A heart attack of my own making: Gateshead Eggs

In my high school days I spent a lot of time at my best friend Andrea's house. Once there, we used to inexplicably demand that her big sister Shelley make us food. I'm not sure why we thought being so bossy was okay, but Shelley really did make good cheese sandwiches. We used to routinely demand that she make us Anglesey eggs, which was always met with a resigned sigh. 

Nowadays, I understand that sigh. I made Anglesey eggs myself a couple of years ago, and whilst it was delicious, I ended up using every bloody pan and receptacle in my kitchen. By the end of cooking it, I was greeted by a kitchen disaster area that made my heart sink. 

 This evening, as I gazed into the fridge hoping for inspiration, I remembered the recipe and considered making it. Then I realised that I neither had all the ingredients I needed, nor the energy for hours of washing up, so I decided to make my own abbreviated version instead. Even then, I had to make some on the hoof changes as I got halfway through and realised that my milk had gone off and I had no mustard. 

I am calling it Gateshead Eggs. Just like a Saturday night out in Gateshead town centre, it is actually probably quite deadly if experienced regularly.The result ended up really quite pleasant and very comforting. 

Ingredients

• olive oil
• 6 eggs
• Whatever potatoes you happen to have lying about, diced. I used about 500g of Charlotte potatoes, but I'm guessing anything will do.
• 2 leeks, sliced. 
• 50 g unsalted butter
• 50 g plain flour
• 300 mL double cream
• 75g extra mature cheddar cheese, grated. A mixture of cheeses would be lovely too. 
• 6 rashers of bacon
• Some water
• smoked garlic salt, pepper, and chives to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees or equivalent. 
2. Splash some olive oil around an oven-proof dish. If you want, pop in some finely chopped garlic or herbs, and pop in the oven.
3. Boil the potatoes and leeks in a pan together for a few minutes. Once softened, drain and toss in the dish with the olive oil. Put into the oven until nicely browned. I didn't time it, but I think it took about 20 mins or so.
4. In the meantime, hard boil the eggs and leave aside to cool
5. fry up or grill the bacon to your liking. leave aside to cool a bit
6. Peel and slice the boiled eggs
7. Chop up the bacon into chunks. 
8. Once the potatoes and leeks are done, place the sliced egg and bacon over them. You could do this in a pretty, precise manner, or you could just vaguely chuck it in like me. 
9. In a sauce pan, gently melt the butter over a low heat. Once melted, stir in the flour, then pour in the cream, whisking continuously, in three or four lots. Add enough water to make a pourable sauce. 
10. Pour the sauce over the dish contents. 
11. sprinkle the cheese evenly over the whole affair and shove in the oven
12. Cook until gooey and bubbly and lush. 
13. At this point, it might be nice to consider a bread crumb layer. I couldn't be bothered, but I imagine a bit of crunch could be quite pleasant. 
14. Season with garlic salt, pepper and chives as required.
15. Eat and enjoy the sensation of your arteries clogging up.

Like I say, this is definitely an occasional treat sort of recipe. It has that lovely comforting cheesy goo about it that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Perfect for a dark winter night, and ideally consumed in pyjamas under some sort of blankie. 

Hxxx

Completely inauthentic red beans and rice

You know when you think you’re all organised and you know what you’re going to cook? You have put the time aside for it, and you have all your ingredients, and you’re really looking forward to it? That’s what good cooking is all about, right?

Well it turns out that I almost never, ever cook like that. It’s just not in my nature to be so organised, and even when I *think* I am, I’ve always forgotten some major component of a recipe. My cooking is therefore mostly done on the fly, with a lot of last minute recipe changes or substitutions. As it happens, sometimes you end up nailing it accidentally. That’s what happened when I attempted to make authentic Louisiana red beans and rice the other day.

Firstly, the beans. It turns out that genuine red beans are fairly difficult to get hold of in the UK. No bother though, for I looked up alternatives and found out that the pack of dried black beans that have been in the cupboard for ages should be fine. Except for that I forgot to soak them overnight beforehand. Luckily, there was a dusty tin of kidney beans at the back of the cupboard which saved the day. Secondly, I have no idea at all what Andouille sausage is. I decided, apropos of very little, that chorizo would do instead. Turns out that it’s probably more like a smoked sausage, but never mind. Thirdly, I couldn’t find Creole seasoning anywhere. We searched three supermarkets before giving in and getting a Cajun seasoning instead. Fourthly: the ham hock was hard to find, so I ended up leaving it out.

And yet, despite all of this, I ended up with a really delicious slow cooker creation. It probably bears no resemblance to actual red beans and rice, but it was super tasty nonetheless. So here is my off-the-hoof, completely unauthentic, grab-anything-nearby-then-feel-proud-of-yourself-afterwards recipe for red beans and rice.

Ingredients
1 tin of kidney beans in water
One chorizo sausage, sliced.
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped into chunky pieces.
chilli flakes or one fresh chilli, to taste
2 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning powder
Fresh basil
Cooked basmati rice.

Method:
Dump the entire contents of the kidney bean tin, water and all, into a slow cooker on high setting
Shallow fry the chorizo until it is browned. Plonk the sausage pieces into the slow cooker and reserve the fat in the pan.
Fry the garlic, onion and green pepper in the chorizo fat. Once softened and just browned, add to the slow cooker.
Add the chilli flakes, basil leaves and Cajun seasoning too.
I added a little water- about 100 mLs, although that made for quite a watery sauce and I don’t think you necessarily need to add that much.
Leave for about 4-5 hours. If it’s too watery
Cook the rice according to instructions. Spoon over the bean and sausage mixture and voila.

Enjoy :) xxx

Lady Vengeance Pie

So, last night we held a really special meeting of Private Pie at the Star and Shadow Cinema. you can read all about it at the Private Pie blog here.

I decided to make two pies for the event: a sweet and a savoury. Some of you may already know that I am a bit of a fiend for Asian Extreme Horror Films, so I thought it would be cool to do something on that theme. I also went to go and see a load of Korean and Japanese horror films at the Star and Shadow, so it seemed like Lady Vengeance, my favourite of Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy. Here's an explanation of what I made, and how it links in with the film:

Tofu:
In Korea, a block of white tofu is presented to people on leaving prison. Its a symbol of purity and of starting a new life. This symbol appears twice in the film- at the beginning as she leaves prison, and at the end, when she represents the white tofu in a cake. A few weeks earlier, someone on Twitter recommended this recipe for chocolate tofu pie, so it seemed to me that it would fit nicely.

The chocolate tofu mixture in my pate sucree pastry case,

Strawberry Mousse:
On her release from prison, Geum-Ja finds a job in a bakery. Here's what the bakery owner has to say about her:

 "He tells her that he was astonished at a strawberry mousse made by a prison inmate who, using poor ingredients, made a dessert "fit for a king."

So I thought a lovely strawberry mousse topping would be perfect. I went for this BBC good food recipe

The strawberry mousse layer

Pink/Red:
See her eye-make up? That's quite a feature of the film, as Geum-Ja uses a change in her appearance to symbolise her departure from innocence to one intent on revenge. I had to go for a have a pink/red colour theme, and it had to be pretty- Geum-Ja likes pretty things, as do I, so I used pink sugar pearls which I let dissolved into the topping, and liberal applications of red glitter, with some little bits of red icing here and there. I also used some pink and red sugar roses, to add extra prettiness. I think Geum-Ja would have liked that.

With pink and red decorations

White
I made some meringue hearts with the leftover egg whites from the pate sucree, to pick up the theme of the purity from the tofu. And, of course, we have to bear in mind that everything Geum-Ja does is for the love of her daughter.

Blood
This is a revenge film, featuring plenty of blood. I used red gel food colouring to make blood spatter.

The fully assembled pie, ready for eating at Private Pie.

The resulting pie was rather tasty, although very sloppy as it was pretty hot in the room. If it was kept nice and clilled, I think it would make for a very pretty slice. And don't let the tofu put you off- its just really there for the texture, and you certainly can't taste it. the mousse was delicious, and i had plenty left over to give to friends and to make a pretty little dessert for myself as well.

 

 

Hxxx

A Stack O' Stotties

The older I get, the more Geordie I appear to be getting. And since getting my mixer, resplendent with its dough hook, i've been trying to make more bread (although bread making is often delayed whilst I end up wandering around my kitchen, making myself giggle by pretending to be a pirate with the dough hook) So it's amazing really that I've never yet gotten round to making my own stottie cakes yet. But, tonight, I made my first attempt.

For those of you of a Southern disposition, you may well have no idea what I'm on about. The stottie is one of the shining lights of Geordie cuisine. Within its fluffy, dense interior is the inimitable feeling of home. 

Stotties bread is only proved once, giving it a dense, beautifully soft texture. It's like the marshmallow of the bread world. It's particularly good at soaking up liquids, so great for a bacon sarnie as the sauce (brown, obviously) and fat soaks into the bread. Traditionally, it was make by housewives on baking day, as they used to take a section of dough after first proving to bake straight away for their man's bait (that means lunch, by the way, not some weird northern mating ritual). Off the man would go, down the pit, with his ham and pease pudding stottie in hand.

So anyway, my first attempt at them went alright. I tried to make them smaller than a usual, plate-sized stottie, and I probably made them too thick. I left some of them in the oven a little too long as well, so they started getting a crust, although this certainly isn't unpleasant, just not very traditional. 

And here, dear friends, are My First Stotties: 

St Catherine's cakes

People who know me will know that I am not in the least bit religious. But I do like cake, a lot. So the other week, I dug out an old recipe book and gave these St Catherine's cakes a try.

 

I assume they're named after St Catherine of Alexandria, in which case naming a pretty little patisserie cake after the wheel-shaped rack she was tortured on seems a bit morbid. They're little pinwheel shaped cakes. The other alternative is St Catherine of Siena though, and this would appear to be even less appropriate as her life appeared to be mainly categorised by fasting, anorexia, and bulimia. Anyway, whichever they are named after, the fact of the matter is that I spent a few minutes researching the various Saint Catherines whilst these were baking. Learning through cake.

Anyway, these are tasty, not overly sweet little crossovers between biscuits and cake. I spread a little bi of glitter over them once they were done to add a little bit of glamour. I didn't really put that much effort into presentation, to be honest, but I think with patience and a little bit more effort these could be really pretty and dainty.

Ingredients:

350g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon mixed spice

25g ground almonds

225g caster sugar

225g butter/margarine

50g currants or mixed fruit

1 egg, beaten

25g Demerara or granulated sugar.

Instructions: 

Sift flour, bicarb and mixed spice into a bowl and add the almonds ad caster sugar.

Rub in the butter, then stir in the currants.

Add the egg and mix to a dough. Knead and roll out into a rectangular shape about 30cm x 20cm. Trim the edges so they are straight.

Cut into long strips, about 1cm thick. 

Brush each strip with water, then sprinkle with the Demerara sugar. Roll each strip up into a coil and space them out on a baking tray, with plenty of room in between each roll.

Bake at 200 oC for about 12-15 minutes or until browned.

Northumbrian Baking

Last night I cooked myself up a Georgian Feast (as in the country, not the period) using some recipes from my friend Dacia. What resulted was one of the tastiest meals I have had in a long time. I thought it would be nice tonight to make some recipes from closer to home (by which I mean I need to go shopping, so only have a few ingredients in), hence the bacon floddies in the previous post and this Felton spice loaf, a Northumbrian traditional recipe.

Felton Spice Loaf

Recipe:
115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
50g ground almonds
115g self raising flour
Half teaspoon mixed spice
175g mixed fruit
50g peel (optional- I just used a mixed fruit mix with peel in it an used a little bit extra)
Dash of milk

1. Cream butter and sugar
2. Beat in the eggs. Try not to let it curdle, but if it does its not the end of the world.
3. Stir in the ground almonds
4. Sieve in the flour and mixed spice and stir
5. Add the mixed fruit and peel and stir again.
6. Add a little milk until the mixture thins to a dropping consistency.
7. Put in a well greased loaf tin
8. Bake at 190 degrees for about 40 mins or until well risen and firm to the touch.

The result is a deliciously light, yeast (and therefore faff) free teabread, which is particularly yummy warm with a bit of butter.

Bacon Floddies

Dear people,

I have sorely, sorely neglected you. I bring you bacon in apology.

Specifically, bacon floddies. These are a traditional Gateshead snack and are basically the Geordie version of onion bhajis, with less spice and much more bacon. Alternatively, I suspect at some point in Gateshead, back in the day, the following conversation happened:

"I see them Scots are eating tattie scones for their bait"
"Aye, they're tasty"
"Maybe, but they're missing something'"
"Aye, there's nee bacon in 'em"

Apparently these are usually eaten with even more bacon and eggs on the side for breakfast and supper. They're really blummin yummy, and well worth the effort of grating potatoes ( I really hate grating things) for.

Recipe:
225g grated peeled potato
2 onions, grated or finely chopped. Sometimes I use one onion and one spring onion, which gives them some little spots of green colour.
175g bacon rashers. I tend to put more in because its bacon and there can never be too much. Finely chopped
50g self raising flour
Salt and pepper
2 eggs, beaten
Vegetable oil (you're supposed to use bacon dripping)

1. Plonk the potatoes, onions, bacon, flour and seasoning into a bowl and add the eggs.
2. Mix thoroughly
3. Fry. I usually use a tablespoon or so of mixture per floddie, but you can make them as big or little as you like. It helps to squish them down a bit while they're frying. Once they're browned, turn them over and fry them on the other side
4. Drain on paper towels, wait to cool a few minutes, then shovel them in your gob.

I hope this offering makes up somewhat for my lack of attention to my little baking blog. I just never seem to find the time these days, and have been busily writing for my skepticism blog.

Hxxx

Oreo Cheesecake Cookies

Hiya lovelies,

Apologies for the silence since June. I have gotten to the point where i have so much stuff to write up on here I'm rather overwhelmed by it all, so have been employing my usual strategy of avoiding the issue, whilst feeling like a total blog-based failure and stressing about it at the same time. But today, I've decided to take a step forward and do a post from last night. I'm going to hope to make up the gap at some point, because i have loads to share with you, but i need to start somewhere, and here it is.

One of my favourite websites to browse on my lunch break is www.foodbeast.com. Although it has loads of stuff that isn't really relevant to us in the UK, it shares my obsessions of bacon and peanut butter and always has some bizarre food stories on that make me laugh.

Little balls of cheesecakey goodness ready for the oven

Today we've had a World's Biggest Coffee Morning at work, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try something new. I've never been consistently good at cookies or biscuits, so I thought I'd make some cookies. Well, when I saw a recipe for Oreo Cheesecake Cookies on foodbeast, I just had to give these bad boys a go. I stuck to the recipe pretty much exactly, and oh my, what a result. Gooey, chewy, and really sweet, these are a real American style treat.

The finished product. Loooooovely.

They were pretty well received at our Macmillan Coffee Morning, and help to contribute to our pretty decent takings for the day- so far we've counted £73.50, which is pretty good considering there were quite a few people who couldn't make it today, and also that we have some people who haven't yet paid up.

Speak soon,

Hayley xxx

Hayley's Film Club- Prometheus

Dudes, it’s time for a film review

“on a baking blog?!” i hear you ask... Well, i know but theinside of my head isn’t organised enough to keep to the one subject all thetime. And  everyone else in the worldseems to be posting about this film, so i am ungracefully leaping on thebandwagon. I warn you, there will be spoilers.

The film in question is Prometheus. Now, I’ve never seenAlien or any of the other Aliens, Alienz, Aliens & Friends, Alien Partyseries but i’m told that some are good and some are rubbish. So, on the basisthat Prometheus is a Not-A-Prequel-But-Actually-Really-A-Prequel sort of film,I thought it might be worth a shot.

Before you start reading this if you can be bothered, ithink it’s worth saying that on the whole i did enjoy Prometheus. I did getquite into it when there was running around alien goo shizz going on, but thenthey kept stopping running around and talking about God and Important Stufflots, which lost my interest every now and then. It seems like a few of my points have been discussed already on the t;interweb. But hey ho, here are my thoughts for your reading joy:

So, off we go. Whhhheeeee we’re flying through New Zealand,and now there’s some baldy geezer wearing weird pants made of bandages. Andhe’s drinking some wormy goo stuff, and then bad stuff happens to him. And hisDNA goes all floaty light into the water and so life is born. Wor Ridley hasapparently said this:

““No, it doesn’t have tobe. That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing isacting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is thedisintegration of himself.”

But but but but but but.... ummmm, so the camera swept overthis landscape, which we all really know is New Zealand, AND THERE WERE PLANTSTHERE ALREADY! Lots of them! So baldy geezer could have made them. And why doeshe look like Voldemort? Why isn’t  RalphFiennes playing him?

And here’s the main issue: Those pants. If these baldyfellas, sorry engineers  (and where arethe lady engineers?) can make life happen just by drinking some tarry stuff,they have no need for genitals surely, especially if there are no ladyengineers lolling about on chaise longues anywhere. And if there’s no genitals,why do they feel the need to wear pants? And even if you did have genitals, ifyou knew fine well there wasn’t any life on a planet BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T MADEIT YET, wouldn’t you kick back, relax, and wander around  letting it all hang out JUST BECAUSE YOUCOULD? It’s the equivalent of getting home, drawing the curtains, and wanderingabout in your underwear because you can’t be bothered with getting dressed whenno one is going to see you anyway. And, let’s just say that these guys are deadclever and all, and have created life, surely they can create some stylish formof boxers to wear instead of those godawful white wraparound bandage-y affairs.

So then there’s some people on a ship, and then they get tothis planet and some stuff happens. Most of which i don’t understand, but whichis in the main quite entertaining.

Then, shortly after having fairly major surgery involvingstaples, Noomi wifey is wandering around in a matching set of bandage-underwear(seriously, they don’t even have underwired bras in the future?!?!?),apparently from the same designer as that of the engineer in the first scene.Eh? After 2000 years, pant design hasn’t moved on at all and still doesn’tappear to involve elastic? Anyway, whilst shambling around, wifey stops in thekitchen for a nice chat with someone. And herein lies the revelation ofPrometheus, the real life lesson that it is trying to teach us:

And the Lord said unto them “ Thou shalt create a line ofkitchen ware which is stylishly clever in its design. And lo, it shall last forhundreds of years, and it shall be named Joseph Joseph, Amen.”

Whatever they were nattering on about (oh, what a surprise,they were on about God again) i got a bit bored with looking at them and wasgazing into the background, and observed that their kitchen was equipped with anice Joseph Joseph hanging utensil kit. So, obviously it’s worth investing in anew chop 2 pot as now we all know that they are such good quality they willstill be there in the future.

Now, i don’t purport to be any sort of archeological expertor anything, but i am fairly aware of the fact that if you’re going into animportant historic site you need to be fairly careful about  conserving the environment if you want toproperly research it. But nay, our hapless crew are blithely traipsing about,breathing everywhere, stepping where ever they like, and just generally beingrather retarded. “we’ve changed the atmosphere in here” wifey says, and this issupposed to be something to do with human evilness and a Space Jesus. Well, yesdarling you have changed the atmosphere, but it’s nowt to do with Jesus... Thedoor’s been shut for 2000 years, i imagine it did get a bit musty inthere.  And i should imagine a bit offresh air along with all of your fresh breaths would change the place a bit.

Oh, and i’ve also read somewhere that the dead head theydecide to electrocute asplodes because it can’t bear the pain and anger at howterrible the human race are. ORLY? Nothing to do with the fact that it’s 2000years old, exposed to a whole new atmosphere, AND HAS JUST BEEN ELECTROCUTED?

I’m actually not even going to start with the most obviousplot hole-  how comes her oxygen doesn’trun out when it said it was going to and she doesn’t appear to recharge itwhilst she goes off to see what behbeh is up to?

And thank fully my friends, that is all for Hayley’sbakingbeautiful film club this time. Think yourselves lucky i actually did likethis film- imagine how long a blog post there would have been if i feltotherwise.

Walking in Glasse Slippers- Chapter Two

So, the first step in modernising Hannah's recipe was conversion. Her recipes include huge quantities, presumably because they would be feeding a large household for banquets. A quick glance at the recipe made me panic slightly... what on earth is a peck? a pennyworth? aaargh!

So the only solution was to grab a calculator, do some googling for conversions, and make a table.

I found the following conversions:

1 peck= 9.09 litres
1 pound= 453.6 grams
1 ounce = 28.3 grams
1 quart= 946.4 mls

So this was my starting point. And from , the Grand Table Of Ingredients was born. I thought I would divide the whole thing by 4 to make a reasonable sized cake.

Ingredient	Original recipe	Original recipe- metric	Metric/4
Fine flour	¼ of a peck	2.27 l	0.56L
Butter	1 ½ pounds	0.68kg	170g
Carraway seeds	3 ounces	0.085kg	21.25g
Eggs	6	6	1.5
Cloves	1/8 ounce	0.07087kg	17.5g
Mace	1/8 ounce	0.07087kg	17.5g
Cinnamon	Pennyworth	?	?
Sugar	1 pound	0.45 kg	112.5
Rose water	Pennyworth	?	?
Saffron	Pennyworth	?	?
Yeast	1 ½ pints	1.5pints	1.5 tsp baking powder
Milk	Quart	946.6mls	236.6mls

 ....to be continued....

Walking in Glasse Slippers Chapter One

Next month's Clandestine Cake Club is going to be a very special affair. It's part of the Newcastle EAT festival, and people have snapped up tickets for the event at only £10 each for all-you-can-eat cake. The theme for this meeting is 18th Century Cakes.

Last year, someone told me about Hannah Glasse, who I had never heard of before. She was an 18th century food author who wrote a book called The Art Of Cookery Made Plain And Easy. And as she grew up in Northumberland, it seemed like a good idea to try out some of her recipes.

During a quick scan of the contents of the book, a seed and saffron cake caught my eye, so I decided on making that one. The recipe?

To make a fine ſeed or ſaffron-cake. YOU muſt take a quarter of a peck of fine flour, a pound and a half of butter, three ounces of carraway ſeeds, ſix eggs beat well, a quarter of an ounce of cloves and mace beat together very fine, a pennyworth of cinnamon beat, a pound of ſugar, a pennyworth of roſe-water, a pennyworth of ſaffron, a pint and a half of yeaſt, and a quart of milk ; mix it all together lightly with your hands thus : firſt boil your milk and butter, then ſkim off the butter, and mix with your flour, and a little of the milk ; ſtir the yeaſt and ſtrain it, mix it with the flour, put in your ſeed and ſpice, roſe-water, tincture of ſaffron, ſugar, and eggs ; beat it all up well with your hands lightly, and bake it in a hoop or pan, but be ſure to butter the pan well. It will take an hour and a half in a quick oven. You may leave out the ſeed if you chuſe it, and I think it rather better without it, but that you may do as you like

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/glasse-making-cakes-15.php
Copyright © celtnet

I had assumed that there would be a modern version of the recipe, but after a fairly lengthy search, I've been unable to find one. However, I was determined that this was the recipe i was going to use. So I got my calculator out....


.... To be continued.

Cream Tea Scone Cake

I wasn't intending on going to last month's cake club, partly due to the diet but mainly due to my lack of organisation which meant i didn't get my name down on the list in time.

However, I bumped into Nelly (of Nelly's Cupcakes fame) on the way into work one morning and we had a bit of a chat about cake club. Then it turned out that her guest cancelled on her so i could go as her non-baking guest- Hoorah!

The theme was An English Country Garden. Although i was a non-baking guest, I wasn't doing anything the night before so i thought i would bake a cake, see how it turned out, and bring it along if it was ok. It was a nice feeling, as i didn't have any cake-based pressure. If it didn't work, I just wouldn't bring it, and no one would ever know of the failure, yay!

This begged the question: What am i going to bake? Well I thought about the sort of ingredients you might find in an English Country Garden, but i thought that would be the sort of tactics everyone else would be using. So then i thought- what would you do in an English Country Garden? Well the obvious answer is afternoon tea. So I struck upon the idea of making a giant scone with cream and strawberries.

I managed to find a recipe from good old BBC Good Food, which is here. And the cake turned out beautifully.

I assembled it when i got to cake club, added a couple of fresh strawberries, sugar daisies, and patriotic picks as it was nearly the Jubilee weekend. It sounds daft, but because it was cake sized i expected it just to taste of cake, even though it was made using different techniques. However, it really did taste like a scone, a really massive one. I got quite a few complements from the other bakers, which is always really flattering considering how they are all such good bakers. And, the most pleasing of all was the fact that there was NONE leftover AT ALL by the end.

A highly recommended recipe, if only we could get the weather to match.

Hayley's Italian Kitchen

Mamma Mia, a new addition to my kitchen family arrived the other week:

A shiny silvery new pasta machine! I sort of bought it by accident- we were planning to make homemade pasta again using the bicep building pastacise method we've used before. But, we were having a bit of a wander around the metro centre and ended up in Lakeland, where it was quite reasonably priced.

So we made lasagne, entirely from scratch. I've never really made lasagne that often in life, as it seems rather faffy- by the time you've made the ragu, you've then got to put it in the oven, but you could have been eating it already if you were having good old spag bol. When I have made it in the past i've just used jars or pasta sauce and white sauce, with dried pasta sheets.

This time however, we made everything. Red sauce, white sauce, and pasta. Short of rearing the cows to milk them then mince them, we couldn't have homemade anything else in this lasagne.

The pasta dough is made

My saucy kitchen

The finished product was definitely worth all the effort- much better than a mangey microwave lasagne. The pasta was beautifully cooked, and it just tasted so much sweeter with the smugness of knowing you've made it all yourself.

Nom nom nom

Hayley's Life Lessons: Film Reviews

Welcome, dear folks, to the second installment of my Hayley's Life Lessons series of posts.

Not content with simply preaching the best way of slicing pizza to the world, I now want to teach you to be VERY suspicious of film review quotes.

I think everyone does know to be suspicious of the one word quotes that appear on film posters: "BRILLIANT!" the poster says. And most people do seem to know that this may well actually be taken completely out of context and the actual quote may have been "Brilliant this film is not."

I came across a much more complex (and disturbing) example of this same thing recently. As part of a research project for work, I’ve been looking at some information sources about a particular doctor who operates in the US. His name is Stanislav Burzynski, and he claims to be able to cure cancer with his antineoplaston therapy. I’m  going to attempt not to make any judgements of him or his treatment in this post as its a bit of a complex issue and i can be a real bore on the subject. I just want to share with you this tiny part of the whole affair that i’ve come across.

Supporters of Burzynski point to a film made by Eric Merola  (The Burzynski Movie- Cancer Is a Serious Business) as evidence of the benefits of Burzynski’s  (expensive) treatment, despite a lack of robust, reproducible trial evidence. If you were to go to the website for the film, you would see a range of seemingly impressive reviews from various newspapers or film review websites.

Let’s just pick one of those: The New York Times review seems like a good place to start. According to the website they’ve said:

Wowser: so from this we can see that The New York Times thinks poor, stoical Dr Burzynski is struggling to use his highly effective treatment against the will of the evil FDA and Big Pharma.  Shall we have a little look and see if that is what they’ve actually said? If you want to, you can find the actual review here. I’ll pick out the main bits here:

"Plain, plodding and relentlessly expositive, “Burzynski” tries to wrestle medical clarity from a snarl of science and human suffering. The price paid, however, is a documentary as visually arid as it is topically fertile.

Like a bloodhound following a redolent paper trail, the director (and writer, cinematographer, editor and narrator), Eric Merola, presents Dr. Burzynski as a stoic victim of patent fraud, government harassment and scientific sabotage. No one appears to contest the efficacy of his treatment; the problem, the film suggests, is a pharmaceutical industry with nothing to gain — and much to lose — from the introduction of a highly successful, nontoxic competitor to chemotherapy and radiation."

And so, with a few words taken out the Burzynski website seems to suggest something completely different to what the review is actually saying.  With any other film it would be funny, but the sad fact is that desperate, ill people are turning to this problematic form of evidence to make treatment decisions. 

Porter Cream Pie

Our last Private Pie Club meeting's theme was "Local Tipples"

I am a HUGE real ale fan and always have been, so this theme really excited me. Beer and pie are obvious partners but i was really excited about how our members were going to be creative with the theme.

I had set my heart on making a sweet pie with beer, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it. As usual, the first step in researching was google, and i stumbled across this beer cream pie blog post. I knew this was the one.

I was fairly short of time, so I ended up making the pies for the meeting the night before without doing a practice run. I was a bit nervous to start with that it was all going to go horribly wrong, which may explain the events that followed.

I merrily made a chocolate shortcrust pastry and blind baked the crust. Nothing untoward here.

Then I mixed the melted chocolate with the porter and brushed a good thick layer of this divine stuff onto the pastry case. Again, all went smoothly. The porter i was using was Hadrian and Borders Ouseburn porter.

Then it came to making the custard. Here, total panic and disaster struck, as the custard just wouldn't set at all (in reality, I think i was too impatient and didn't really let it cool down as much as i should before taking action). For some reason, it seemed like a good plan to put some gelatin in... So in went one sachet... Then i thought i needed some more (again i clearly hadn't left it for long enough to make this decision rationally)... and some more.... so in total i put in three sachets of gelatin.

Eventually, the custard started setting... And then it continued setting, then set a bit more. Undeterred, I
went ahead and decorated the tart with some of the leftover porter chocolate mixture and some gold leaf. It looked pretty good in the end:

The verdict at pie club was that it tasted nice, but had a very odd texture. Emergency gelatin really wasn't a good plan at all. One member put it very nicely: "I think you might have invented a new material for breast implants"

Hayley's Life Lessons: Pizza Cutting

Yes my dears, I am binge-blogging again. no posts for ages, then a deluge of insights into the inside of my head. 

So I'm thinking I'm going to start a new mini series of posts on this here humble blog: Hayley's Life Lessons aka Things Most People Have Known Already For Years But I Have Just Learnt Recently Because I Am A Simple Dog. I think it might even need it's own logo or something. I'll do that sometime, honest. 

These sorts of posts will wildly veer between the mundane and useless to the life changing and hugely important. Alternatively, I'll forget that i ever started this mini series after 2 posts and that will be that.

Anyway, this first post is one of the most amazing, life changing tips I have ever come across in my entire life. 

Have you just cooked a pizza? About to use an unwieldy knife or an always disappointing pizza roller thingy? STOP!!! Think again! Get back to the drawer and instead pick up the scissors.

That's right- the subject of today's revelation is cutting pizza with scissors. Much more accurate and ridiculously easy, this concept had never, ever occurred to me before but the part of my life devoted to the cutting of pizzas has become so much better because of it. 

Just in case you were wondering what scissors actually look like.

Of course, you'll note my utter selflessness in telling you this knowledge when I have been banished to the realms of diet food from now on. No gooey, cheesy, doughy goodness for me. Now off you go, good people, and enjoy all of that time you're now going to save.

In which I attempt to lose weight

I am, as a twitter friend put it so poetically "built for comfort not for speed". 

I have zero willpower, am useless at being organised, and lazy. All of which adds together to mean i usually end up eating crap most of the time. This situation isn't particularly helped by my sedentary office job.

I did get down to a nice weight a few years ago. at this time i was working in a really stressful job in community pharmacy- always on my feet and never with any time to eat. I ended up just eating one meal a day (obviously neither healthy nor sustainable), and in addition to that i was going to the gym three times a week. Now, I sit on my ample backside amongst a plentiful supply of biscuits every day.

I've been going to the gym a bit more often, and doing my kettlebells, but i thought it was time to really do something about my useless eating habits.

Ages ago, I went on slimming world. While I really enjoyed the food, I found it really difficult to prepare everything from scratch along with working full time and everything else in my life. This definitely isn't an option for me now as i do so many locum shifts and travelling (not to mention being a social butterfly =D) that i just wouldn't be able to stick to it. 

So I've taken the plunge and gone for Diet Chef. This is a scheme where all of your meals are delivered to you on a monthly basis, so you don't really need to think about preparation. I've gone for the 4 monthly option as it's cheaper and according to their website i need to lose 2 stones, which is likely to take a LONG time. You then need to buy your fresh fruit and veg to have alongside the meals, which are stored at ambient temperature so great for at work or on the go. 

I did do a week's trial of Diet Chef back in January, and i was actually pleasantly surprised by the food,which was tasty and quite filling. I particularly enjoyed the breakfasts, which were yummy porridges or granolas or mueslis. I thought i'd show you a couple of pictures of the evening meals i've been having to prove that you actually do get quite a bit for each meal, once you added the veg.

I'll probably be having most weekends off from Diet Chef as i'll be gallivanting in London or the boyf will be here, and i'm not convinced that Private Pie club or Clandestine Cake Club, or a peanut butter addiction will fit into the new regime particularly brilliantly, but i know that i'm much more likely to be successful if i'm fairly relaxed with the rules.

Diet Chef sausages in gravy, with mash (probably more than the regulation amount but really, who cares) and herby balsamic runner beans

What i'm really enjoying is actually bothering to make vegetables- something that i must admit i was absolutely terrible at before. I'm not bothering to weigh accompaniments or veg that i'm having at this point in the diet- i figure whatever i'm having now is still much better than what i was eating before.

Diet Chef pasta carbonara with chinese leaf lettuce and sesame soy shallots and runner beans

I lost 4lbs in the first week- hardly life-changing, but a tiny win nonetheless. Just in case anyone wants to give it a try (NOT that i am saying that any of you need to, you understand), just type in this discount voucher code:

 MYHCIGIW

And you'll get a tenner off any orders over £190. Better than a kick in the teeth, eh? Wish me luck with my *hopefully* slow but steady weight loss. I'll keep you guys posted on how it goes, without being too boring.

Apple Streusel Cake

I'm a lazy, lazy person. Occasionally, I like to have very lazy days where i barely leave the house (I don't think a trip to the bins is classed as an expedition these days, especially when the bins are about 2 metres away from your flat). Usually on these days i am suffering from that most terrible of ailments The Hangover.

One thing i do like to do on these days, except for watching full DVD box sets of Dexter or House MD, is to bake. So then I have to attempt to find something to bake for which i already have all of the ingredients in the house.

So, the other week I had some cooking apples left over from the toffee apple cider pie I made for Private Pie Club (I will post about this sometime soon). I also had some pecans and bits and pieces leftover from the not-so-vegan-vegan-tart, so i decided to make an apple cake.

Of course, good old BBC Good Food obliged me with a recipe, and a-baking i went.

The result:

Apparently I have a lop-sided cake tin :-S

It looks pretty rustic, and it collapsed a bit in the middle, but it smelt of spicy appley goodness. To be honest, I've no idea how it tastes as it's now all wrapped up in freezer awaiting a last minute cake emergency situation.

Hayley's Little Helper

No, for once I don't mean gin.

I adore baking, I really do. It's calming, relaxing and very satisfying. There is one aspect to baking though that I really can't be bothered with.

Lining The Cake Tins.

This dreaded task, which requires geometry, patience, and construction skill, really does my head in. I recently ran out of my supply of My Little Helper, but now i can breathe a sigh of relief that i have more in my possession:

And so, with only a few pounds whisked out of my bank account, my life has just become easier. You can buy these great little cake tin liners from Lakeland and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

NB: Lakeland!!! Look at meeee!!! See how i am recommending your products to my lovely followers! Give me free stuff! Pretty PLEASE!!!!

A not even vegetarian vegan tart.

I am a staunch meat eater through and through. And, probably partly due to my job, i'm highly suspicious of new age faddy diet sort of stuff, like raw food diets.

So imagine my surprise when i found myself making a raw, vegan chocolate tart one evening.

What on earth happened there?! Well, I happened to have the TV on while i was doing an online food shop the other week, and it was Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's vegetable programme that happened to be on at the time. In this episode, he went to visit a raw vegan food place, where a raw chocolate ganache tart was made. It actually seemed quite intriguing, and i was interested in how it would all work, and taste. Apparently, as no baking is going on, you don't have to be as exact about quantities, and a lot of the process involves senses rather than times etc. So, before I knew it, I had looked up the recipe and was buying all the ingredients I needed. I am a sucker for trying new types of foods and playing about with ingredients i've never heard of before. I mean, what on earth is agave nectar?

Well, I say all the ingredients. It turns out that Asda don't do coconut oil. Undeterred, I did a quick google scan to see what i could use as an equivalent. One website recommended a mixture of butter and lard, and in a few clicks it was ordered. I know I can hear you all screaming at me about using lard. I am a total ignorant philistine, and to be honest, it totally never even occurred to me that not only is it not vegan, IT'S NOT EVEN VEGETARIAN. What can I say, except for that I am a total and utter retard at times.

Making the tart was pretty easy. The base is a mixture of pecans and dates, whizzed together in a food processor until they turn into a nice pastry sort of texture. I think i may have whizzed them for a bit longer than i should have, as the pecans started to release oil. However, the "pastry" texture was still good, so i went ahead and pressed it into the tin. "What's this?" I thought, staring at my hands, which were covered in a delicious smelling sheen. "Why i appear to have made a lovely hand and nail oil as a side effect". The pecan oil was really moisturizing, and smelt lovely.

The hardest part of making the filling was that the only night i could make the tart was before the avocadoes had had a chance to ripen properly, so it was a bit of a struggle to prepare them. I was a bit worried that the texture of the filling was a bit too lumpy because of the unripe avocadoes, but it turned out that this didn't make a difference in the finished product.

Licking the spoon after putting the filling totally blew me away. I was expecting a bland, blah sort of a taste, but it was rich, creamy and very delicious- a total show stopper. Into the fridge it went, where it sat there overnight awaiting its fate at my workplace the next day.

After I unwrapped it, and undid the springform tin, my cynical head said that the whole thing would fall apart into a raw, anemic mush. However, it held it's own and stood proudly and chocolatey. It sliced beautifully.

Everyone at work was eager to have a try, and the feedback was really positive. We decided that the base was rather too salty, so i would reduce the amounts in the recipe (I didn't used pink himalayan salt either). Everyone loved it except for the poor vegetarians, who i emailled in a flurry of excitement, before they calmky enquired about whether the lard included was vegetarian lard. I felt absolutely terrible- after all i had metaphoically just dangled a (very tasty, very chocolatey tart shaped) carrot in their faces and then snatched it away from them at the last minute.

Will definitely be trying this again. you can find the recipe here.