Oven roasted Sicilian aubergine with tomato and feta

As mentioned in my last post, we have had a bit of a revolution in our local Morrisons which now sports a funky new veg section. Including one with a lot of different aubergines – there was Dutch, smaller rounder Indian, purple and white aubergines and a Sicilian aubergine. The latter is just gorgeous looking – check out the vibrant purple and the lovely round shape. I’ve never seen one before and though it cost me £1.69 which is expensive for an aubergine, I couldn’t resist.

According to the Think Sicilysite, the Romans were suspicious when first shown the purple black fruit by Moroccans and dubbed it the “apple of insanity”. Ilove that! That site has some great recipes but as I didn’t have the ingredients, I did my own thing. And my goodness, it was DELICIOUS so have a go. Ingredients:

• 1 Sicilian aubergine
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 4/5 spring onions,
• 3 fat cloves of garlic
• 6-7 sunstream tomatoes (or any full flavoured vine ripened tomato). Was about 120g
• 1/2 chili flakes
• A small amount of salt to season
• 100g feta cheese
• 5/6 fresh basil leaves

Cooking:

     

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade (180 for fan)
• Wash the aubergine, cut off the stem then slice into 1cm discs
• Arrange the discs into an oven proof dish and coat with generous amounts of olive oil (I used at least 3 tablespoons)
• Roast in oven for about 15 minutes
• Meanwhile, top and tail the spring onions, peel outer layer if manky and slice up green and white parts finely
• Remove outer layer of garlic and slice finely
• Wash and chop tomatoes into quarters
• In a heavy based pan, add 2 tbs olive oil and fry the onions and garlic
• When they start to caramelise, add the tomatoes, chili flakes and season slightly. As feta is quite salty, you can leave out salt if you wish
• Remove the aubergine from the oven and pour the onion/tomato mix over the top. Then crumble up the feta and place back into the oven.
• Roast for a further 15 minutes, then tear up the  basil  and chuck it on on top. Place back in the oven for about 15 /20 minutes until aubergine has cooked through (check every now and again to ensure it’s not sticking to the bottom or burning on top).
• Serve with warm bread, with pasta, on toasted slices of bread as bruschetta or just on it’s own. Delicious!

Baked plaintain

I am sooooo glad that I decided to give plaintain another shot. In the past, I’ve unsuccessfully managed to fry it in a pan West Indian style. However, when popping into the local Morrissons, I couldn’t resist picking a large plaintain up. I’m pretty chuffed that this branch is selling “ethnic” foodstuffs so am trying to keep encouraging them by buying stuff.

A quick google took me to the Oven Baked Sweet Plantains recipe. I’m not a huge fan of cooking sprays as they seem to leave a residue on the pan that ruins it. However, reading through the comments, I liked the idea of olive oil and also coating the baked goods with sugar and cinnamon. The results were a tasty little treat good for either after dinner or an quick sweet snack.

Ingredients:

 

• One plantain, ends chopped off, peeled then flesh sliced diagonally
• Enough olive oil to cover the plantain in an oven proof dish
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 dessert spoon icing sugar

Cooking:

• So easy. Preheat oven to 200 degrees (less if using a fan oven)
• Place plaintain in an oven proof dish and toss about with olive oil until well covered
• Cook for about 15/20 minutes. Half way through turn the pieces
• Once cooked, remove from oven an allow to cool (unlike me who left them in while we ate dinner and they burnt slightly)
• Once cool enough to touch, toss in cinnamon and icing sugar

Chocolate covered bretton biscuits

Pah to Valentines. I don’t need a Hallmark holiday to tell me when to tell my loved one that he is loved. He gets told regularly enough thank you. And he gets fed with lots of love on a daily basis. So I say, “don’t buy me a card”, “we won’t be doing silly gifts will we dear” and such stuff. But what I say, is not what I do. I cannot resist buying a silly card and showing him my love through food. This year, the treat was chocolate biscuits using a recipe from the Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipes book which was a Christmas gift from the sister-in-law and has been sat on my shelf unused for a couple of years. Most of the recipes need too many ingredients for an inpromptu bit of baking. But today, I was lucky to have a choice of a cake or a biscuit. The little one chose Breton Butter Biscuits which are an easy biscuit made of butter, flour, sugar and egg. I added in a teaspoon of powdered ginger and topped the lot of with melted Green and Black’s Chocolate with ginger. Hope that he appreciates the burnt fingers as I dipped lovingly into the hot choc sauce. The results – well spicy, just like my other half loves!

  

Tomatoes, fried rice, noodle soup and banana bread

Not all in the same dish but all scoffed today. I’ve been stuck at home waiting for a delivery. Apart for moaning rather loudly, I used the time to do home food. We picked two very red tomatoes off my daughter’s tomato plant. She was given the plant as a tiny thing from Greenslade nursery and over summer we have watched it grow. It survived the move to Scotland and has in fact flourished with many new tomatoes appearing on the plant even though I’ve not been feeding it. The tomatoes at the bottom appeared rather early but took forever to turn red – mainly as I had them indoors and didn’t know they need to be out in the fresh air and sun to redden.

Anyway, here we are – a tomato salad according to my daughter consists of errr, ummmm, tomatoes!

She nibbled one before reminding us that she in fact, did not eat tomatoes (unbeknownst to her she does as mummy hides tomatoes in sauces). So hubby and I ate the “salad” with a sprinkling of sea salt. Not the tastiest tomatoes we have ever had but easily the best if you know what I mean.

Next step was egg fried mushroom rice and tofu for daughter’s dinner – so yum that I had to have a small bowl too. A good way to use day old rice. Easily made by frying spring onion and ginger in a large frying pan, adding mushrooms and cooking until they reduce, add the rice and stir carefully to prevent it all sticking together but to make sure all the rice is covered with the mushroom mixture . Push mixture to the side and add in the beaten egg mixed with a little toasted sesame oil, scramble it then combine with rice mixture and cook for a few minutes more. I added a little dash of dark soy to improve the taste and colour. She scoffed a lot with a side dish of fried tofu.

Dinner for hubby and I was a noodle soup. It’s an impromptu dish I’ve made a couple of times with what was available in the fridge. Today we had spring onions and ginger fried, added a thinly sliced orange pepper, some pak choy, sweetcorn (kernels not baby sweetcorn as i find that tasteless) and mange tout. The soup was made with a big glug of Gourmet Garden Thai Fresh Blends mix and about a cup of water. I cooked this for about 5 minutes on medium heat then added in fried tofu, and some thick straight to wok udon noodles and dark soy sauce. Cooked until the pak choy had wilted. At first I didn’t really like the Gourmet Garden taste – it was too bland especially compared to the  Schwartz Lemon Grass, Ginger and Coconut tube I’ve used before. However, as it cooled, and with a dash of light soy sauce, it improved.

We would have had a lot more tofu for the soup but my little one loves the stuff straight out of the packet and just as much fried. She thought it was hilarious to sneak past me all afternoon nicking bits and stuffing them in her mouth.

The Gourmet Garden sent me hurtling back to my youth – while I was trying to google whether it is vegetarian, a restaurant came up called the Gourmet Garden in Hendon. I grew up in a flat that was directly opposite the restaurant and could see it and a lot more of the high street from my window. Silly things like this always bring a soppy tear to the eye.

This is turning out to be a long post and it’s not over yet. I’ve been promising to make banana bread for a few days. A lot of stay at home mums I know make banana bread and as long as you don’t have it every week, it’s bloody tasty. I’ve already scoffed a fifth of it – so a huge thankyou to my friend J.R. as she sent me her version of a Delia recipe. It’s fantastic. I’m going to have to work extra hard in the Zumba class tomorrow night!!

Spring sale baking

My 3-year-old’s nursery is having a spring sale tomorrow and have asked for donations of biscuits and cakes. Great opportunity for me to try my hand at a few biscuit recipes.Not so good for the waistline as I think it’s important to sample a few before donating to the sale.

I chose 3 -  two of which were egg free as I wanted to give the egg-intolerant a treat too:

Rachel Allen’s lemon scented biscuits

Good Food channels chocolate crinkle biscuits

Allisons Oat and Raisin cookies (from the back of the plain flour packet but also available on their bakingmad site)

 

And the verdict:

Lemon biscuits

The lemon biscuit dough was rather crumbly. I prepared the dough last night. It wasn’t too lemon scented due to a failure to use the appropriate equipment (used the odd holes on my box grater rather than the sensible grater. And I used soft brown sugar instead of caster – you would think with so few ingredients I’d get it right. But nooooooooo.  Result is kitchen smelt very lemon like but there was little zest in the mix). I stuck it in the fridge. This morning it was brick hard so I left it out for an hour to soften. When I finally worked with it, it was really difficult to roll out as it kept breaking. Baking the biscuits was quick and short though. However, they had such little flavour that I decided to ice them. What a DISASTER. My icing had the consistency of polyfilla, didn’t taste at all lemon like despite having the juice of a whole lemon, and was so sugary it caused a diabetic shock. Even covering them in sprinkles couldn’t save them. So they are BINNED and my quest for the perfect lemon biscuit continues ….though my friend E makes gorgeous ones so my quest may just be a quick walk to her kitchen instead.

Chocolate crinkle biscuits

Ridiculously easy to make even without an electric whisk (no jokes about wrist power please). I was worried as the mix was very gooey but again, after a night in the fridge it solidified somewhat. I had great fun with two teaspoons creating little balls of mix and rolling it around in icing sugar. Watching them crack in the oven was bliss and taking them out when their centres were still a bit gooey felt naughty but nice. Most importantly the taste – well I score them 8/10 because [foolishly] I had decided to use half plain chocolate, half dark making them taste a tad too sweet. Next time, I’ll do all dark. I’ve squirreled some away for us, and the rest will go to the sale.

Allisons biscuits

I decided to do these as I’ve seen the recipe on the back of the packet for some time and it looked interesting. Again, another easy make but strange mix. When I put all the ingredients in, it felt crumbly and greasy making me fear I was in trouble again. But once baked, yum, yum, yum. I love them. 3 year old not so impressed. But if she doesn’t eat the ones I’m saving for us, hubby and I will. Score 9/10.

BTW that baking mad site has lovely recipes on it (including lemon biscuits!!). I’m going to try Ginger and Chili cookies next I think

RED NOSE DAY ’11 – Lemon butter biscuits

Blimey it feels like I have been away for ages. It’s been a busy old time. Some friends got married (gorgeous couple, gorgeous wedding) so I was faffing about finding outfits and knitting accessories (for me not the bride!).

I’m now busy working towards Red Nose Day ’11. Normally, I just watch it on TV however, this year, thanks to my SAHM-iness I’m doing something funny for money. I persuaded a friend to host a bake sale at her house. Poor her, she’s ended up doing most of the work, including the flier, the organising, the thinking about kids activities. I’ve gone along for the ride. I had planned to bake loads and got the RND Jamie’s Monster Bake Sale book. Funnily, I’m not going to need to do much as there are so many kind people donating baked goods. Yippeee I say especially as the book is not really full of recipes I like. I’ve picked some to try out and the first one was the relatively simple lemon butter biscuits. When will I learn to read a recipe before starting????  There was tot, hands cleaned, standing on a chair with her spoonie in her hand full of anticipation. She was allowed to crack egg, measure out flour, mix the butter and sugar and then STOP. Chill for 2 hours. Grrrrrrrrr not what a 3-year-old (or 40+ year old for that matter) understands. Plus my biscuit mix was not mixing. So she sulked off to the front room while I “fixed” things. Basically adding at least another 50g of flour to get ball rolling so to speak. Then in the fridge and forgotten until late this afternoon. The dough was firm and whooooppppeeeee what fun we had making different shapes with the dough. She’s already scoffed quite a few. Luckily, her boredom threshold is low and she toddled off leaving me half the dough and all my new the cookie cutters to go wild with. Fun, fun, fun and they were very tasty indeed.

Norwegian Biscuits

Sometime ago, I bought some Golden Syrup and then promptly forgot why. It’s been sitting in the back of the cupboard until today when I decided to search the Lyle’s site for inspiration. I’ve never made biscuits successfully and now I’ve discovered that there is a magic process at the end where the soft, almost crumbling biscuit comes out of the oven and after metamorphosis, becomes a solid biscuit like object. I just sigh to think of all those things I’ve thrown away in horror/disgust as they came out oven all gooey and soft and not solid at all.

That site is great. I chose to make Norwegian Biscuits. As there is no picture, I’m not sure what they are meant to look like. Probably a blessing considering what I produced.

A few amendments:

Instead of Stork margarine, I used butter. Bad for my high cholesterol but oh so deliciously good for my tongue.

I wasn’t sure what rolled oats were so I just stuck in the equivalent amount of Ready Brek porridge

The resulting mixture was very crumbly. I didn’t think that’s what biscuit mix was meant to be. Also, they did not spread out on the tray when I cooked them in the oven. I was convinced they would be utterly disgusting. But after cooling, the verdict….DELICIOUS!!  They were still very crumbly but quite nice with a hot cuppa. Yum yum.

P.S. Without the raisins/currants etc this mix would make a great topping for crumble. Just don’t cook as long, when the biscuits are cool, crumble them up and put on top stewed fruit and cook the crumble. Or hot, crumbled on top icecream.