Coffee Muffins

Chicken Orzo Risotto

Lauren — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:30:09 +0000

It’s weird the way naming conventions in food work, isn’t it?

Orzo is a type of pasta, it’s small, and sort of rice shaped – like pine nut. One of the best things about Orzo is that like rice you can use it to make a very fast risotto type dish, called an Orzotto.

In Italian orzo means barley, so back in 2010 when I made a risotto using pearl barley, it too was called orzotto. While pearl barley cooks into a delicious risotto dish, you can’t say it’s fast. It takes longer to cook pearl barley than it does to cook rice.

Risotto is a firm favourite in our household, but the rice version takes a bit long for a week night meal. This is where Orzo (pasta) steps in.

Chicken Orzotto

~ makes enough for 2. Dinner sized portions.

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

1/2 tablespoon of oil, I use rapeseed (canola) oil.
1/2 of a large onion, finely diced.
1 clove of garlic, minced.
1 breast of chicken, cut into 1 inch cubes.
150 grams of Orzo pasta
3 large button mushrooms, sliced
250ml of chicken stock
1 cup of frozen soya beans, although peas, green beans or broad beans will do.
1/4 cup of grana padano, or parmesan.

Add the oil to a frying pan under a medium heat, once the oil is hot, add the onions. Leave for a couple of minutes to soften, they should not brown.

Then add the garlic and continue cooking for another minute, before adding the diced chicken, cooking for around 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the Orzo pasta, mushrooms and stock to the pan. The stock should just cover most of the pasta. Leave to cook for 5 minutes, stirring to stop it from burning, and adding a little more water (and turning down the heat) if it starts to dry our too quickly.

Lastly add the soya beans and half the grana padano, stir and cook for another 3 – 5 minutes. It should be sticky but not wet, and the pasta should be cooked through.

Serve with a sprinkling of grana padano.

This is an amazingly quick dish, and as versatile as a risotto, the variations are endless and all at the speed for a healthy week night meal.

The New New Year Resolution

Lauren — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:37:39 +0000

January is typically the time of year where you make heaps of resolutions. But now we are into February, how many have you kept?

Like most people I wanted to start to eat healthier and work out more. At both of these I failed miserably.

No salads eaten…

My eating habits have been extremely poor. First of all we had the mound of Christmas sweets to eat – and I rather mistakenly thought that eating through them as fast as I could was the best way to solve the problem. Not so, when we finished those we just bought more

This wouldn’t have been so bad had I not also fallen into a rut with cooking. When I say rut, I really mean, avoiding cooking altogether. I would pull meals together on the weekend that required some effort, but during the week we would have frozen pizzas, pastas and takeaways.

But resolutions don’t have to be just at the start of January, you can start (and keep) a resolution on any day in any month of the year. Don’t put it off.

However the 1st of February is a nice round time to start back into it. We’ve said goodbye to the most depressing month of the year, we are all firmly back into the swing of school and work, really there is no excuse!

So let’s re-kick off the new New Year. Remake all our resolutions. This time we keep them.

If like me, you are trying to eat better, here are some good healthy recipes to try.

Over the coming weeks I will be posting healthy recipes – to find out about them follow me on twitter or subscribe to my rss feed.

Even Healthier Hot Cross Buns

Lauren — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:55:23 +0000

Back in May 2010 I made wholewheat hot cross buns and I got a pretty good reception on them.

It’s not exactly the right time of year for Hot Cross Buns but I gave them another go, but then breads and sultanas never really go out of season!

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So how can I claim these are healthier than my wholewheat 2010 buns? Well this time I substituted coconut oil for butter, low fat coconut milk for milk and Light At Heart sugar for, uhm, sugar.

I guess I should be up front about it – I was given Light At Heart sugar for free by Tate and Lyle, however I had been hearing about stevia based products for years and been dying to try them. Unfortunately until December 2011 they weren’t allowed to be sold in Europe! The good thing about Stevia based sugar is that it’s half the calories of normal sugar but it’s all natural. (i.e. Not weird Splenda type stuff that was invented in a lab).

If you don’t have or want to use the substitutions you can instead follow my wholewheat hot cross buns recipe instead.

See all photos for Even Healthier Hot Cross Buns.

Wholewheat Hot Cross Buns

~ makes 12 small buns. Adapted from this BBC hot cross bun recipe.

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes

450 grams of Strong Wholewheat flour
7 grams of fast acting yeast
50 grams of white Light at Heart Stevia based sugar (to use normal caster sugar add 100g)
100 grams of currants, I used sultanas
2 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of all spice
32 grams of Coconut Oil (for butter use 50 grams)
250 ml of warm milk, I used 200ml coconut milk and made it up to 250 ml with water
1 egg, beaten
75 grams plain flour
2 tbsp of white Light at Heart Stevia based sugar, 4 tbsp of caster sugar
4 tbsp of water
1 tbsp smooth marmalade, I used rhubarb and ginger jam
1/2 tbsp of brown Light at Heart sugar
2 tbsp water

Add the flour, yeast, sugar, along with the spices and the sultanas into a bowl and mix throughly.

In a small pot add the coconut oil (or butter) under a medium heat till melted. I find coconut oil slightly difficult to measure, so sit the tub on the scales and watch by how much it drops.

Then add the coconut milk, till it begins to heat up.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg.

Pour the eggy mixture into your flour mixture and mix. Once it starts to form a ball, remove it from the bowl. My mixture was rather too wet and I ended up adding another 50 grams of flour to make it suitable for kneading.

Knead for 10 minutes. (I used the dough hook, which is probably the best thing I have ever been given…)

After you have finished kneading, split the dough into twelve rolls and leave to rest on a well oiled baking tray with a damp cloth on top.

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While you are waiting for them to rise you should make the mix for the cross. Add the flour (this time definitely use white flour rather than wholemeal flour this time), sugar and water, and mix it should form a thick paste. Add the paste to a piping bag.

Preheat the oven to 200oC.

After about an hour they should have doubled in size. Using a sharp knife slice a cross into each bun, then use the piping bag to pipe the cross.

Place the buns in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes.

While the buns are cooking make the glaze. Add the ingredients to a small pan and cook until glossy.

Once the buns are cooked, glaze them as soon as they come out of the oven.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes, but eat warm.

For leftovers lightly toast.

I love these hot cross buns, I have had them for breakfast two days in a row and as a cheeky Sunday afternoon snack. While they are perfect warm from the oven, I almost like them more toasted with morello cherry jam. Yum.

Bacon and Kale Simple Calzone

Lauren — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:10:04 +0000

For some reason calzone seems so different from a normal pizza, it’s a nice change when you get bored. I kept this recipe simple by using a bread mix instead of measuring the flour and yeast out myself.

You can choose which ever fillings you like for this recipe – but I have to say I love the way the kale cooks up in this dish – delicious! And how can you ever go wrong with bacon?

I thought I would try putting together a slideshow of the steps for this recipe, I’d really appreciate it if you check it out and give me some feedback!

For the best affect select the “Show Info” button on the top middle-right of the screen during playback.

Links in the recipe, take you to relevant pictures…

Bacon and Kale Simple Calzone

~ makes enough for 4, although we split it between the two of us.

Original recipe based on this Kale & Salami calzone recipe from BBC Good Food.

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes

500 grams of bread mix, I used ciabatta.
Other ingredients listed on your bread mix, in my case, 350 ml of water and 1 tablespoon of olive oil – I used rapeseed oil
4 small mushrooms
1 clove of garlic
4 leaves of kale, I used curly kale.
3 rashers of bacon
pinch of dried chilli flakes, optional
3 tablespoons of tomato paste

To make the dough in a mixer

Add the bread mix to the bowl of your mixer, I used my Kenwood Chef Titanium.

Follow the instructions on the packet to make the bread dough. For me this was to add 350ml of water and mix. For the mixing I used my dough hook for approximately 2 minutes. After this time it became obvious that the dough was too wet.

It should be tacky but should not stick to your hands. I added a couple of tablespoons of plain flour and continued to mix. In total I added 5 tablespoons of flour and mixed for around 5 minutes.

I then finally added 1 tablespoon of rapeseed oil to complete the ingredients, I continued to mix for another minute until the dough started to form a ball. Lastly I removed it from the machine and pulled it into a boule shape.

To make the dough by hand
Add the bread mix to a bowl, follow the instructions on the packet. After you have mixed the ingredients together if the dough is too tacky add more flour (a couple of tablespoons at a time) the dough should be easy to handle. It should be a little tacky but it shouldn’t stick to your fingers. Pull the bread into a boule shape.

Most likely you will need to leave the dough to rest for 10 – 20 minutes.

Pre heat the oven to the hottest temperature (mine was 250oC).

To make the filling
in the meantime I started to prepare my ingredients. First chopping some chestnut mushrooms.

Then chopping the garlic. Which I first “smooshed” (not sure thats the technical term) with the flat of my knife, before slicing as finely as I could.

Now to cut curly kale – the easiest way is to fold it in half so the stalk is exposed, then score down the edge of the stalk.

This should separate the kale from the tough stalk. Then you should rip the kale into bite-sized pieces.

Cut in to small pieces and fry up the bacon in a pan, I left the rind on and omitted any oil, so the bacon cooked in it’s own fat at a medium high temperature.

Add the garlic and the mushrooms to the hot pan, and gently stir the bacon so it doesn’t stick.

Once the mushrooms are starting to brown up, add the kale on top. Don’t stir for a couple of minutes just let it steam cook.

Gently use a fishslice (or similar) to flip the bacon on top of the kale, ensuring the kale becomes evenly cooked.

If using add a generous pinch of chilli flakes. Stir to distribute evenly.

Take the frying pan off the heat.

Stretch out the dough on a baking sheet. To do this I turned the dough upside down and began to pull it across the sheet. By turning it upside down, the side on the baking sheet has been exposed to the air so it is slightly harder and less likely to stick to the sheet.

Spread the tomato paste – or if you have time tomato paste mixed with dried italian herbs.

Pour the topping onto one side of your calzone, ensuring a border to allow the calzone to close.

To fold the calzone, fold the uncovered side over the topping. To seal you need a pinching motion around the entire outside.

Bake the calzone in your oven for around 20 minutes, till golden brown and it sounds hollow when you tap it.

Voila! A simple calzone!

You can see all photos for this in the Bacon & Kale Calzone photo recipe.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the recipe? Or on the new photo recipe feature – what did you like or not like about it?

You can have a chat with me on Twitter anytime. I’m @coffeemuffins.

Learning new cooking techniques in 2012

Lauren — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:23:13 +0000

In terms of food blogging this year has been a bit of a wipe out, I dropped Daring Bakers, Daring Cooks, making my own bread, ice cream and french macarons. I stuck to simple dishes when I blogged at all, that were either left for hours to slow cook, or were ready in a matter of minutes.

While this was necessity – you can’t plan a wedding while still working a 40 hour week and have time to keep up with the making, photography and posting cycle.

In 2012 I want to get back into pushing the boundaries a little. As much as Daring Bakers and Cooks was really great at pushing you to try new things, I did spend an inordinate amount of time pushing myself to make things that I would never have eaten if I had the choice. Like those marshmallow disaster cookies. I cried over those, tears of anger and disappointment.

While I am not sure I necessarily want to go through anything like that again – you don’t learn if you don’t push the boundaries. Learning new recipes is all very well and good, but really what you need to learn is new frameworks. Ideas that catapult you out of your everyday dishes, like learning to make bread – once you have the technique millions of new recipes are open to you.

Next year I will learn how to :

Make my own pasta from scratch. Fresh pasta is so much better than dried, and the one time I attempted Ravioli it was pretty amazing. I would love to try this tortellini recipe.
Bake, ice and decorate a cake. Obviously the perfect time would be Christmas – but I didn’t have time this year. I could use birthdays as an excuse to practice!
Make my own bread. I loved working my way through the Bread Bakers Apprentice, but I haven’t made bread in ages. This year I want to :
- Make this Rosemary and Garlic loaf.
- Find the perfect sandwich loaf. I love toast and sandwiches but most of the loaves I have made so far just aren’t suited to this.
- Making this pull-a-part cinnamon bread. Mr Coffeemuffins loves cinnamon and I have promised to make him cinnamon buns, but I think this pull-apart bread could be even better!
Eat more vegetarian. After my brief dabble in Vegetarian Christmas meals for a friend, I would love to eat more vegetarian food, and get some really great dishes in my repertoire.
Make a Soufflé. With their reputation of being difficult to make I have always avoided trying to make one. But you know what, it can’t be that hard. Can it?
Be more locally minded. This can mean anything from buying locally, to making more traditionally Scottish recipes. Next step Haggis…
Bake Profiteroles. Ok so after what I just said adding Choux pastry seems a bit wrong, but I have always wanted to try this. I even booked to go to a Choux Pastry class in 2011 – only to have it cancelled at the last moment. This year I have to try, while I love the idea of a Croquembouche, I might need to work up to it!

And of course I want to do all this while being and eating healthier!

What new techniques would you like to try for 2012?

Roast Aubergines with Pomegranate

Lauren — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:26:25 +0000

Last Christmas I asked for a copy of Ottelenghi’s Plenty. The plan, as with all good plans, never came to much – but the idea was to kill two birds with one stone:

Matt and I would eat a more healthy vegetarian diet, at least a number of times a week.
And next time I had my best friend (and vegetarian) over for dinner I would have a wealth of different recipes to choose from. Recipes that I know and love myself.

However it didn’t work that way and the book ended up on the shelf (in fact it was lost in the basement for a period), when I finally opened it up – I was in a panic.

Somewhat stupidly I had just agreed to do a Christmas dinner for my friends, for the first time to anyone ever. I had given myself less than one week to prepare. I’d had an entire year but my vegetarian repertoire was as pathetic as before. I read Plenty cover to cover, I scoured the internet, foodgawker, the guardian Christmas food sections, but found nothing that looked special enough for a vegetarian Christmas meal.

I saw some great tasting recipes, with layers of vegetables, that could with time and skill have been made to look quite pretty, but that level of care is not my strong point. Especially when I am stressed (and believe me I was S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D on the final day – but that is a different story…)

This roast aubergine dish ticks all the boxes for me. It is delicious, it doesn’t sound like it should work – but it does. Perfect with rice, which is how I served it for my trial run, but also could go with the traditional Christmas
veg I served at my dinner party. It’s pretty simple to make and large parts can be prepared ahead. And finally? It has the wow factor.

I am not going to post the recipe here, as it is perfect the way it is. Here is the recipe I followed: Aubergine with buttermilk sauce.

However I do have a couple of notes:

Za’atar – doesn’t seem to be stocked in any of the supermarkets I tried, so you may need to try further afield. I found Za’atar Spice Blend Standard Jar 50g on Amazon, but with my last minute rush I couldn’t have received it in time. While I have no idea how authentic it is I did make a spice blend with what I had to hand: (roasted) sesame seeds, dried oregano, salt and pepper. It certainly added something to the dish and I wouldn’t leave it out. (My version misses out the sumac – as I didn’t have any, if you do, be sure to add some).
Making this dish for a dinner party is pretty easy, you can make the buttermilk sauce and spice mix ahead of time and keep them in the fridge. I would definitely prepare the pomegranates ahead of time, because that can be fiddly. So all you need to do at the time is cut, score and roast the aubergine. While the roasting time is 35 minutes you don’t need to be in the kitchen for that time so you can relax be with your guests.
In the recipe one half aubergine is quoted as a starter. As you can see I served it as a main meal with rice (on my trial run), this was quite a light meal, and with lots of veggies as a middle in a three courser! However if you are particularly hungry I would suggest bulking up with extra veg!

I love the fact that I now have a great vegetarian recipe, especially one that’s just a little bit more special than the typical.

Hope you all have a fantastic Christmas

Married!

Lauren — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:33:41 +0000

I have been rather absent in recent weeks, so I thought I would post a couple of shots from my wedding.

Organising a wedding in November I understood straight away that I could not count on the weather. In fact I planned assuming the worst, ice, snow, rain and wind. No outdoor wedding for me, in fact the venue I booked allowed us to do all the different sections of the day under one roof. No taxis, or cars needed. In fact in the end I actually walked to the venue, dress draped over my arms (it was only 2 minutes).

Having photos outside was an option that didn’t seem likely at all. So when I woke up to see the sun shining on a crisp November morning – I was a little shocked. I hadn’t planned for this eventuality at all.

Thankfully the venue has access to Queen St Gardens, so after we had our first glass of champagne/ whisky as husband and wife, we walked along to the gardens for some photos.

Photo by Bryony Beckitt

I think this is probably the closest I’ll ever come to feeling like a celeb. Walking along the street with a photographer snapping away, people in cars staring at me (and smiling) and a little girl pulling on her mum’s hand “Look, mummy”.

Queen Street Garden’s aren’t open to the public, so I had never seen them before. Of course it was pretty muddy, and there was no path. While it’s hard to come up with a favourite picture out of them all, this one of Matt helping walk through the mud, certainly has to be up there.

Photo by Bryony Beckitt

On a more food related theme, on to the cake! There were three tiers of fruit cake, with small iced boxes to hold up the glass plates, the bottom tier was polystyrene as for only 100 guests I didn’t need quite that much cake.

Photo by Bryony Beckitt

I loved the cake, which was extra special as it was one of the big surprises on the day. I left the decoration up to my Mum and her friends. I thought there would be some form of white flowers on the cake but the snowflakes were just perfect. It added a touch of winter on what was a remarkably perfect November day!

Unfortunately I didn’t take any snaps of the meal, which was truly out of this world, and got some truly great responses from the guests.

In fact I may try to recreate some of the dishes and put these up on the blog However it may be sometime before that happens.

I won’t bore you with too may more pictures of my wedding – but if you are interested my wonderful husband as put some up on Flickr. See the Wedding of Gemmell set.

Baked Apples

Lauren — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:08:08 +0000

About this time of year I start to really crave sweet things after dinner. Ok I crave them all year round but maybe it’s just I give in a lot more easily when it gets dark and cold…

This is a happy medium, I get something sweet but it’s an apple, so it’s obviously healthy – right? Ok so it’s an apple filled with brown sugar, sultanas, nuts and the tiniest hint of butter. But it is AH-MAZ-ING. You need to try this.

There are a million variations you could try with the basic recipe. I can see a Mincemeat one for Christmas, a puff pastry wrapped one, a date stuffed one, crumble toppings, I could go on, and on…

I usually just make two, one for each of us, but the great thing about this recipe is that it would be super easy to scale up. Perfect for autumnal entertaining. Although if I was serving at a dinner party I would be slightly less virtuous and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Baked Apples

~ makes enough for 6, can easily be divided.

Prep Time: 1 hour
Cooking Time: up to 1 hour

100 grams of sultanas
4 walnuts, diced fine.
50 ml whisky, although other alcohols like brandy or sherry would do.
50 grams of unsalted butter, room temp.
2 tablespoons of light brown sugar.
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
6 eating apples, I used Cox (don’t use Bramley apples as they will disintegrate).

Pre heat the oven to 150oC.

Find a deep oven-proof dish that will fit all the apples. In a bowl add the sultanas, walnuts and whisky. Leave to macerate for about an hour.

After an hour mix the fruit into the butter, sugar and cinnamon. Core the apples, removing the seeds. If they are unsteady in the dish use a sharp knife to flatten the bottom.

Fill the cored apples with the fruit mixture, cover with foil and place in the oven for 45 minutes. Baste the apples with the juices and put back into the oven for the last 15 minutes cooking time.

Serve, although remember these will be boiling hot!

Braised Beef and Caramelised Onions

Lauren — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:18:29 +0000

Despite the relaxing necessary this weekend I did want to post something food related. Don’t worry I am multitasking and breaking in my wedding shoes at the same time. Is it worrying that the word I most associates with shoes after 30 minutes is “ouch”!

This braised beef dish is another great autumn recipe perfect for a Sunday evening. I got this recipe for Rich Braised Beef with Melting Onions from the October edition of Good Food, and it appealed to me as it was so simple and I had all the ingredients I needed.

I love this type of Autumnal cooking, a little prep and then hours of great cooking smells wafting through the house. I won’t post the recipe for this because I made no changes. It is fantastically warm and homely the way it is. Perfect as the weather is getting just that tad colder this weekend.

Wedding Related Stress

Lauren — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:03:38 +0000

I haven’t really been blogging and to be honest my dinner dishes recently have lost inspiration. I’ve made an awesome Green Thai Curry about 4 times in a month – because it’s tasty and more importantly quick. (I will post it eventually I promise).

When I have been baking I have been using my new Kenwood Chef Mixer, which I love and I am sure you will hear much about in the run up to Christmas! But to reduce stress I have been remaking old recipes, and while fantastic I don’t like reposting.

I’ve been so busy because I have been sorting stuff out for the wedding. Everything else has been dropped. I send emails in my lunch break, then I work some more. I run home, make a quick dinner, some nights I run out to yoga, others I spend on the phone to my parents discussing how many bottles of wine we need and who shouldn’t sit beside who. Then I will send more emails to caterers, the venue, make up artist (who knew I would ever need or want one of these?), jewellery makers, anything and everything necessary for a wedding. Then bed. Repeat.

Nobody can live like this for too long, so this weekend, the last before the big day, I promised I would relax. Yesterday we went out for our last evening meal booked in my maiden name, and today we are planning a long walk and a lovely lunch.

Hope you all have a lovely week, wish me luck!