Quick food for busy people

Wanna play a game?

There are days that are really busy and productive when I can't wait to do stuff and others when I find it hard to get going.  Today was a good busy day, hence the late post.  There were chores to be done and preparations to be made for our building works (more on that another time).  Keith the dog tried his hardest to distract me - it was very difficult to resist.

Being busy usually means that food needs to be quick but we still don't want to compromise on taste.  Yesterday, I made a lovely oven-baked fish dish for dinner which I can highly recommend.

 I love food that can be done in the oven and "forgotten about" - mind you, I almost did with this one and the crust turned out to be a little darker than planned.  Anyway, that aside, this easy and yummy recipe with a Mediterranean twist went down a treat and was prepared and cooked in just over half an hour.  Ideal for those busy times during the week.

Have a lovely weekend!

An interesting read

The sun came out a little this morning but still no bees buzzing in the garden.  I am really quite worried, especially after hearing about their decline too in other parts of the world.

We have plenty of flowers and bushes in bloom in the garden and there should be plenty of insect activity but...nada, nothing, zilch.  Mr Happy Larder and I are seriously considering hand-pollinating our apple tree this year which might be ok for us to do on one tree but think about orchards?  And it's not just apples - bees pollinate a large variety of crops including different types of berries, tomatoes etc.  I have found a great report by Friends of The Earth and the University of Reading here in the UK that you might find interesting, even if you don't live in the UK:  "Reviving British Bees - why we need a National Bee Action Plan".


On a more cheerful note, I have found a great recipe that I am going to try out for dinner tonight, so watch this space tomorrow for another (hopefully) tasty supper idea.

Cookie monster

It's been absolutely shocking weather here - yesterday especially we had torrential downpours and temperatures never got over 8 degrees.  Brrrr!  Now, it's not just that I hate getting cold and wet when walking Keith the dog but on a much more serious note I am very concerned about the impact the weather is having on crops etc.  I haven't seen more than a couple of butterflies so far this year and the bees are not really coming out, so how on earth are plants going to get pollinated?

To cheer us up, I made a couple of batches of biscuits (cookies) which turned out rather lovely with a slight crunch on the outside but soft & chewy middle: chocolate chip & hazelnut and cranberry & blueberry oat ones. 

Both were definite winners and replacing some of the flour with oats (as suggested by Mr Happy Larder) gave a great texture to the fruit ones.  I didn't have quite enough dried berries, so used some frozen ones instead which tasted yummy but made for slightly soft biscuits the following day.  I'd recommend using just dried fruit if you are planning on storing these.


A couple of these with a hot mug of tea helped us forget the rainy day ;-)

Cheap & cheerful fridge cooking

I am slowly working my way through the handwritten cookbook I found the other day.  What a treasure trove it is turning out to be!  There are some wonderful ideas in there and one especially captured my imagination: what I would call a "French Toast Quiche" is the ideal meal to use up old bread and other bits and pieces from the fridge and cupboard.  

I made a portion of this for lunch today and loved it!  The bread makes a lovely crispy base, the topping tastes just like a quiche (all without the hassle of making pastry).  Another bonus: the ingredients can be varied according to what you have to hand and served with a simple side salad, this tasty dish won't break the bank either.  Perfect fridge cooking!

Strawberries and cream

When I was a little girl, one of our birthday treats was to choose our the cake for the day.  For me, it was always the same:  a sponge base topped with a light and creamy fruit mousse.  It's called "Mandarinenquarksahnetorte" in German (we like our long words) and still is my absolute favourite. The mousse is made from a mixture of quark (a soft curd cheese very popular in Germany, similar to fromage frais), whipped cream, fruit (mandarin segments), a little sugar and gelatine - it's really easy to make and tastes utterly divine.

At the weekend, I decided to make a variation of the above, using strawberries.  And since the two of us could hardly eat a whole big gateaux by ourselves, we had a couple of little individual ones instead. 

The result was the taste of summer on a plate. :-)

What I love about this recipe is how versatile it is - you can use pretty much any fruit you like (fresh or tinned), change the base to a biscuit crumb one or leave it out completely, serving the topping as a dessert. Or why not fill a Swiss roll (see link) with this?

I had some sponge in the freezer that was left over from my rainbow cake baking (see link), so I used that as my base with dessert rings* (see note) cutting out small rounds and providing the support for the filling.  The base was topped with a spoonful of strawberry jam and I then filled the rings almost to the top with the mousse.  The little cakes rested in the fridge for 30 - 45 minutes to allow the filling to set and were then gobbled up within seconds.

I reckon a birthday cake is good on any day!

PS:  One of the blog readers was after a recipe for a strawberry cake a little while ago - unfortunately, I can't find who it was but I hope this recipe will be useful...

Little treasures

Keith the dog has been keeping us up in the night - first he thought it was really important to bark at the scaffolding outside the house...at 3:45am (!) and the following night he let us sleep in until 4:45am before alerting us the the "terrible threat" of a badger by the back door.  Several jugs of coffee later and I slowly resembled more than a mere shell of a person.  Bless him - he was only trying to be a good watchdog.  Needless to say that he went on to have a snooze, just like when he was a small puppy.

Despite the lack of sleep I am pleased to say that I have finally got the search function on the blog to work - now, the "Search for Inspiration" button on the right-hand side will make it so much easier to find dishes and good food ideas.

The recipe I tried out yesterday was one I found in a handwritten cookbook which must be a good few decades old.  What a treasure! This date & walnut loaf is so easy, you can make it in your sleep - which is probably just as well - see above :-).  The result is what I call an old-fashioned, simple cake/bread that isn't too sweet.

You could amend the recipe by adding raisins, other dried fruit or chocolate chips but I must say I like the original version and enjoyed a couple of slices for my breakfast.

Have a lovely weekend!

The staff of life

A batch of muffins cooling down

Bread has to be one of the most satisfying things to make and eat.  In my view, there are not a lot of things that beat freshly baked bread with butter.  And there are just so many types to choose from!  When I first arrived in the UK, I came across some breads that I had never heard of before - one of these was the good old English muffin.  I thought it was a cake but little did I know - had Wikipedia existed then (gosh, I am showing my age) I would have found that "a muffin or English muffin is a small, round, flat (or thin) type of yeast-leavened bread which is commonly served split horizontally, toasted, and buttered.".

So, there you have it - little breads made for toasting. Topped with butter, cheese, poached eggs or even jam they are hard to resist. And if you are partial to a bacon sandwich, look no further - these make the best bacon butties ever!

I had never made these muffins before and was surprised to learn that they are actually baked in a pan on top of the stove.  The dough is a yeast one which needs to rise and the cooking/baking method is really quick and simple.  I took the recipe from the River Cottage Bread Handbook and was very pleased with the result.  The dough yielded 12 muffins rather than the 9 stated in the book but you won't see me complaining :-)  A batch has already gone into the freezer - each muffin cut in half, so that we can just toast them from frozen when we feel like having "fresh" muffins for breakfast.  And in the meantime, I have enjoyed one with cottage cheese and homemade strawberry jam.  These will definitely become a firm favourite in the Happy Larder household!

Teamwork

Every now and again I write about a recipe that Mr Happy Larder has introduced me to.  The following one he cooked for me the other day and I loved it - we had enjoyed so much lovely seafood in Savannah and had promised ourselves that we would make even better use of the fresh fish available to us here by the Welsh coast.  So, I thought it would be nice if in fact he told you himself about his creation:

A long time ago, I went to an Italian restaurant in west London somewhere and ordered Zuppe di Pesce Siciliana. It was a delicious combination of tomato, fish and scented Mediterranean herbs: a week in a hammock slung between cypress trees overlooking the beach, right there in a bowl. It was filling too – more of a thick stew than a soup. It didn't seem very complicated to make so I resolved to have a go at recreating it at home. 

 

(I think the story might have been a bit more involved than this, and may have involved trying to impress young ladies, but I can't remember the details and it's Kirsten's blog so I'd keep quiet even if I could. This was at least ten years before we met, you understand.)

There was one thing I wanted to change from the original: in the restaurant, by the time I'd finished shelling the mussels, beheading the prawns and de-suckering the octopus tentacles, the soup was barely lukewarm. Purists (and Sicilians) may well look down their noses at me, but my crustacean dissection skills were never going to wow the girls so I made it shell-less that time and always have since. That way, it's as easy to eat as it is to make, which is to say very easy indeed.

Spring cleaning...updated

Another beautiful Spring day today and we are - very appropriately - Spring cleaning.  There is lots of sorting out to be done as we'll have some building work done in the house soon and we might as well use this opportunity to rationalise what we have.  There are a few items that are perfectly good still but are no longer used by us such as our bread maker.  It's been gathering dust for a good couple of years because I switched to kneading and baking bread without the machine.  I am pleased to say it's going to find a new home this afternoon, thanks to the magic of the internet and Freecycle.  If you haven't heard of Freecycle before, it's basically a local website where people advertise stuff for free that they no longer have use for.  Great idea!  Someone is coming to collect the bread maker later on which means more room in our kitchen for us and a new toy for someone else to play with.

As we are busy, dinner will most likely be a basic and quick affair...something like sausages, baked potatoes and coleslaw.  I cook sausages in the oven on a wire rack above a lined tray - that way, any fat can just drain off.  There's also a lot less splatter than when doing them under the grill - 25 minutes in a medium hot oven and yummy sausages are cooked and ready :-) For the coleslaw I simply finely slice either red or white cabbage, grate some carrot and add a couple of teaspoons of mayonnaise as well as a good amount of salt and pepper.  Much nicer than shop-bought and a lot less fatty.  And finally, for the jacket potatoes, I always put a metal skewer through the potatoes as I find they cook faster that way with the metal transferring the heat through the potato.  A little trick Mr Happy Larder told me :-)  I'll add a food photo later...

So, dinner is planned...now we just have to sort through all those boxes of stuff...phew! 

Update...here is the dinner photo...

Monday surprise...

It's time to reveal the winner of the latest giveaway - the prize is a selection of beautiful Somerset Suds soaps made by my friend Sue. 
 Her soaps are just lovely and I have decided that this time, I'd like even more people to enjoy these, so...wait for this...we have THREE winners! 

Congratulations Kim, Jolouise and Aska Lodge - you will all get a set of soaps! 

Just bear with me whilst I order some more from Sue to send on to you - in the meantime, please email me your address (my email is on my profile page), so I can send your prize on its way to you as soon as possible.  Thank you so much for taking part and for reading my blog!

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On of my favourite things to do at the weekend is to get The Guardian newspaper on a Saturday and - armed with a mug of coffee - sit on the sofa and read.  I always read it the same way:  first, the general news bit, then travel , followed by the family section (usually, there is something in that one that will make me shed a couple of tears like articles about bereavement, illness etc) and last but certainly not least the recipe section and magazine.  It's my little tradition and I always do it the same way.  Do you have a weekend tradition?

A couple of weeks ago I found a breakfast cake recipe in the newspaper that I had to give a go.  It looked delicious on paper but also healthy with oats and fresh raspberries  Perfect for sharing here on the blog or at least so I thought...the result was pretty terrible!  I double-checked I hadn't made any mistakes - no, it was just really really bland with a strange spongy texture.  Not pleasant at all and definitely not for sharing.  Luckily, I had made only half the amount - the only way to eat this "healthy" cake was to slather it in jam.  So, as you can see, things don't always go according to plan in the kitchen at The Happy Larder :-)  Saying that, we have had a beautiful fish dish made by Mr Happy Larder which he will write about in a guest post over the next couple of days and there will be lots more recipes to come...

Have a great start to your week!