Chocolate Puds with Warm Choc Sauce, plus Lamb Stew

Now that’s got you feeling hungry hasn’t it?

I’m going to start with pudding. This is a recipe I made a few days ago from Olive magazine. Here’s the linky if you wanna try it yourself. It’s surprisingly easy to do. I changed it a little, by omitting the almonds and instead of dark chocolate for the choc sauce I used half a Cadbury’s Easter egg and a packet of the choc buttons you get inside. Yeah, I still have leftover Easter eggs, weird huh?

For tea last night I made a lamb stew, based on a recipe from Slow Cooking by Katie Bishop. I was going to cook it in the slow cooker but I read the recipe too late and it takes 9 hours! So I opted for the oven instead. My recipe was adapted quite a bit from the original. Here it is:

Lamb Stew Recipe

Lamb neck fillet, diced – I used a packet of 227g but you should use more if you can, I was just trying to save pennies

1 onion

5 celery sticks

4 carrots

1 humongous maris piper potato – this freakish potato can be substituted with about 4/5 medium potatoes

2 x 400g tins/packets chopped tomatoes

Red wine – didn’t measure this sorry, think I used about 1 1/2 large glasses

Salt and pepper

Fresh parsley to garnish

Preheat oven to 180 C. Prepare the veg. Put all the ingredients except the parsley in a casserole dish, stir and cover with a lid. Cook for 2-3 hrs until lamb is tender. Season with more salt and pepper if necessary. Sprinkle with the parsley before serving.

Serve with delicious crusty bread and butter.

I kept checking this to make sure it didn’t dry out. It didn’t, but if it does, just add more liquid. If you don’t want to use wine, just add stock or water or more tomatoes. This made a meal for me and OH, plus enough for today’s tea. It was a nice hearty meal and the lamb was melt in the mouth tender but  the stew wasn’t stupendously flavourful – I think it needed something, maybe just more salt. I will experiment a bit next time I make it.

There’s loads of recipes I want to share with you, but I’ve realised that I very rarely measure ingredients, which is something I really need to work on as a food blogger. Truth is, I’m usually too impatient and hungry to stop cooking and write down measurements but I will try, just for you guys.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, whatever you do.

Spaghetti Bolognese

Happy Easter Sunday!

Yesterday the other half was out most of the day watching the local football team and drinking copious amounts of beer. Meanwhile, I spent the day reading the latest Olive magazine (food porn), doing housework and of course cooking. I really need to revisit my feminist handbook don’t I? Never mind.

As I was cooking for one, I decided to make spag bol, freezing the leftovers. You might think it’s odd to feature a dish as simple as spaghetti bolognese on a food blog but as a child it was my favourite meal and even now, it’s definitely up there as one of my all time faves. My mum used to make spag bol a lot but it still felt like a treat every time she did. I remember the strange smell of the parmesan shaker and the fiddliness of eating the spaghetti, usually resulting in me getting bolognese sauce everywhere. It was also the first recipe I was taught by my mum.

I’m not going to post a recipe, mainly because I don’t follow one, but also because there’s nowt special about my version. I just wanted to share with you a meal that takes me back to my childhood, and not just because I still need a bib when eating it. 🙂

Please leave me a comment and let me know what food takes you back to years gone by.

Paloma Faith and Breakfast Muffins

I saw Paloma Faith today! She was opening Carnesky’s Ghost Train on Blackpool Promenade so we popped along to see her perform a couple of songs and she was ace as always. Here’s some pics from the OH so blame him for the blurriness- she always looks über cool. We didn’t go on the ghost train ’cause we didn’t want to hang around in the cold but we’ll definitely be back soon.

After that, we decided to do a bit of shopping and then went home and ate some very unimaginative and unhealthy Friday night food. Friday night is our greasy food night – usually something and chips.

So I found out today that you’re not allowed to eat your Easter eggs until Sunday, so to satisfy my sugar cravings, we baked some breakfast muffins. I got the recipe from a freebie with Olive magazine called ’25 cakes, bakes & puddings’ but I’ve also found it online so here’s the link.

I found that it made 9 rather than 6 (3 were still in the oven here). And as they contain banana and seeds they’re practically health food. Now I don’t feel so bad about the obscene amount of chips and mayo I scoffed earlier 🙂

“Summer” Spiced Chicken Salad and my First Loaf of Bread

OK, so apparently it’s British Summer Time. However, the weather here has been absolutely awful and even dangerous in some places. Take care if you’re off out and about and be sure to wrap up!

On Monday I decided to make the very summery Rachel Allen’s Spiced Chicken Salad with Tzatziki, changing it a bit based on what salad ingredients I had in. I can’t eat really spicy food and this was definitely spicy but the cooling tzatziki meant that I could eat this without it feeling like it was burning off my taste buds. This is another new recipe to me but it went really well. I would recommend it as it was mega easy and I think it would make great Friday night food with some potato wedges or chips. Mmmmm chips.

Monday also saw me attempt my first ever loaf on bread. I wanted something easy so I opted for Rachel Allen’s (yep, Rachel again – she’s ace) Rustic Bacon and Cheddar Bread . I like the fact that  you don’t need to knead it, just pop straight into a loaf tin and voila! I was really pleased with the results but I think I would add more bacon lardons next time.  Would be great with some home made tomato soup.

Hope you all have a smashing Easter. I will be mainly eating chocolate and then more chocolate. You?