Inspiration Chain

The very lovely Louise from Please Do Not Feed The Animals held a giveaway for the latest link of the Inspiration Chain which was started by Chris at Mince & Skirlie.  You can read all about the Inspiration Chain here.

I’m exceptionally excited about this book.  (I don’t actually own a Nigel Slater recipe book.  Well, I have a copy of Toast… Does that count?)

I understand why Louise picked this to be the next link.  It is amazing.  I struggle to cook from recipes when I’m cooking dinner.  Cake recipes are different but if it’s something savoury then nine times out of ten, I’ll just wing it… Or look at a recipe for information and rough cooking times.  I am firmly of the philosophy that “It’s done, when it is done”

The best thing about this book?  It gives you the bones of a recipe and then give you ideas that you can tweak it with.  I like that.  I like that he measures things in handfuls too!

I’ve decided to make the delicious onion tart on page 298.

It was gorgeous and perfect for my obsession with packed lunches at the moment!

It didn’t take me long to figure out what I wanted to pass on! 

So, to get your hands on a copy of The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit, all you have to do is leave a comment below before midnight on the 31^st January 2011.  I’m happy to post the book anywhere in the world.  Please only comment if you are happy to pass on a copy of your most inspiring cookbook. 

Many thanks again Louise!

We Should Cocoa: White Chocolate and Chilli Brownies

This month is being hosted by Chele at Chocolate Tea Pot who came up with the great idea of using something we had leftover from Christmas with chocolate!  You can see the round up of the dates challenge here. 

I scoured my cupboards.  It didn’t look good.  I had a copious amount of gin.  This is a good thing in my book but isn’t going to help with chocolate.  Then I found some white chocolate in the dining room.  I prefer really dark rich chocolate but I decided to class this my ‘leftover find’ and clutched it whilst running into the kitchen, grabbing my laptop on the way.

I stumbled on this recipe for White Chocolate and Chilli Brownies (Blondies…) and decided to give it a bash.  It was pretty faffy to make, simmering the chilli in syrup, melting the chocolate, whisking the eggs… And to be honest, it wasn’t worth it.  The chunks of chilli, no matter how small, just tasted dirty and out of place.  Get a piece with no chilli in it and it just tasted like a nice fudgy blondie. 

I would make these again but just with a handful of flaked toasted almonds in place of the chilli just to smooth out the strong sweetness of white chocolate.  

Despite the blondie fail, I’m excited about these.  Very excited.  

Forever Nigella: Ham in Coca Cola

I don’t know if anyone else does this but I have a habit of seeing something I want to do and then storing it in my head for months.  Then it runs out of season/availability and I’m loathed to buy artificial tasting raspberries or strawberries.  Or, perhaps, worse, I run out of free time to do them! 

But this weekend is different.  Apart from a couple of hours at a wedding fayre on Sunday morning, I’m free all weekend.  It feels good to say that! After a shocker of a week at work and the good couple of hours mental preparation it will take for Sunday morning (Chair covers! Flowers! Table Favours! Balloons! Doves! Aargh!) comfort food is definitely in order! 

A quick deep dig into that head storage and I’ve pulled out something I have wanted to try for a long time.  It’s a Nigella recipe so I thought I would enter it into Forever Nigella that is being hosted by Sarah at Maison Cupcake.  Ham in Coca-Cola.  You can find the recipe here.

Since there are only two of us, we opted for a smaller piece of ham, about 750gr.  I used about 1ltr of coca-cola and half an onion.  It took about an hour to cook in the pan then a 15 minute blast in the hot oven.  It was really delicious and would definitely recommend it! The sticky glaze and the cloves make it perfect for the season!

Bad Runner

This is me after a 5k race.  The smile is an illusion, I felt like dying. 

I used this little app for training.  It’s actually very good but I haven’t completed it yet.  I always get up to Week 7 and then just stop.  It’s ridiculous to have such a mental block.  Problem is, when I stop, I stop. Then the I look at the app when I am at work and it tells me the last time I went for a run.  The last time I went for a run was in October.  This is bad.

I want to be able to comfortably run 5k.  This year is the fourth time I will run Race for Life for Cancer Research and I need to make the person I do it for, proud.  

I don’t want to bore you all with blogging about running but I need to put something down and out as motivation.  So here goes.  Week 7… I’m coming for you… Maybe not in shorts, something a lot warmer!

Gluten Free Vegan Cookies

I sincerely hope everyone had a good New Years!  A couple of good friends had organised a soiree around there flat so, we ate Chinese food, played pool, Mario Kart and Wii bowling, sang a very drunk version of Auld Lang Syne with glasses of champagne and then walked home, dodging the drunk of the town centre. 

I made mini cupcakes, simply vanilla cupcake recipe with vanilla butter cream plus something special for the gluten intolerant vegan friend.  These are very crunchy and not overly sweet so were a bit of a relief from all the heavy sweet sticky things from Christmas

Ingredients

100gr icing sugar

200gr vegan margarine

1 tsp vanilla extract

400gr gluten free flour

Method

1, Cream the margarine and the icing sugar together.

2, Add in the flour bit by bit until you can bring it together to form a dough. 

3, Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

4, When you are ready to start baking them, preheat the oven to 180o/c

5, Lightly flour your work surface with some more gluten free flour and roll out your dough.  If it falls apart a bit, give it a quick knead and then reroll. 

6, Stamp out the sugar cookies with cutters and place on a baking sheet.  They keep their shape pretty well so you won’t end up with a giant sheet of cookie.  

7, Bake for 10-13 minutes.  They need to be cooked until they go firm, but not golden brown.

8, Cool before icing

The cupcakes