Blog Scratch Meals is a company that provides you with ready to cook meals. Allow us to do all of the chopping, washing, weighing, planning, shopping, measuring and blending, leaving you to do the fun bit: cooking! Our meals are sold in the UK in participating stores and come in four different flavours! http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:05:55 +0000 Joomla! 1.7 - Open Source Content Management en-gb Shrove Tuesday http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/57-shrove-tuesday http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/57-shrove-tuesday
It is often the case that people choose to give something up for lent that they have a particular love for, be this carbs, cake or chocolate. I always take Shrove Tuesday to be a day where you can gorge on the item about to be given up for a long 40 days. 40 days filled with regret and longing for that bar of chocolate hidden at the back of your cupboard in order to resist all temptation. This year, I have set my poor unwitting self the challenge of giving up cake. Cake is a particular soft spot of mine; I love testing out different flavours, be it plum and hazelnut crumble cake or an orange blossom and pecan. But, alas, for the next 40 days I shall fill my time with baking bread instead and I hope to soon become for trained in the field of sourdough and soft centres instead of rich buttercreams!

Not only are pancakes quick and easy to make, they are delicious too! I enjoy pancakes which are more like crepes, a very thin spreading of batter in the pan so that they go crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. My filling favourite has to be nutella and banana, despite it breaking from tradition I love the nutty gooey chocolate spread with the soft banana and the roasted taste of the hazelnuts! A perfect match in my opinion!

This is why, ‘pancake day’ is so good, it means that everyone can feast on crepes filled with lemon and sugar, nutella and banana or another combinations that shouldn’t work, but only today they do! It means that you can let your waistline go wild for the day. It is a day to let yourself go and eat what you want. Food is there to be enjoyed and so why should you stick to your detox on such a marvellous day!? Have fun flipping the pancakes, filling the pancakes and feasting on the pancakes!

Crepes with Nutella and Banana

100g plain flour
A pinch of salt
1 egg beaten
1 egg yolk
300ml milk
1 tablespoon of oil
Oil for cooking
A generous spread of nutella
1 sliced banana
A sprinkle of chopped hazelnuts

Sift the flour with the salt in a bowl and make a well in the bottom of the mixture. Mix in the egg, egg yolk and a little milk with the flour gradually and add more milk to stop it from getting too thick. Add the remaining milk and the oil until it is a thin batter. Cover and chill for 30 minutes. Heat a frying pan with the oil until hot. Drop in a spoonful of the batter and tilt the pan so the batter is evenly spread. When the pancake is golden, flip it with a palette knife (the first one always goes wrong!). Spread the nutella on the pancakes, add the sliced banana and chopped hazelnuts and enjoy!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Ellie Edwards) Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:28:28 +0000 Aspire Drinks http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/56-aspire-drinks http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/56-aspire-drinks

They're packed with loads of caffeine to keep us going at the office and they taste a lot better than some of the "diet" drinks we've tried. The cranberry isn't nearly as tart as your average cranberry juice and the carbonation adds to the lightness of the drink. It's not so sugary and sweet that it leaves a film in your mouth like some drinks and, as excited about exercise as we can get (Lola's a regular gym go-er and Alex is getting some personal training in), we have to admit that burning an average of 200 calories a can is a pretty nifty upside.

You can buy Aspire online on their website or check to find a stockist nearest to you. Thanks to the guys at Aspire for letting us give the drinks a try!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Lola) Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:15:53 +0000 Evernote Food Review http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/55-evernote-food http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/55-evernote-food Our regular blogger Juliane Caillouette Noble decided to review the Evernote Food app for us this week. Evernote Food is a free app that allows users to keep track of their favourite dishes at venues or your own recipes at home using photos, captions, and other tools. An ideal app for a foodie, frequent restaurant go-er, or a food blogger like Juliane, Evernote Food lets you keep all of your food adventures in one easy place.

I had the most extraordinary tapas in Barcelona. The building was stone and down an alley that opened up on a square. The asparagus was extraordinary. I would highly, passionately recommend it to anyone who is travelling through Spain… the trouble is, I can’t for the life of me remember the name. I’ve saved business cards, matchboxes, and napkins from restaurants that have inspired me over the years- kept them in a place so safe that I have no idea where they are.

Evernote Food

Does this sound familiar? Enter Evernote Food, the newest app brought to you by the Evernote team. The app is so simple you probably wish you’d thought of it. Snap a photo, jot down where you are and what you ate, and the app stores it. It's streamline, easy and well designed. So in five years, all you have to do is flip back and there you have it, the photo of the delicious asparagus and the address of the tapas bar in Barcelona.

The Evernote Food app is free for anyone to download from the iTunes store, but premium Evernote accounts aren't free. We're giving two lucky people codes for free premium Evernote accounts! From February 13th until February 20th, anyone who likes us on our Facebook page, will be entered to win a premium Evernote account. We'll draw two lucky winners on February 22nd.

Winners announced here!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Juliane Caillouette Noble) Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:03:49 +0000 A Visit to Bristol http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/54-bacon-bagels http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/54-bacon-bagels

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
Another reason Bristol is on my top 10 places is the variety of food on offer. In one modest weekend, I managed to fit in: a bowl of warming lentil and spinach soup, champagne and chocolates at Raymond Blancs, a selection of Spanish tapas dishes from potato bravas to spiced mutton, my first experience of chocolate nemesis and a seeded bacon bagel, intermixed of course with ginger crunch flapjack and a fantastic selection of breaky dishes… think yogurt with fresh raspberries, homemade granola etc etc.!

The Spanish tapas really did make a great change from the usual meal out, not only the fact that you could chose how much you ate, but there was such a variety of small dishes on offer, the mutton was tender and seasoned perfectly with cumin and cinnamon which went perfectly with a sweet butternut squash pilaf. However delicious Spanish tapas is, it isn’t likely that it will be re-created as brilliantly in your own home (but trust me, I’m working on it!), but my bacon bagel I devoured on the Sunday was perfection in a bread roll with a whole. The seedy-ness of the bagel made it not only nutty but also slightly nutritious at the same time. And bacon. It’s perfect anyway, but the salty nature of it makes it very very moreish, so make sure you have another bagel waiting!

Bacon and Cheese Bagels

2 seeded bagels
¼ pack of cream cheese
Handful of chives
4 rashers of bacon

Simply chop the chives and mix in with the cream cheese. Drizzle a little oil in a pan until hot and place the rashers of bacon in the pan. Cook until the bacon for about 3-5 minutes depending on how crispy you like it! To prepare the bagel, slice each one in half and spread with the cream cheese, then place on the rashers of bacon.

This makes a perfect moreish breakfast, light lunch snack or quick tea treat!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Ellie Edwards) Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:55:23 +0000 Kitchen Calculator Pro http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/53-kitchen-calculator http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/53-kitchen-calculator Facebook and Twitter from time to time. They come from a variety of different places which unfortunately means that metric and imperial units can create a considerable amount of headache for home cooks. We've found a particularly useful app that can help with pesky conversions: Kitchen Calculator Pro!

Just select a unit to convert, choose an ingredient, and then input the amount and it instantly converts whatever you need. It includes fraction measurements and has a variety of ingredients on the list. The app also allows you to scale needed ingredients. So if you want to make three servings of your favourite chili and it calls for 2 teaspoons of garlic powder, you can not only find out how many grams of garlic powder it is, you can scale the recipe to call for three servings worth.

Made by Forward Leap Software, Kitchen Calculator Pro is an ideal solution for home cooks who use all sorts of recipes! It's only £2.49 in the iTunes store, but you can have a chance to win a copy of it if you head to our Facebook page and give us a "Like"! On February 7th, we will pick three random "Like"s to win a free copy of Kitchen Calculator Pro!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Lola) Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:44:09 +0000 Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/51-juliane-bloodorange http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/51-juliane-bloodorange
But this weekend something wonderful happened! Yes, the temperature dropped dramatically in London, but the skies are blue! Cloudless and bright, unending blue. And there is sun! Not light beaming through a layer of grey, but proper shining sun! And blood oranges have arrived at the market!

Blood oranges are one of the great treats of midwinter. Maybe the only real treat of midwinter. They come into season later than other oranges, as they benefit from the low temperatures of cold December nights. The flesh is a deep red, bloodlike colour due to the presence of anthocyanin, a red pigment common in other fruits, but not usually in citrus. Anthocyanin is a strong anti-oxidant, giving blood oranges unique anti-aging and cancer preventing qualities. They are also chock-full of Vitamin C, even more so than regular oranges, which is probably why in Italy blood oranges are eaten to prevent midwinter colds. They are sweet and a bit tart, and absolutely beautiful sliced thin in a salad of rocket. But since it’s cold outside, how about we bake them in a cake and put on the kettle instead.

Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake
(adapted from the New York Times)

3 blood oranges
1 cup (200 grams) sugar
1/2 cup (118 ml) plain yogurt
3 large eggs
2/3 cup (156 ml) extra virgin olive oil
1 3/4 cups (219 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons (8 grams) baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 180°C. Butter a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Grate zest from 2 of the oranges and place in a bowl with the sugar. Using your fingers, rub ingredients together until orange zest is evenly distributed in sugar. Cut off the tops and bottoms of the zested oranges, so that the orange can stand upright on your chopping board. Peel away the pith (the white skin bits) and cut the orange segments our of their connective membranes. Break up the segments in a bowl so that you are left with about ¼ inch pieces.

Halve the remaining orange and squeeze the juice into a measuring cup. It should be near ¼ of a cup (about 60 ml). Add the yogurt to the juice until you have 2/3 cup (156 ml) of liquid all together. Pour the liquid into the bowl of sugar and whisk well. Whisk in eggs and olive oil.

In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gently stir dry ingredients into wet ones. Fold in pieces of orange segments. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake cake for 50 minutes, or until it is golden and a knife inserted into center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 5 minutes, then unmold and cool to room temperature right-side up. Enjoy!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Juliane Caillouette) Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:42:58 +0000 A Summer's Meal on a Winter's Day http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/50-ellie-edwards-summersmeal http://www.mealsfromscratch.co.uk/blog/50-ellie-edwards-summersmeal
The only salad that had ever proved popular to my taste buds and me was an M&S Lechmere salmon and new potato salad: the mix of peppery rocket, even more peppery salmon and the creamy crème fraiche cut with the acidity of the lemon was perfect, however my bank balance could not reach as far to provide myself with one of these everyday so, on the coldest day of winter, when I was craving the dish summer was made for, I re-created the only salad love of my life. I think the trick to a good salad is fresh ingredients combined with fresher flavours, this is why rocket, beet, tomatoes, carrots, corn and courgettes all work fab, all these flavours are crisp and fresh but have underlying deeper flavours.

Rocket for instance is also quite woody and peppery. I think the reason I, and hopefully you love this salad so much is that the salmon gives it a great texture to an otherwise crunchy salad, the softness of the salmon makes it very easy to eat as a main course as it fills you up perfectly! A great salad is hard to find often, the potatoes can be hard, the crème fraiche in too little or too large quantities and the dressing very overpowering…the joy of making a salad at home is that you get the choice of quantities and so I generously coat my potatoes in dressing once the salad has been served, this way everyone can be pleased!

After being very impressed with my new found salad skills, I’ve decided to challenge myself to dig deeper and discover more salad opportunities out there, so far Ottolenghi and Nigel Slater are proving great for fresh salads and light bites…I’ll let you know how my further salad adventures turn out!

Smoked Salmon, New Potato, Crème Fraiche and Beet Salad

Ingredients:
5 new potatoes
A handful of salmon flakes
Crème fraiche
Squeeze of lemon juice
Pepper
Handful of salad leaves
¼ of a cucumber
½ beetroot
A few plum tomatoes

Instructions:

Cook the new potatoes in boiling water; meanwhile mix together the crème fraiche, pepper and lemon juice. Roast the tomatoes in the oven at 180 degrees C. Peel and cube the beet, along with the cucumber. In a bowl, throw in a handful of salad leaves, the beet, cucumber, and flaked salmon. Remove the tomatoes from the oven and place them in the bowl along with the potatoes covered in crème fraiche dressing. Enjoy!

]]> lola@mealsfromscratch.co.uk (Ellie Edwards) Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:46:11 +0000