A Taste of England

Last week Paul and I were given a lovely wedding gift that was made up of proper English goodies that I couldn't help but take a photo of to show off!

 

It's daft which English food I miss that I can't buy in Texas except for in speciality stores (at a price too). I'm saving one of the cans of beans for making a good English breakfast for Paul and I on Christmas Day. Unfortunately the chocolate biscuits have no chance of lasting that long!

 

Cranberry and Ginger Relish

Today I made one of my favourite Christmas recipes. Now I'm not one for copying recipes to my blog as I prefer to link back to the original recipe online, however despite my best efforts I can not find this one anywhere on the web. It's a recipe I cut from a newspaper about 5 years ago so I'm not even able to credit the original writer (sorry). However it's simple and delicious and I really recommend it. You can make it a few days in advance and chill it in a sealed jar.

I adjust the below recipe to make about double and make sure to have a cinnamon stick in each jar for the flavour to infuse over the next couple of days before we eat it with our turkey dinner (yum)!

Ingredients:

300 g Fresh Cranberries

100 ml Water

100 g caster sugar

4 Pieces stem ginger in syrup finely cut into matchsticks

1/2 tsp Ground ginger

1 Cinnamon stick

Directions:

Put the cranberries and water into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cook for 4-5 minutes until the cranberries begin to pop.

Add the sugar, ginger and cinnamon. Give the mixture a stir to help the sugar dissolve. Cook over a high heat for another 4-5 minutes until the liquid has reduced to a sticky glaze

Transfer the relish to a bowl and allow to cool. If making ahead, spoon into a sterilised jar while still warm and seal tightly

So what are you waiting for? Go and stock up on some cranberries and get cooking ... you won't regret it!



 

Baking Experiment #2!

Flush with success baking a Christmas cake I got all giddy and decided to try and make one of my favourite cakes; lemon drizzle cake.

Now I said the other day that I'm no expert in the kitchen but if I never try these things I'll never know! I had a quick search through t'interweb for a recipe. Firstly there is the original master of baking Mary Berry and her recipe . However I'd heard a rumour (potentially on the Great British Bake Off) that Paul Hollywood's was better but his recipe isn't readily available online. So for some random reason I opted for a Nigella recipe. Love her or hate her, everyone knows that Nigella makes sexy cakes! Plus I could find a copy of her recipe online with some helpful photos to give me some guidance!

And... tadaaaa!!....

My verdict: I absolutely loved making this. It didn't need a load of ingredients and was pretty fast and simple to make. I did it in one of those silicone squishy baking moulds and as a result had to bake it for just a few minutes more than the recipe called for. All in all it seems to have been another success so I'm feeling pretty proud of myself!

Learning to Cook with Jamie Oliver

For many years I haven't really have the opportunity or requirement to explore cooking. I could do the usual stuff like stir fry type dinners, but never anything that required much more than some chicken, a jar of sauce, maybe an onion and some garlic!

However things have changed quite a bit over the last couple of years. Firstly, when I moved back to my parent's hotel, my Mum taught me the art of cooking traditional English breakfasts for 30+ people. For a start I was very daunted by the prospect and lacked confidence, however now I love a busy breakfast. It can be completely crazy, with everyone ordering at the same time, but there is no bigger sense of satisfaction than when you send out the last breakfast, knowing that everything you sent out was great! I've had many people say to me that our breakfast was the best they've ever had, and that makes me proud. In turn that made me realise that perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself, especially when we won a breakfast award on one of the days that I was cooking.

However this still left a big hole in my cooking repertoire! When I first started coming to Texas I would get frustrated by the fact that I couldn't find ingredients that I was used to cooking. There is a LOT of pre-made food but I really don't like the thought of microwave meals either. There were several things I could cook but I still felt quite limited in my variation. So recently I turned to my iPad for some inspiration to learn how to cook some good food, from scratch. I came across the Jamie Oliver app which was just what I needed.

It has a mixture of classic meals, 20 minute meals and 30 minute meals. What I love the most is that it is step by step guidance with photos all the way. I enjoy cooking but lack confidence so it helps to be able to refer to a picture to check that I'm doing things right! 

As well as awesome step by step recipes it also has video's on some of the basics of cooking such as 'cooking the perfect steak', 'knife skills', 'cooking with herbs' and plenty of others. The recipes also are broken down into shopping lists which can be exported, plus moving through the recipe is made even easier (for when you have chickeny fingers) by using the voice activated scroll. By just saying 'next' or 'previous' the recipe will move to the next step or backwards through the recipe you're working on.
I've done several of the recipes over the last couple of weeks ... this was my version of the prawn linguine

And this was tonight's success.. Lemon and herb chicken with mash

His food is awesome, fresh and PACKED with flavour. I would seriously recommend investing in the app whether you are new to cooking or a bit of a pro!
However just because I'm learning to cook proper food, doesn't mean that I'm not still cooking these every so often :D