Spelt pastry recipe

Yesterday I went to my friend Rioghnach's Christmas party. She's been so encouraging about my blog and we have a shared love of cooking and all things retro. So I tried to channel my inner Betty Crocker and planned to bring some tasty baked treats to her party.

My list of tasty treats included chocolate macaroons and my alternatives to the traditional mince pie, so mini jam pies, chocolate pecan pies and roast cranberry, apple and Cointreau pies. Sadly the macaroons as we speak are sitting in the bin. They looked perfectly cooked when they came out of the oven, so not suspecting a problem and feeling slightly stressed about how many things I had to do, I left them to cool and thought nothing more of it. Until I attempted to remove them from the greaseproof paper and they fell apart. They hadn't cooked in the centre and returning them to the oven did little to salvage the situation. Sigh. Baking failures make me very sad. 

Dark chocolate mousse

I've had a hankering for chocolate mousse for a few days now. I volunteer as a moderator with a mental health community website so I caved and whipped up a batch of dark chocolate mousse planning to reward myself after my shift with some chocolate yumminess. And it certainly was yummy!

The recipe I used is the Chocolate rum pots recipe from 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats. But with the cream and rum substituted with oat cream and Cointreau.

Just as a side note, this recipe does contain raw eggs. Also it contains alcohol that doesn't get cooked out, so be cautious about people driving a car soon after eating this, but you don't have to add the alcohol if you don't want to.

Vegetarian black pudding

The smell of black and white pudding cooking reminds me of being a little kid. It's a smell that triggers memories of visiting my grandparents in the West of Ireland. The other sure fire smell that reminds me of them is the smell of a turf fire. 


Before I went vegetarian I really enjoyed meat. I liked rare steaks, sausages, good bacon, chicken skin, smoked mackerel, tinned tuna...to name a few things. I also loved good pudding. To me, really good pudding isn't just mush in a skin. It's well seasoned and full of grains so there's something special about the texture too. 


So far I don't think I've seen vegetarian pudding for sale anywhere. I've heard of veggie hagiss, so there's bound to be someone out there making and selling black and white pudding. But nevermind, if you don't mind putting in the time, this recipe will make a yummy black pudding that you would swear was a proper blood pudding. 


I based the recipe around Darina Allen's recipe for traditional black pudding in her Forgotten Skills of Cooking book but put my own twist on it by using green lentils, pearly barley and red wine gravy. I am really really happy this recipe has worked out so well. Not only do they smell and taste like the real thing but the texture is pretty bang on too. 

Baked aubergines with soya cream and thyme

Original recipe by Nick Slater in Tender (pg 61). 

I LOVE aubergines. When they are properly cooked (not just cooked until they go rubbery) they go so soft and gooey and have such a gentle flavour. To me this is a beautifully simple recipe that really celebrates how wonderful aubergines really are. 

Lentil stuffed sweet peppers

Based on 'A lentil stuffing for a cheap supper' recipe by Nick Slater in Tender, p 289.


Serves 4-6 people.


Ingredients:
200g green/brown lentils,
1 sweet pepper per person,
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 onion, chopped
6 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp sweet paprika,
2 tsps hot paprika,
Salt,
Pepper
Olive oil.


Preheat the oven to 180°C

Peach and flaked almond cake

I had some over ripe peaches and a hankering for cake so I decided to make some of Blazing Salad's fruit pies. But being me I didn't have a bunch of the ingredients I tweaked the recipe and now claim this one as my own! It's a lovely light and sweet cake. Perfect for the lovely summer weather I still wish we had. 

Coming soon...

Veggie jambalaya recipe

Wheat free enchiladas (completely from scratch)

A few months ago Gar cooked enchiladas for dinner using corn tortilla wraps and a really nice jar of garlic and tomato sauce. He also melted mozzarella over the top of them while they cooked in the oven. Needless to say they were very yummy. I've been holding off on cooking them myself at home because I haven't been able to find the corn tortillas in the shops where I live, even though I'm convinced they're one of the Old El Paso products. I made almond and garlic sauce to go with some pasta and quorn chicken earlier in the week and still had some left over sauce sitting in the fridge. I really wanted to see what the sauce would be like with enchiladas so I decided to try and improvise making wheat-free alternative for the tortilla wraps at home. The easiest thing I could think of to substitute them with was spelt flour pancakes. This may cause a raised eyebrow response. But honestly, they worked wonderfully. 

Dinner the other night: Bulgar and feta stuffed squash with salad.

I'm a very keen follower of Biorequiem, the blog of artist, model, co-founder of Coilhouse magazine and self declared Russian Cosmonomad, Zoetica Ebb. Recently she published a post with a recipe for a quinoa stuffed squash with nuts and dried cranberries. The intriguing mix of sweetness and seasoning had me drooling within seconds. I decided to try my hand at her recipe the other night, we're now finishing the leftovers tonight before heading off for the weekend. Follow this link to Zoetica Ebb's quinoa stuffed squash recipe and enjoy salivating before you try it yourself!


I didn't have all the necessary ingredients, I never do! So my alterations were to use broken up walnuts, feta cheese as the protein, cracked black pepper instead of the cayenne and to finish it I added chopped up spring onions.

Roasted tofu ricotta stuffed peppers

I stumbled upon a very interesting food blog called Vegan Cowboy Food which has a recipe for tofu ricotta and I felt really inspired to make it myself with my own little twist. Here's the link to the original page; Vegan Cowboy Food tofu ricotta recipe


I served this the other night along with the lemon & saffron rice together with some steamed asparagus it was a big hit. Sorry about the picture quality, my camera battery was dead so I used my phone. This recipe can be easily made Vegan friendly by using a cheese-free pesto either shop bought or home made.


Serves: 4


Ingredients:
125g tofu, preferably silken
2 garlic cloves, crushed,
2 spring onions, chopped,
2 heaped tsps of green pesto,
handful of cherry tomatoes, quartered,
pinch of cracked black pepper,
2 peppers, red or yellow,
50g of pinenuts,
Splash of balsamic vinegar,
Olive oil.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Rinse the peppers, cut them into halves through the stem then remove the membrane and seeds. When the oven is ready put the pepper halves on a baking tray and drizzle them with the balsamic vinegar and olive oil before putting them in the oven for 10 minutes. While the peppers are softening in the oven, heat a frying pan and dry fry the pine nuts until they begin to turn golden. Add the chopped cherry tomatoes followed by a generous sprinkling of cracked black pepper and the chopped spring onions. When the cherry tomatoes start to soften remove the pan from the heat. Next break up the tofu into a food processor/blender and blitz it until it looks smooth and creamy. Add the pesto and crushed garlic into the  tofu followed by the toasted pine nuts, cherry tomatoes and spring onion mix. Stir the mixture well.
Remove the peppers from the oven fill each one with the tofu ricotta before putting them back into the oven for 20 minutes.

A good start to the new year

So the new year is upon us and I can't help but feel a little winded by how quickly it has arrived. For me 2010, complete with it's ups and downs of which there were plenty of both, really did go more quickly than I could have anticipated. I do have a lot of good memories of the year. I turned 21, got my first tattoo, graduated from university, celebrated my 1st anniversary with my boyfriend which has been my longest relationship so far, together we went to Paris, Vienna and London, I've been doing more photoshoots, making jewellery and fascinators. I must admit though towards the end of the year I spent a few weeks eating whatever took my fancy really, wheat, cheese, lots of chocolate and sugar....so now I've gained a few pounds from all the Christmas indulging and feel pretty unwell in myself. 

Today has been marked by a return to me friendly food. Breakfast and lunch were made by the Mammy, we had spelt flour pancakes for breakfast and homemade bean burgers with mix leaf salad and wholewheat pitta breads for lunch. For dinner I made one of my old reliables. A big pot of risotto. Everytime I make one its different to the last because I use whatever vegetables are in the fridge, nuts from the cupboard, quorn chicken pieces or goats cheese and whatever herbs we have that I think smell like they go with the protein I used. 

Tonight was a green risotto, with courgettes, green pepper and wilted spinach leaves, chevre and crushed hazelnuts. Since you can already see how I prepped my veg, I can skip that bit. :) Next I heated some vegetable oil in a biggish pot. When the oil was hot I added the chopped onions and roughly half a tea spoon of salt. Apparently this stops them from burning in the pot....well according to some guy who was on Come Dine With Me. So far I have found this works, but then it could honestly be a bit of a placebo effect because I watch the onions more carefully to see if they do burn and prove that guy wrong...