New Year’s Food Resolutions

As the year comes to an end and we start getting to grips with blogging (we hope!), here are out new year’s food resolutions for 2014. We’ll let you know how we get on and we’d love to hear your resolutions too!

• Try out new recipes from cookbooks we already own – it’s always difficult to resist buying a new cookbook but we’ve got into the habit of trying a couple of things and then it goes into the cupboard and gets forgotten about. We want to rediscover the books we already have and get cooking new recipes on a regular basis!

• Experiment with new ingredients and flavours – when we first met I wouldn’t eat Indian (too spicy) or Chinese food (too much veg), now we eat both on a regular basis, in and out of home – so I’m getting better! We make curries from scratch but would like to do this more with a range of cuisines, trying new ingredients and ways of cooking.

• Dine out and review more restaurants for this blog – so far the blog has been recipes we have tried at home but we’re keen to dine out more at different places and review for you all to see.

• Keep an eye out for great deals and restaurant offers – we all want to make sure we’re getting great value for money when dining out so we’re making a conscious effort in 2014 to stay on top of the best offers whether that be for afternoon teas, dinners or package deals.

Happy New Year!

Review: Gifts for Coffee Lovers

We’ve been getting more and more into coffee recently and as a result got two great gifts for Christmas – a DeLonghi coffee grinder and a Nespresso Aeroccino Milk Frother. Both make a great addition to our kitchen – here are our reviews:

DeLonghi Coffee Grinder KG49

As owners of a DeLonghi coffee machine we’re familiar with the brand and have always been happy with our past purchase. It may sound time consuming to freshly grind coffee beans, but this grinder is so quick to master. Simply pour in the beans, secure the lid, select whether you’d like the coffee coarse, medium or fine and push down on the lid for the grinder to begin. We have been grinding to medium for our coffee machine – you hold down until the light comes on for ‘medium’ and then you’re done. The only thing is, you must keep pressing down and not release until the coffee is ground to your liking, stopping and starting again will reset the grinder.

Although this claims to grind enough beans to make 12 cups of coffee, we have been using it just for the two of us, grinding smaller quantities so the coffee does not go to waste. It may not be something we use everyday, but sometimes you just can’t beat the smell of freshly ground coffee so we’ll certainly be getting it out for weekends.

At just £24.99 from John Lewis, Currys and Amazon it is good value and we’d definitely recommend this.

Buy this on Amazon for free super saver delivery: http://www.amazon.co.uk/DeLonghi-KG49-Electric-Coffee-Grinder/dp/B002BWPTP6

Nespresso Aeroccino

We had been looking at one of these for a while and it is a real time saver. As we make coffee most mornings, we found frothing the  milk from our DeLonghi machine was time consuming when you’re in a rush but with the Nespresso Aerocino you simply add the milk, press the on button and away you go. Once the milk is heated through the Aeroccino switches off automatically so you don’t need to be stood watching it.

You can choose to have the whisk attachment on this to froth the milk, or just heat it through. For frothing the max capacity is 120ml and for heating it is 240ml – not massive quantities but as it is so fast you can quickly use again for more hot milk. We’re definitely impressed so far with this and another benefit is that you can use this to make hot chocolate – just add in the powder and milk together, it mixes really well.

The cheapest we have seen this is for £46 on Nespresso’s website: http://www.nespresso.com/uk/en/product/aeroccino-3-red. The Aeroccino runs from the mains and is available in red, black or white.

 

Let us know if you’ve used these or any other brands, it would be interesting to see how they compare.

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Baking Gingerbread Men

Yesterday we thought we’d take advantage of the freezing cold weather and stay in, nice and snug baking Gingerbread Men! We lost a few good men along the way, one looked a little under nourished, another lost his head and a few were eaten straight out the oven! With a shortage of icing pens in Waitrose, we opted to dunk ours in chocolate which is delicious. Here is he recipe we used, nice and simple:

Gingerbread Men

 

Ingredients

350g plain flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
125g butter
175g light soft brown sugar
1 free-range egg
4 tbsp golden syrup

Method

Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon and pour into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and blend until the mix looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar. (This can also be easily done by hand)

Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, add to the food processor and pulse until the mixture clumps together. Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in clingfim and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm thickness on a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out the gingerbread men shapes and place on the baking tray, leaving a gap between them.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. When cooled decorate.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Christmas Cake

It’s never too late for a spot of festive baking, this recipe for Chocolate Christmas Cake could be great for using up leftover fruit and nuts. We’re not really keen on traditional fruit cakes or Christmas puddings so baked this as an alternative. It takes a while in the oven but is easy enough to make and has gone down a treat with the family. Try it out and let us know what other fruit/nuts work well.

Chocolate Christmas Cake

Ingredients

200g butter, softened
225g light muscovado sugar
4 eggs
225g plain flour
50g cocoa powder, sifted
150g plain chocolate drops
200g glace cherries
200g raisins
75g walnuts, chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice

You will need: a deep 8in cake tin lined with baking parchment

Method

Set oven to 160c/140fan/gas 3. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat well until pale brown and creamy.

Gradually beat in the eggs, adding a little flour if the mixture curdles. Stir in all the remaining cake ingredients to make a soft mixture.

Mix well  and spoon into the cake tin. Bake for 30 mins, then reduce the oven temperature to 150c/130 fan /gas 2 and bake for a further 11/2 hours  until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Allow to cool in tin for 1 hour then turn out and allow to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Cheesy Christmas Biscuits

These savoury biscuits are so simple to make and absolutely delicious hot or cold. The bigger the cutter the better as the biscuits are so light that any shape too small and fiddly will result in crumbs – we lost a few stars along the way!

Cheesy Christmas Biscuits

Ingredients

175g Plain flour

1 tsp Paprika

175g Butter, cubed

75g Cheddar cheese, grated

1 Egg yolk

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees. Sift the flour and paprika into a bowl and add the cubes of butter. Use your hands to rub in the butter until the mixture is combined.

Mix in the grated cheese before stirring in the egg yolk to make a dough. Make sure all ingredients are well combined.

Roll out the dough to about half a centimeter thick and cut out the biscuits using Christmas cutters.

Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes and golden brown.

Enjoy!

Homemade Lasagne

It might be a little time consuming making lasagne from scratch, especially after a day at work, but sometimes you just can’t beat it! This is our staple recipe for homemade lasagne, but if we have red/rose wine open we’ll add that into the meat sauce for some added flavour. This serves around 4 – 6 depending on portion size and what you’re serving it with.Try it out and let us know how it goes!

Homemade Lasagne

Ingredients

Drizzle of oil

1 x Onion, thinly sliced

2 x Garlic cloves, cruched

1 Tbsp dried mixed herbs (oregano, basil, thyme)

500g Lean beef mince

400g Chopped tinned tomatoes

Salt and pepper to season

Cheese Sauce

25g Butter

25g Plain flour

1 Pint of semi-skimmed milk

Generous couple of handfulls of grated cheddar cheese

Grated Parmesan to top

14 x Lasagne sheets

Method

Heat the oil in a deep pan and add the onion and garlic. Fry until softened and add the dried herbs and minced beef.

Stirring, cook until the mince is browned. Add the tinned tomatoes and stir to combine, sprinkle with salt and pepper to season. Reduce the heat and cover to simmer. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Now start the cheese sauce by melting the butter in a medium sized pan over a moderate heat. Stir in the flour to create a roux and cook for 1 minute whilst stirring.

Remove from the heat and gradually add the milk, just a little at a time to prevent the sauce going lumpy. Once all the milk is added, return to the heat to bring to the boil, stirring continuously.

When the sauce has thickened, remove from the heat and cool just for a minute before adding the cheddar cheese – if you add the cheese whilst still on the heat you’re in danger of the sauce curdling.

To assemble the lasagne, put a little of the cheese sauce in the bottom of your ovenproof dish, then top with pasta sheets. Layer on half the meat sauce, before drizzling with the cheese sauce and topping with lasagne sheets. Repeat this process and finish off by pouring the majority of the cheese sauce over the top of the lasagne, making sure all the pasta sheets are covered.

Sprinkle on the Parmesan cheese and cover with foil – cook in the over for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for a further 15 minutes or until the top is golden brown.