Easy-peasy oat crunchies

Now that I am at home full time I have re-discovered my copy of Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. This book tells you how to boil an egg properly (and I found I've been doing it wrong all these years!) and it also contains a recipe for oat crunchies which I made for the first time the other day. Very easy and very nice! Here is my slightly amended version:

Ingredients
110g (1.5 cups) oats
75g (1/3 cup) light brown sugar
110g (1 stick) margarine or butter

Preheat oven to 375oF, 190oC or gas mark 5.
Grease a 9x9 inch cake or brownie tin.

Put the oats and sugar in a bowl and mix together well. Gently melt the butter being careful not to let it brown. Pour the melted butter into the bowl and mix well. Tip the mixture into the cake tin and press down evenly with your hand (the crunchies will be quite thin).

Bake for 15 minutes until they are pale golden brown. Remove from oven and cut into 12 portions with a spatula while still warm. Leave in the tin until cold and crisp then store in an airtight tin.

Muffins: Fast and Fantastic

Catriona here, pulling myself out of the Christmas whirl to write a blog post (Nicki is picking herself up off the floor right about now!). Anyway, I have a great suggestion for a Christmas gift that is inexpensive but invaluable if you know someone who likes baking or would like to learn. It is a book about how to make excellent muffins called Muffins: Fast and Fantastic, and it is written by a lady who goes to our church, Susan Reimer. She wrote it several years ago when she first moved to the UK from Canada with her family. She was frustrated when her tried and tested muffin recipes just didn't work with British weights and measures so she set out to re-write the recipes for use in Britain and this book (which was self-published) was the result. It is extremely practical, and full of helpful comments about how to modify the recipes for different diets or just for variety. And even if you live in North America, it will still be useful to you as she gives advice on how to modify the recipes for US/Canadian ingredients and measures.

I can personally endorse almost all the recipes as I've virtually baked my way through the whole book and not one of them has been a flop. (My husband has enjoyed trying them out!) I even gave a copy to Rachel for her engagement and she made some excellent summer fruit muffins for her engagement party. If you can't wait for the book to arrive you could visit Susan's website where you will find the recipe for her amazing banana muffins and can get started right now!

(And Susan, hope you don't mind me giving you a plug - have a great Christmas!)

Lime Cream Pie

As we are thinking about hospitality, here is a recipe for a very easy and extremely yummy dessert (although don't count up the calories!). My mother-in-law makes this and she got the recipe from one of her friends so I don't know who the original source is. I usually make it the evening before we have someone over for lunch or dinner.

Lime Cream Pie

Base 8oz crushed ginger biscuits.
3oz melted butter.

Filling 1 can full cream condensed milk (400g).
200g full fat soft cream cheese ( Philadelphia or the like)
150ml half fat crème fraiche
3 juicy limes - grated zest and juice.

1. For the base, mix together the biscuits and butter and press into greased flan dish. Chill well.
2. Beat together the condensed milk and cream cheese until smooth ( I use an electric whisk).
3. Add the lime zest and juice. Fold in the crème fraiche. Pour over the base and chill overnight.
   
4. Decorate with grated chocolate.
   

The filling freezes well, but the base is best made not more than 24hrs beforehand.

Recipe Round Up

At Rebecca Writes this week there is a Recipe Round Up where there'll be a collection of recipes for cookies, cakes, sweets etc. I thought I'd throw in our tuppence worth and re-post Catriona's Mum's recipe for an authentic Scottish treat - tablet.

Tablet is fudge which has been beaten to give it a crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth consistency (and to give you a sore arm - but it's worth the effort!).

Ingredients:
2 lbs sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp butter
2 teacups (about 375ml) fresh milk

Put all the ingredients into a large pan, stir and put on a low heat. Leave until it comes to the boil then simmer gently for 20 minutes (set a timer). After this time add a few drops of vanilla essence. Remove from the heat and beat with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes. Pour into a square or rectangular container (about 8" diameter) and chill to set. When set, cut into small (1") squares.

Carrot & Parsnip Soup

It's that time of the year in the Adams' household when all we want to eat for lunch is some nice hot soup and crusty bread! My kids love soup and it's a great way of getting loads of veggies into my two year old daughter (and husband), neither of whom are too good with vegetables.

One of the current favourites is a really simple carrot and parsnip soup, which I found here. I normally double the quantities below and freeze some and usually don't bother with the yoghurt or cumin - I add a teaspoon of medium curry powder instead.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion
• 2 large parsnips
• 3 large carrots
• 2 pints of vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp natural yoghurt
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin (optional)

Instructions

1. Chop the onion and sweat it, covered, in the olive oil for 10 minutes.
2. Add the carrots and parsnips (cubed) and the stock, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Leave to cool for 15 minutes then blend in a food processor.
   
4. Stir in the yoghurt and cumin.

Serve with fresh bread, and season with plenty of black pepper.

I'd be interested to hear from any of you about any good soup recipes you have - quick and easy preferred and I'm always open to the unusual!

Sesame & Lime Chicken

I've been trying out a few recipes recently and my husband and I believe we've discovered a real treat - sesame & lime chicken. We've tried it in a couple of different ways, serving it with rice, noodles and even a spicy couscous - and all have been scrummy. The recipe is also very low in fat, bonus!

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts, diced
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 inch of fresh root ginger, finely grated
4 tablespoons soy sauce
zest & juice of 2 limes
2 teaspoons sesame oil

Method
1. Place the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, lime zest & juice and sesame oil in a bowl and add the chicken breasts. Toss the chicken in the marinade and leave for at least 30 minutes.
2. Remove the chicken from the marinade, place on skewers and grill for 4-5 mins. Alternatively, stir fry and serve with rice, noodles or couscous.
3. Heat the leftover marinade in a small pan until boiling and drizzle over the chicken before serving.
4. Enjoy!

Meal Planner Spreadsheet

For those of you who were interested in the meal planner Excel spreadsheet I mentioned, you can now download it here:

MealPlanner.xls

The spreadsheet uses 'macros' (little bits of programming code that do the magic) so you'll have to make sure that your security settings in Excel allow you to run macros. (In Excel 2003, go to 'Options' in the 'Tools' menu, select the 'Security' tab, and click the 'Macros Security' button. We have the security level set to 'Medium', which means that you have to confirm that you want to enable macros whenever you open a spreadsheet that uses them.)

The instructions are included as one of the worksheets on the spreadsheet. If you have any problems, post a comment and we'll try to answer them.

Menu planning and kedgeree

We had our regular MuMS group last month after a summer break, and our topic was "The Honour of Working at Home", continuing our study of Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney. We had a great evening and touched on a lot of topics, but one focus of our discussion was menu planning. Someone made the point that they found planning the family meals a really difficult task and many of us agreed wholeheartedly.

I had to come clean and confess that I am pretty obsessive about menu planning since my husband (who is a bit of a computer whiz amongst other talents) made me an excel spreadsheet for that very purpose some six years ago. It is basically a database with the ingredients for all the recipes I cook so that each week, I tick the ones I want to use and from there I can print out a list of ingredients I need to buy. It originally came into being because I used to spend ages each week copying down things out of recipe books and this speeds things up a lot. It is also useful as a way of storing all the recipes I use (now about 120 of them - I think I need help...). It keeps track of when we had each meal so that I can rotate things and not have the same dish too often.

Anyway, that is my way of doing things and it works well for me, although for those of you who are more laid back about menu planning, it may seem a bit over the top! For any fellow planning freaks I will try to persuade my husband to post the program sometime, and meantime, here's one of my family's favourite recipes, kedgeree. I got this from Annabel Karmel's book of baby and toddler recipes, although I've modified it slightly for my family's tastes.

Ingredients

350g of smoked haddock or cod (dyed or undyed)
142ml tub of double cream
1 onion, chopped
1-2 teaspoons mild curry paste (I use Pataks korma paste)
250g rice
1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional – I use Jiff lemon)
2 eggs
Olive oil

Method

1. Hard boil the eggs and mash with a fork (you can do this in advance).
2. Cook the rice as normal.
3. Cut fish into pieces and take off any obvious bones. Put into a microwavable bowl and pour over the cream. Cover with cling film, pierce some holes in it and cook on full power for 5 minutes.
4. Heat olive oil in a wok and gently fry the onion for 4-5 minutes until soft.
5. Stir in curry paste and cooked rice and cook for 1 minute.
6. Add cooked fish and cream mixture, lemon juice and mashed eggs.
7. Mix together, heat through and serve.

Another Christmas Recipe

Last night we had a group of people from church over who have been attending the Greenhouse course. In preparation for this, I did a Google search to find a recipe for a non-alcoholic mulled drink and came up with this great recipe here.

I slightly modified it for using apple juice as that is more readily available in the UK, so here is the recipe for my version:

Non-Alcoholic Mulled Apple Juice

4 litres apple juice
3 mulling spice bags
1.5 tbsp brown sugar
3 whole cinnamon sticks
2 wedges of lemon
1/8 tsp butter

Put the apple juice in a very large saucepan or jam pot. Add the spice bags and heat on a low to medium heat. When it begins to steam, add all the other ingredients, squeezing the juice out of the lemon wedges. Cover with a lid and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring occasionally - do not allow to boil. Serve in mugs with some other festive food!

I found that 4 litres serves 10 people comfortably (i.e. about 400ml per person), allowing for some seconds. For greater or lesser amounts, adjust the amounts of the other ingredients accordingly.

Christmas Sweets

I posted a couple of weeks ago about my family's Christmas tradition of making sweets for friends and neighbours. Well, stage one of the process began yesterday afternoon as we made tablet, chocolate fudge and stuffed dates with marzipan. I thought I'd post a couple of recipes in case you are searching for something sweet and easy to make in the run up to Christmas.

The chocolate fudge recipe I found on the Reflections of the Times blog (HT: Rebecca Writes) and I can testify is really is very easy to make and tastes great! For UK readers, 3 cups is about 600g of chocolate.

And for those of you who want to try an authentic Scottish treat, here is my Mum's recipe for tablet. Tablet is fudge which has been beaten to give it a crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth consistency (and to give you a sore arm - but it's worth the effort!). I'm sorry that the ingredients are all in imperial measures. It's an old recipe and I'm hopeless at converting to metric.

Tablet

Ingredients:
2 lbs sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp butter
2 teacups (about 375 ml) fresh milk

Put all the ingredients into a large pan, stir and put on a low heat. Leave until it comes to the boil then simmer gently for 20 minutes (set a timer). After this time add a few drops of vanilla essence. Remove from the heat and beat with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes. Pour into a square or rectangular container (about 8" diameter) and chill to set. When set, cut into small (1") squares.

Saturday Night Supper

We were recently on holiday in the Lake District and one evening I put together a curry for our dinner that my husband labelled "Keswick Curry". Yes, I know, Keswick is famous for the convention, hill walking and lakes but not really for its Indian cuisine- humour me!

I thought I'd post the recipe just in case anyone is looking for something easy to make for a Saturday night dinner. This serves two hungry people, three at a push, and it's yummy with rice and garlic and coriander naan bread.

Keswick Curry

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil or sunflower oil
1 onion, chopped
2 chicken breasts, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 red pepper, chopped
10 cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 tbsp Korma curry paste
1 tsp mild chilli powder
300ml coconut milk

Method

1. Heat the oil in a wok or large pan and stir fry the onion until soft.

2. Add the chicken and continue to stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

3. Add the garlic and then the curry paste and chilli powder and continue to stir fry for 1 minute.

4. Add the red pepper and tomatoes and stir fry for a minute.

5. Stir in the coconut milk and simmer gently for around 15 minutes until the curry is the desired consistency.