POACHED EGGS, SMOKED SALMON WITH OAT SPINACH PANCAKES

I came across this recipe whilst reading the fabulous Gluten Free Rosie blog. I have been cooking quite a few Ottolenghi recipes recently and as soon soon as I saw Rosie's recipe had been inspired by Ottolenghi I thought I had to try it!

I met Rosie at another supperclub and have already had the pleasure to visit her at her very own supperclub once already. But it's time I went again, especially after trying out one of her recipes from her fantastic blog! It's given me the taste for more of her food. 

Now, I need to state that I am not a coeliac but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy recipes that have been created for coeliacs, especially when Rosie's recipes are just so damn good! So in my recipe I used normal porridge oats, rather than the recommended gluten-free oats. Anyway here is Rosie's recipe:

INGREDIENTS (Serves 4 people)

Pancake dry ingredients

• 150g certified gluten-free oats or normal oats if you're not a Coeliac
• 1 tsp gluten-free baking powder
• 1 large handful of spinach leaves (finely chopped)
• Pinch of salt and pepper

Pancake wet ingredients

• 250ml milk
• 1 egg (whisked)
• 2 tbsp melted butter

Sumac sour cream sauce ingredients

• 50g sour cream
• 75g  Greek yogurt
• 1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
• 1/2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 small garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tbsp tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 tbsp sumac (a tangy, lemony spice which you can buy in all large Turkish, Arabic and Iranian supermarkets)
• 1 pinch of salt and black pepper

Piling on top ingredients

• 4 tsp smoked paprika
• 4 slices of smoked salmon
• 4 eggs
  1 tbsp White wine vinegar
• 4 tsp fresh coriander

METHOD

Pour your oats into a food processor and wizz till you have a fine flour. You'll be putting this through a sieve at a later stage to give you an idea of how fine you should get them.

(I could've made mine finer!)

Sift and whisk the flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Then mix in the finely chopped spinach leaves. Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and slowly add the wet ingredients, whisking well until you have a smooth batter. Leave the batter to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. This allows the baking powder to form bubbles in the batter, leading to light and fluffy pancakes. 

Next, make your sumac cream sauce. Place the yogurt, sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, sumac (you can get this at most supermarkets now, you'll find it in the herb & spices isle) and seasoning into a small bowl. Stir well and set aside.  

**Please note the cute little metal dishes. Aren't they fantastic! 

They make me feel like I'm Blue Peter "Here's one I prepared earlier". 

One of Ben's xmas stocking gifts off his mum ~ Joan, they're fab and getting used lots! x

Prep your coriander leaves, some wedge of lemon and have the paprika at hand. Using smoked paprika really makes a big difference, so if you find it use it. I've just run out :(

Next, heat a non-stick frying pan. Take ladle full of the batter and pour into the center of the pan, spreading it slightly. Keep the pan on a medium/low heat, no need too rush. Once bubbles start appearing on the surface, carefully turn them over and cook for another few minutes. Once ready transfer them onto a plate with tin foil on top to keep them warm.

Now Rosie does her eggs before doing the pancakes, however I find getting the perfect poached egg quite an intense process (I has gone horribly wrong in the past..) so need everything else done first!

So next make your runny yolk poached egg! I poached mine for 2-3 minutes with a tbsp of white wine vinegar.

Once the eggs are ready place your pancake on a plate followed by a 'swirl' of the sumac sour cream. Next place your egg, topped with the smoked salmon, coriander and paprika.

These were a real hit as was the garlic! Fortunately it was just the two of us but next time I think I shall make an extra sure I find a ubber small clove of garlic ;)

If you have any batter leftover, just cling it and pop it in the fridge. 

You don't half, look amazing when you produce this for brekkie, on a Monday morning before work! 

Now I'm off to try and bag me some tickets for the next GFR. Wish me luck! 

Flapjack Cookies revisited

Did you know that the main reason people visit my blog is to read one of my first posts on my Mum's Flapjack Cookies recipe 239 people to be exact!?!

I haven't been home for a while and even though Christmas is on the horizon ( & tempted to make Christmas-y looking biscuits) I felt compelled to make a few home comforts. Ahh my kitchen smelt just like back-home when I was baking them. I grew up on these and will always consider them as proper flapjacks and not the slice variety that everyone else are used too.

This lovely new batch of flapjacks were for my clients and work colleagues.
Half the tin was eaten by midday!?

Victoria's Famous Flapjacks

170g Traditional whole rolled oats
140g Sugar
140g Plain flour
1 tsp bicarb of soda
2 tbsp Boiling hot water
170g block butter
1 tablespoon Syrup
(makes around 34 biscuits)

Preheat oven to 180oc

Mix the oats, sugar and flour together in bowl. In a separate bowl mix the boiling water and bicarb of soda, then mix into the oat mixture.

Melt the butter & syrup in a bowl over boiling water. once melted add to the oat mixture.
Roll into small balls and place on a baking tray covered with baking parchment, press two fingers into each blob. Make sure they are too close together as they will spread. If you're using one tray, do it in three batches.

Pop in the oven for around 12-14 mins, they won't take long.
leave to cool on the tray a bit to crisp-en up, then onto a wire rack to fully cool.
Package up and hand out to people to make yourself smile ;D

A blog called Constellations have blogged about my mum's recipe too, and it looks like they went down well. Lets just hope that the office and my clients like the oaty variety treats to the jammy linzer biscuits I made last year.

Questions is ... how should I package them?
Hmmm will post some photos once I decide.

Ginger Spiced Flapjack Cookies

 As we're nearing spring I thought what a better time to use up ingredients in my baking cupboard - the first one on the list was stem ginger! Black treacle and rice flour to be used up next, so all ideas welcome :)

So these are a slight twist to mum's original recipe for Flapjack Cookies I did previously on the blog. Whilst mentioning my mum's Flapjack recipe, did you know that is one of the main reasons people end up finding / reading my blog!?! It's because they type in 'flapjack cooie' into google and my link shows as the forth one down (yes just below the BBC - Ha!!)

Right sorry went off on a bit of a tangent then, back to the old recipe :))

Ginger Flapjack Cookies

100g Stork or Softened butter
1 tbsp Golden syrup
100g  Caster sugar
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp Ground ginger
2 tbsp Finely grated stem ginger
100g Plain flour (if you wanna be ubber healthy use wholemeal flour)
125g Porridge oats

Pop the butter, syrup and sugar in a small saucepan and heat gently until just melted. Remove from the heat heat and add the bicarbonate soda, ground ginger and the grated stem ginger.
In a separate large bowl put in your oats and flour, mix. Then pour in the warm ingredients from the saucepan - mix well.
Now at this point I wrapped  the dough in cling and popped it into the freezer for half an hour to an hour, just to make it easier to work with. Roll into small balls and place on prepared and lined baking trays. Pop in an oven preheated at 180oc for around 10mins - I ended having to do this in three batches as only have 2 trays. Leave to cool on the trays once out of the oven for 1-2mins before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Oats & ginger? They must be healthy!?! :)

Peanut goowey bars

Some people just aren't breakfast people and can't do early morning food. This I can't really relate to, when I wake up the first thing I think about is what I should have. Pete is one of those breakfast missers and could very easily skip it completely... until I made these that is!!

For his birthday his mum gave him Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall new cook book - "River Cottage Every Day", which is where I found the recipe.

RECIPE

125g unsalted butter
150g soft brown sugar
125g crunchy peanut butter
75g honey
Grated zest 1 lemon
Grated zest 1 orange
200g whole rolled porridge oats
150g dried fruit, such as sultanas, raisins, apricots
150g mixed seeds, such as pumpkin, sunflower, poppy, linseed (I used pumkin, sesame, poppy seeds)

Grease and line a baking tin, about 20cm square.
Put the butter, sugar, peanut butter, honey and citrus zests into a deep saucepan over a very low heat. Leave until melted, stirring from time to time.
Stir the oats, dried fruit and most of the seeds into the melted mixture until thoroughly combined. Spread the mixture out evenly into the baking tin. Sprinkle the remaining seeds on top, plus a drizzle of honey.
Place in a preheated oven (160C/gas mark 3) for about 30 minutes, until golden in the centre and golden brown at the edges. Be careful not to leave it too long. Golden brown edges, not black.
Leave to cool completely in the tin. Be patient – it cuts much better when cold and easily falls apart when warm. Turn out and cut out into squares with a sharp knife.

Eat when an energy boost is required.

 

Pete's been eating them for his brekkie, not necessarily the healthiest option but not the worst either. They are full of healthy oats & seeds after all.

A Sunny Sunday Roast

Every Sunday without fail Pete suggests we should have a 'ROAST'. A very manly request, that takes them back to the feral carnivorous stages of wanting MEAT and two veg. Anyway don't know if you noticed but this weekend was a bit of a scortcher and even though saturday had all the glory Sunday was still rather hot day. so the thought of having a heavy hot roast dinner wasn't really very appertising.

As my mother has always said to me ' compromise, compromise, compromise' and my father says 'Don't see a problem, See a solution'. Wise words don't you think! So knowing that a salad would not to do I thought we should just combine the two. Nice and easy.

So here is what I made: Whole chicken baked with rosemary & garlic - A great recipe from AntonioCarluccio's simple cooking book.

Served with a simple salad and also a spicy puy lentil, bean, broccoli salad. Ooo will be doing that puy lentil salad again it was lush!

SPICY PUY LENTIL BEAN SALAD

• 100g Puy lentils
• 500ml hot vegetable stock
• 100g broccoli
• 70g frozen soya beans , thawed
• 70g sugarsnap peas
• 1 red chilli , deseeded and sliced

FOR THE DRESSING

• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• juice 1 lemon
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 40ml reduced-salt soy sauce
• 3cm piece root giner, finely grated
• 1 tbsp clear honey  

1. Boil lentils in stock until just cooked, about 15 mins. Drain, then tip into a large bowl. Bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil, throw in the broccoli for 1 min, add the beans and peas for 1 min more. Drain, then cool under cold water. Pat dry, then add to the bowl with the lentils.
2. Mix together the dressing ingredients with some seasoning. Pour over the lentils and veg, then mix in well with the chopped chilli. Pile onto a serving platter or divide between 4 plates and serve. 

And then to finish off individual rhubarb, apple & raspberry crumble served with orange creme fraiche. Hmm maybe I ended up making a pretty big meal anyway!? Rhubarb is ace!

Tasty Muesli

Hi all,

So randomly got up at 6am this week and was bored... so decided to make some muesli.
Now you're probably thinking, "Muesli, how boring!?!". But this is not the case with this muesli.

Once you try this muesli, you'll be addicted!! I mean it :D

So it's dead easy to make, here you go:


200g Traditional whole rolled oats
25g pumkin seeds
15g sunflower seeds
50g nuts (you can use whatever, I like Pecans, hazelnuts & Almonds) Chopped
3 tbspn maple syrup (can always add a little extra if you've got a sweet tooth)
75g dried apicots ready to eat
50g sultanas

Pre-heat oven to 200oc
In a large bowl mix your Oats, seeds, nuts and maple syrup. Spread mixture onto one large or two medium baking trays, that have been lined with baking paper.

Bake for 10-12mins until toasty, golden in colour.
Allow to cool a bit, then return to the bowl and mix in your dried fruit.

Store in an airtight contain - Keeps for 4 weeks (unless you eat it all in the same day!?)

Serve with ice cold milk.

LUSH!!!

Mum's Flapjack Cookies

So this weekend I decided to make a batch of my fav flapjacks!
Now these aren't the average flapjacks, these are made using my mums recipe, which is more of a cookie than a slice.

They are sooo moreish and not too bad on the hips :o)

Victoria's Famous Flapjack Recipe:
6oz Traditional whole rolled oats
5oz Sugar
5oz Plain flour
1 tspn bicarb of soda
2 tbsp Boiling hot water
6oz block butter
1 tablespoon Syrup
(makes around 34 biscuits)

Preheat oven to 180oc
Mix the oats, sugar and flour together in bowl. In a seperate bowl mix the boiling water and bicarb of soda, then mix into the oat miture.

Melt the butter & syrup in a bowl over boiling water. once melted add to the oat mixture.
Roll into small balls and place on a baking tray covered with baking parchment, press two fingers into each blob. Make sure they are too close together as they will spread. If you're using one tray, do it in three batches.

Pop in the oven for around 12-14 mins, they won't take long.
leave to cool on the tray a bit to crispen up, then onto a wire rack to fully cool.

Make a large cuppa tea and enjoy!