I haven’t much foodieness to write about just now (except the discovery of smoked brie - oh my goodness it tasted soooooooo nice) - so I shall share a few recent pictures inlcuding Elodie helping herself to my doughballs in Pizza Express :)

Now, I’ not sure if I’ve missed something but the lentils started to dry out quickly in the pan so I tweaked the recipe slightly, added a little cream and we ended up with this…

Ingredients

• 1 Tin of green lentils
• Coriander
• 1 Clove of garlic
• 1 Small onion
• 1 Teaspoon Ground cumin seeds
• 1 medium chilli finely chopped and de-seeded
• 1 Tablespoon double cream
• 6 Tbsp water
• 2 Tuna Steaks
• 4 Tomatoes

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°c
2. Halve the tomatoes and roast for 30 minutes - start the rest of the cooking after 15 minutes
3. Finely chop the onion, garlic and chilli
4. Put lentils in a a pan with the copped onion, garlic and chilli and the cumin seeds
5. Add 6 tablespoons of water to the pan and simmer for 10 minutes
6. Meanwhile start to griddle the Tuna - ours were well cooked
7. When lentils are cooked, take off heat and stir through the double cream then add the coriander leaves
8. Serve Tuna on top of lentils with roasted tomatoes around the side

But it’s the happy times I wanted to (eventually) share with you all and the reason I have been off my food.  We’ve been baking a little baby :)

The other good news is that I am just about back to eating more ‘normally’ and am even venturing into the kitchen again.  It is the only time I have ever been off my food and Hubby didn’t know what to do with himself when all I could managed for tea was a crumpet!

I’ve held off until today to blog about this as it was our 20 week anomaly scan this morning.  All seems to be ok and it looks like the Little One is going to be a girl - despite us both thinking it would be a blue one!

So in the last 20 weeks, this is what we’ve been baking ;)…

My mum kindly offered my services a few weeks back to bake some cakes for the cake stall at the Zoes Place Summer Fete.

It seemed like a great idea at the time, come Saturday evening post-baking it seemed altogether exhausting.  We arrived to set up our stall very last minute, but despite the rush, it was nothing less than a huge success.

Every year Zoe’s have a cake stall & the local Greggs bakers supply them with numerous freebies to sell so we had a front stall of homemade cakes and a side stall of Greggs baked goodies.  I am pleased to say that the homemade cakes sold out quickly & we were left with lots of Greggs muffins and cookies but by the end of the day everything had been eaten.

Between us, we made:

• 3 sandwich cakes
• tray of rocky road
• tray of mars bar rice crispy bake
• 24 sponge cakes with icing
• 24 rolo cupcakes
• chocolate muffins
• blueberry muffins
• chocolate cornflake cakes

We’re not sure of the final figure but it looks like we made just over £200 which will be doubled by my mum’s work, so it was certainly worth an exhausting days baking.

Ingredients

• 2 Tuna Steaks
• 1 lime
• 1 red chilli
• Olive oil
• Tin of mixed beans (Soya beans, Chick Peas, Pinto Beans, Black Eye Beans, Red Kidney Beans & Aduki Beans)
• Mixed salad leaves - we used rocket, spinach and watercress
• 3 tomatoes

Method

• Rinse Tuna & put in a dish so that they can lie down next to each other
• Squeeze juice of lime & a good glug of olive oil over tuna
• Chop chilli finely & add to tuna - cover dish & pop in fridge for 20 minutes
• Put griddle pan on to heat up
• Drain tin of bean & rinse well
• Put tuna in griddle pan, pour over excess liquid, season with salt and pepper - cook as you like it
• Place a good handful of leaves on a plate, sprinkle over a good handful of beans & place tomatoes around the side
• Place tuna steak on top of salad & serve

Delicous and healthy, even if I do say so myself.

Tonight we were supposed be enjoying sausages from Hollies Farm Shop in Northwich (a new discovery when we bought a new car from the area a week or so ago).

However, Anthony had to have a tooth out this afternoon so wasn’t up for anything but soup and with sausages on the intended menu, that certainly means he really couldn’t eat anything.

Back to the mushrooms though. Every time I make something like this it is just thrown together at the drop of a hat, no recipe in sight. Tonight’s was quite delicious & I thought it about time I share (& post!).

Mushroom & Thyme Pasta for One

• 6 Chestnut mushrooms
• 1/2 small white onion, chopped
• Sprig of fresh thyme
• 2 Tablespoons low fat creme fraiche
• Pasta

Method

• Put pasta on to cook (10-12 minutes)
• Fry onion in a little olive oil & a small pinch of salt until soft
• Add thyme sprig (a few leaves can be removed from sprig as this will be taken out before serving)
• Add mushrooms until soft
• Season further with pepper
• Stir in creme fraiche, take off heat
• Drain pasta & mix

Braised Chicory for two - lunch sized portion

• 2 pieces of Chicory
• 4 slices prosciutto chopped into small strips
• Salt & Black pepper
• 15g unsalted butter
• 1 Tablespoon water
• Juice 1/2 lemon
• 100ml double cream

Method

1. Butter a small oven proof dish & put oven on a low heat (100°c)
2. Arrange chicory in the bowl and dot with little knobs of butter & the strips of prosciutto
3. Season with salt & pepper
4. Put a piece of greaseproof paper over the dish & put on lid (mine didn’t have one so I used tinfoil)
5. Braised in oven for 40 minutes until tender & lightly browned
6. Take out of oven and add lemon juice & cream
7. Serve with crusty bread

With everything going on I’ve not been making many exciting new dishes & resorting to quick, easy, tried & tested ones so I’ve not had much to report.

The only nice tasty meal I can report back about is a steak & cous cous salad we enjoyed a little while back…

Quite a simple cous cous with green beans, a little red onion and chickpeas served with a steak cut into slices & marinated in a little oil with some spicey herb rub.  Quick, simple but very nice.

I had intended on following Bill Granger’s recipe for Lamingtons themselves but the sponge mix didn’t set and with 6 eggs in it I wasn’t overly surprised. So after a quick re-think I whizzed up a batch of Nigella’s trusty cupcakes and then topped each with lamington icing.

I wont bore you with the cupcake recipe now I’ll just tell you about the chocolatey topping…

Ingredients (to top 12 cupcakes)

• 50g dark chocolate
• 125g icing sugar
• 5g butter
• 30ml milk
• 60g desiccated coconut

Method

1. Put icing sugar, chocolate, milk and butter in a heatproof bowl & melt over a simmering pan of water
2. Put the coconut on a plate
3. Dip each cupcake into the melted icing mix, ensure each cake has a generous coating
4. Dip into the coconut
5. Leave to dry