Spicy Tomato soup with Dinner Rolls

You say tomato soup and you think of Heinz. I wasn't sure if this would work out but it was really delicious with a hint of spice from the Worstershire sauce. Basically you boil tomatoes, add spice and whizz up. The bread rolls are a basic white bread recipe. Since watching Paul Hollywood on the Great British bake off I've discovered that I used to kill the yeast when I added everything to the bowl by putting salt on top of the yeast. Well I was really careful with this mixture and made sure I kneaded it a bit longer. I did however make the mistake of only making up half the recipe. Whenever I make rolls we always end up with a couple uneaten and they go to waste so I halved all the quantities. The problem is, these are quite small rolls so we had to ration them out to make sure we all had enough to eat. Plenty of snack were eaten that afternoon!

Lamb Tagine

I'm not very familiar with the food of northern Africa. When I went through the first book there was a filo pie with a savoury filling but used essence of sweet flavours such as cinnamon. I love cinnamon and this dish does use some. Now I have to admit now that I did miss out a major ingredient from this tagine. It is meant to have pear in it. I am still trying to train myself to put fruit into savoury dishes but I do find it really difficult, everything about fruit in savoury is wrong in my mind. So I wasn't too worried when I discovered that we had no pears in the house when I made this dish. But the missing pears didn't detract from the dish, it was really tasty with a hint of spice and the sweet flavours of cinnamon.

As usual I had some ingredients missing, apart from the pears. We used to eat a lot of cous cous and so assumed we had plenty, no we had a spoonful in the cupboard so I had to use bulgar wheat. It is still tasty but a bit rougher than cous cous. I liked the addition of pine nuts in the cous cous to add a bit of texture. So overall it was a really tasty dish, and maybe next time I'll be brave and add the pears!

Warm and cosy Coq au vin.

Well this is just the sort of dish you need on a day like this. Even writing this now my fingers are so cold I'm struggling to hit the right keys. I admit it isn't the prettiest or most appealing dishes to look at but it would definitely give you that nice warm cosy feeling. I have never cooked coq au vin before, I think growing up we had so many stews that I tend not to make or eat them as an adult. My Mum bless her would try and big them up by giving them a different name but would always be faced with the sulking teenager who would respond with, 'so it's beef stew then'. What an annoying brat I was! But maybe I could start to be drawn back to the nice big bowl of hot stew again. This was really tasty and because I didn't even bother offering it to our children we had massive portions. But I think the big rule to any stew is having the warm crusty bread to go with it. You need something crunchy just to give you a change of texture otherwise you might as well be eating  soup, which for dinner just isn't right.

Granola Bars

I am determined to catch up on my blogs, I am about ten dishes behind and beginning to forget how the cook went and tasted which is the whole point of this so there should be one every day for the next week. I think the problem is I prefer to write about the sweet things. So far I haven't made many of the puddings and sweets in the book so I've got to do something about that. Anyway, Granola bars.. to me these are flapjacks but with fruit and nuts in them, maybe that's the official line anyway, I'm not sure. Usually I avoid anything that contains currants, I'm sure I've told you before that they spoil decent food for me, why spoil a perfectly good flapjack by adding fruit. Well, maybe I'm beginning to be converted. I quite liked the little sweet pockets of the fruit and the odd bit of pecan added a little change of texture. The great thing about these is you can make them to your own preference, so add dried strawberries instead or pistachio nuts instead of pecans. This is a great base to make as you like. Both my children enjoyed these and I think Henry would have polished off the entire tin if he could have had the chance. A great little make without the huge feelings of sweet guilt that usually go along with a cake. Yum.

Chorizo baked fish with sweet potato wedges.

Now officially these two dishes should not have gone together. But we had sweet potatoes in the veg box, along with cherry tomatoes so hey ho. The fish is baked with tomatoes and chorizo and herbs. Anything with chorizo is yummy in our house so this was a winner straight away. The potatoes were a very pleasant surprise. They are cut into wedges and baked in the oven with paprika. Meanwhile you fry off some bacon until it's really crunchy and pour on some maple syrup. Then mix the two together. These potatoes are amazing and I loved them. So what if officially you shouldn't really put maple covered bacon with a chorizo dish, I don't care. I will definitely be making those potatoes again. Just writing this I wish I was having them for tea tonight, there's always tomorrow. x

Sausage Rolls big night out

It shows how long ago I made these because I made them for a Halloween party! This was a childrens party but they went down better with the grown ups. It's basically puff pastry and pepperoni fingers. These are a real faff to make, and of course Lorraine made it look so simple on the television. You have to get the sausages just the right distance apart to be able to get your fingers in the gap to squash the pastry , too close and my pudgy fingers didn't fit and too far apart all you'd end up eating is pastry. As you can see from the picture they areb't exactly consistent! But saying that, it did make a really nice change from sausage rolls, a bit more grown up. With the pepperoni it did give it a little more of a kick. Very tasty.

Double chocolate cheesecake.

I love any excuse to make a pud and having tea at a friends is one of the best reasons. Ever since I saw this one of the television I've wanted to make it, I cannot justify making a whole pud just for us at home, although if pressed I will. Just to warn you, it goes a long way. It's meant to be made in a nine inch tin which is massive!! I cut the recipe down by a third and made it in an 8 inch tin. Mainly because I'd forgotten to buy enough cream cheese so I was limited.

The base is made of chocolate digestives, and this makes a real difference, although I did eat quite a lot of it before it made it into the tin. I don't like a deep base, so there was plenty left over to munch on. Then it's basically melted chocolate with cream cheese and a little icing sugar. But it's the topping that looks so nice, you mix a little oil with some melted chocolate and it means you can store the pud in the fridge and you can still cut it without splitting the whole thing all over the table. The recipe calls for quite a lot of white chocolate for the pattern but I only had less than half in the cupboard (I tend to raid the white chocolate stash) and I still had more than enough.

You do need cream with this pud, it is seriously rich. But it's really really good and so simple. Definitely a take along pud.