams closer to being a solicitor!) and keeping down a part time job, it's been really hard to stick to any sort of meal plan and our fridge is looking a little sad and lost.

 Yet again this week we had a number of ingredients sat at the back of the cupboard that desperately needed eating up in particular spinach and eggs. I’ve always thought that spinach and eggs were a GREAT combination! Whether you’re making eggs Benedict, a spinach omelette, or even on a pizza... Who else loves the Fiorentina pizza in Pizza Express? And it seems that the people of Florentine agree so this dish is inspired by them. It may not be traditional, but it’s my twist on their way of cooking.

With all of these dishes in mind I decided to come up with a pasta dish that would be rich and filling, without going straight to your hips. Portion control is key with this dish; with the cracked egg oozing on top you don’t need to pile your plate high with the pasta underneath, and a little cream goes a long way. We are not looking to have a thick sumptuous sauce, but instead a flavoursome coating which brings all the ingredients together. If you are extra careful and make substitutions like 1 cal spray instead of olive oil, and use a low-fat cream this doesn’t have to spell the end of a diet.

Chicken and Tomato Risotto

I overheard my parents talking the other day...they were wondering what they’re going to do when I leave home for good. Food-wise that is! I’m sure they’d love to have their house back; it would be clean, tidy and quiet. But they can’t deny one thing – they eat much better when I’m around!
We’ve nicknamed Mum’s cooking cordon bleu because it couldn’t be further from the truth! She’s well aware that she only has a few recipes in her repertoire that don’t involve packets of frozen food but having said that what she can cook isn’t half bad. When she's not cooking fish fingers it's probably a Chicken Supreme or a Bolognase!

Dad’s a much better cook and he’s probably where I get my cooking skills from. Every now and then he’ll decide to cook a Chinese feast from scratch, or whip up a curry. He’s also not half bad at puddings! It’s just a shame he’s not in the kitchen more often when I’m not around.

I don’t think my Mum is half as bad as we make her out to be. I think a lot of being a good cook is about having the confidence to try new things and the imagination to create something different when faced with the same old ingredients in the cupboard. A couple of weeks ago I cooked a sausage and asparagus risotto for the first time. It was completely unplanned and was based on what I could find in the fridge, but it worked so well we’ve tried it a few times and it now has pride of place on my blog. This recipe isn’t too dissimilar. Not only is it a risotto recipe, but it uses up all of those ingredients you usually have lurking at the back of the fridge; chicken breasts, tomatoes, stock, tomato puree and rice. Nothing here – bar the basil if you don’t grow your own – is special or fancy, they are every day flavours that when combined together make something really quite special!

Tenderstem Broccoli and Sundried Tomato Quiche

Quiches and tarts are the perfect dishes for sharing at summer parties and picnics. At the beginning of the summer I shared with you my Pesto Picnic Tart, and last summer I posted a recipe for a Low Fat Spinach Quiche, today I present to you Tender stem Broccoli and Sundried Tomato Quiche.

I cooked this recipe for a family party we had last weekend. We don’t often see my Dad’s side of the family even though they’re just a town away, and after a spate of funerals, they decided that it wasn’t right that the only family get-togethers had to involve death. So, at Christmas my Dad’s cousin hosted the first party, and 6 months later it was our turn!

We had initially envisaged a Hawaiian themed BBQ, but when the weatherman said that we would be getting a month’s worth of rain in a day we soon had to change the plan. Instead, Mum, Dad and I cooked up a storm creating lots of different buffet/picnic style dishes.

Along with my Broccoli and Tomato Quiche, I made individual Cardamom Cupcakes with White Chocolate and Rose Icing and a Lemon and Amoretti Cheesecake. Mum added a Meat Pie to the table, and Dad whipped up a big batch of his Potato Salad and Coleslaw!

The recipe for the cakes can be found here: Cardamom Cake with Rose and White Chocolate Buttercream (simply divide the mixture into individual cake cases), and the Cheesecake recipe will be up in a few days time!

For now though I bet you’re wondering how to make my quiche...

Turkey Mince Ragu with Pasta

My Mum decided not to go to university because she had had enough of exams. She has a number of stories related to her hatred of exams but one that is always struck me goes a little something like this. When studying for her A-levels she was so nervous that she completely lost her appetite. She literally couldn’t look at a plate of food without feeling physically sick and so instead spent the whole time grazing on small bowls of fruit and nuts. Her parents were convinced she was anorexic, she lost so much weight they had her clothes taken in, despite my Mum’s protests saying it was just exam nerves. But, her parents, as worried as they were, decided once exams were over she should go and stay with an aunty who would hopefully feed her up and knock her out of this “anorexic” stage with plenty of steamed puddings and stews. Funnily enough...my Mum was just nervous...and within weeks of finishing her exams she’s piled back on all of the weight and more and her old clothes were now useless! Not necessarily a bad thing if you ask me. Now the reason this story mesmerises me so much, is that, I just can’t imagine feeling so nervous I can’t eat! When I came to take MY A-levels, I found it impossible to concentrate without a big bowl of salted Doritos or popcorn by my side.

Needless to say I went the opposite to my Mum and didn’t fit in any of my clothes once exams were over for all of the wrong reasons! Every summer for me the pattern has been the same, but this year I was determined to break the cycle, and I’m proud to say that for once I managed to buck the trend! I didn't quite go to the extremes that my Mum did but by watching my revision snacking and eating healthily I've actually managed to loose weight. Though it wasn’t easy I must admit.

Gourmet Tuna Pasta Bake

Pasta bake is one of those dishes that everyone seems to associate with students...it might be the lazy pleasure of hearing that pasta sauce jar pop as your take off its lid, or the fact that if you’re willing to wait a little longer...you don’t even have to pre-cook your pasta! That’s one less pan to wash up!

I’m not going to lie, I’ve taken the pasta bake route many a time in my uni career, and with my uni career coming to an end in just a week, I’m not ready to give them up just yet! So, I set myself the challenge of a gourmet pasta bake, fit for the lawyer I am going to become!

If you though pasta bakes were for lazy people on a student’s budget, think again! The pasta bake is back and it is better than ever!

Tomato, Mozzarella and Pesto Picnic Tart

I am really excited to be starting to explore real summer recipes! I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this tart would look great on a salad table at a BBQ, laid out on a picnic blanket in a field or on a beach, or just in the centre of a dinner table with a big bowl of salad and potato wedges keeping the whole family happy on a summer’s eve!

The quantities of this recipe make a tart 7.5 inches across so it really is the perfect size for sharing among other dishes, but I can guarantee whatever you serve it with, this tart will be the star!

What makes this tart so special are the four distinct layers, melt in the mouth short crust pastry, earthy pesto, creamy mozzarella and then bright and sunny tomatoes – which are now in season by the way! Woo hoo! You don’t know how excited May makes me in terms of food, as some of the best fruit and veg comes in to season, as soon as exams are over I’ll be taking over my Dad’s veg patch, he won’t know what’s hit him!

Not only is this dish in season, but it is also easy to turn into a low-er fat option! Tomatoes will give you a helping hand towards your 5 a day, low fat/low cal mozzarella and pesto are easy to find in any good supermarket. And I can confirm that the most recent time that I made my pastry, I made it with a low fat margarine substitute! (God only knows what its chemical name is...we will pretend its margarine for now...)

I guarantee that if you try this recipe it will become a staple of your summer.

Parmesan Crusted Chicken with Lemon-Mediterranean Veg!

Many of you have probably gathered that I don't eat meat very often, so when I do I like to come up with something new and interesting.

Today it was just me and Dad for dinner and he hates all things vegetarian, so I knew I had to make him something tasty that included veg for me but enough meat for him!

His first comment when he came in was "I hope there's nothing green" - whoops! I'd included courgette...never mind!

Fortunately this recipe went down a treat! (Though he did ask where his potatoes were! Haha!) It must have been the combination of moist chicken with a beatifully salty crust with the sharpness yet sweetness of the mediterranean veg to cut through that he enjoyed so much.

Delicious!

Stuffed Aubergines with Bechamel Sauce

This has to be one of my favourtie recipes! Pefect for sharing with someone special, this dish is quick and easy to make at the same time as being very very tasty.

Sometimes it can be hard when you look in your fridge/freezer to come up with new and interesting ideas. You see a bag of mince and shpeherds pie/spag bol/lasagne springs to mind. When you see an aubergine it screams curry or mousakka! This is a twist on a few of these recipes to create something new!

Brie and Tomato Home-made Gourmet Paninis!

The University of Nottingham's Library Cafe sells hot panini's for just under £3...thats right £3!!! What student in their right mind has £3 to spend on lunch?! Thats's before even factoring in a drink!

That's why...I decided to invest in my own panini baguettes.

My boyfriend's sister's husband...(I may eventually be able to say brother in law?), as far as I am concerned is the panini king, and he inspired me to start making my own (Thanks Russ :D)

So, I nipped to the shops this weekend to stock up on ingredients so that I could eat gourmet sandwhiches allonsgide all the rich students in the library knowing that my panini cost half the price!

One of these delicious sandwhiches will set you back just 93p!

[Burger Recipe] Turkey Burgers with Sweet Potato Wedges

 

UPDATED: 6th May 2013

I originally came up with this recipe in my third year at university. A new academic year gave me the chance to get even more experimental in the kitchen and with all the stresses that final year brings I was determined that I would keep my health and weight in check.

It was my sister who first suggested to me that I tried turkey mince in my cooking. At the time she was a member of slimming world and she still follows their ethos today. With a pack of mince in my fridge I wanted to come up with something a bit more exiting rather than using it in a spaghetti bolognaise.

Unfortunately it seems everyone now knows that turkey mince is much leaner than beef mince and it is rising and rising in popularity. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this also means the price has risen. Just a year ago a pack of turkey mince set me back just under £2. Today it will cost  you more like 3. Ironically if you want extra lean this costs you even more!!! Even though they’ve taken fat out! Work that one out.

That said it is popular for a reason and now that I’ve returned to my parents home whilst at law school I’ve managed to introduce it into their diets too.

They love this recipe so much I decided I would give the whole post a facelift. So here you’ll see new word (you’re reading them now...) and new photos. But I assure you the recipe remains the same!

So back to the recipe...

Because this burger is made with turkey mince instead of traditional beef mince it means you can experiment with flavours much more. Thai turkey burgers are popular all over the internet but this recipe is a little bit different.

These are inspired by the southern states of the USA. They have a smokey paprika flavour and are served with sweet potato wedges. BBQ sauce or mayonnaise wouldn’t feel out of place served as a condiment should you choose.

The subtle warmth that the paprika and cayenne brings means that the turkey mince is still very much the star so if you ever needed convincing to swap beef mince for turkey mince this is the recipe to try!

Aubergine and Pesto Bake

I learnt an interesting fact today while my dinner sat in the oven, the delicious smell of aubergine, tomato and pesto wafting through to my lounge – aubergines (also known as eggplant in America), are NOT a vegetable, in fact they are a berry!

People are often unsure of what to do with aubergines as they are notorious for acting as a sponge, and soaking up lots of oil making dishes with them in quite fatty. In this recipe however, the aubergines merely soak up the juices of the pesto and tomato making for a really flavoursome dish!


Enjoy!

Nepalese Curried Vegetable with Lentils and Home-made Chapathis

A week ago, my family had an old friend come to stay. Her name is Aurelia, and when she was a child she came to stay with my family every year as an exchange student from France, in the hope that we would teach her some English! It’s a tradition my family has had for generations, her father staying with my grandparents when he was a child too!

I think it’s fair to say that in the time she’s spent with us she has taught us just as much as we’ve taught her!

When she came to stay this time round, she decided to teach me a new type of food – Nepalese. She visited Nepal for a couple of months and lived with a number of families eating their traditional food.

Below is our interpretation of the dishes she ate on her travel – as authentic as they can possibly be.

So here is Nepalese Curried Vegetables with Lentil and Home-made Chapathis! (aka chapattis, chapatis).

Chapathis are my new favourite thing to cook!  SO quick and easy, and good fun to make! (Though do not set your tea-towel on fire as I did!!!!!)

Lentil Lasagne

I am not a big fan of meat substitutes such as veggie-'mince.' As a meat eater, I just don't think you can replicate meat, nor do I think you should!

This lentil lasagne, in my opinion, is BETTER than a meaty version! The textures are perfect, there is lots of lovely fresh veg, and the flavours are so vibrant that it makes for a brilliant sharing dish in the centre of the table. At just £1 a portion its a brilliant way to impress family and friends!

Give it a go and let me know what you think of this veggie alternative to an Italian classic!

Lumaconi alla Vodka

The idea of adding Vodka to a tomato and bacon based pasta sauce did not seem strange to me today when I decided to give it a try, but after searching into the history of the dish, I struggled to find where the idea originated from.


Even Wikipedia was no help, giving numerous possibilities of how the dish developed:
According to Pasquale Bruno, Jr., author of The Ultimate Pasta Cookbook, penne alla vodka was invented at Dante, a restaurant in Italy. Other historians of the culinary arts recognize James Doty, a graduate of Columbia University, as the inventor of penne a la vodka. Paula Franzese, an American law professor, has asserted that her father Luigi Franzese, born in Naples, Italy in 1931, devised the first version of penne alla vodka, which he called penne alla Russia because of the addition of the vodka to his tomato and cream sauce base. He first prepared the dish table side for patrons at the New York City restaurant Orsini in the early 1970s. (This seems the more recognised version of events with other websites I stumbled across stating the same!) The Williams Sonoma Essentials of Italian cookbook says that it was invented in the 1980s by a Roman chef for a vodka company that wanted to popularize its product in Italy.

Wherever the dish originated from, this is my version! Do give it a try and let me know what you think!

Spaghetti Bolognase

Just-a-like-ma-mumma-made-it...well...not quite!


In my house my dad is the KING of spaghetti bolognase, but since being at uni I've come up with a few tweaks, and I reckon I could give him a run for his money!


This is my scrum-diddly-umptios Spaghetti Bolognase, even if I do say so myself!


(Look out for my cheats on how to make it super cheap, on a budget)