This little gem is half taken from an old magazine clipping my mum has in her weight watchers folder and half my own adaptation. Whilst it's called Provencal pasta bake, it's flavours come from all over Europe - Spanish chorizo, Italian mozzarella and the whole dish has the colours of an Italian flag but I feel it's still a french dish and it's my blog so what I say goes.
Make up a double amount of my basic pasta sauce - three carrots, three sticks of celery whizzed up in a mini chopper with a red onion and two cloves of garlic. Put this all in a pan with a slug of oil, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a sprinkle of dried oregano. Half a teaspoon of salt will counterbalance the acidity of the tomatoes. Cook on a medium heat for five minutes.
Add a tablespoon on tomato puree and the same of ketchup. A heaped teaspoon of green pesto in the absence of fresh basil and a vegetable stock cube finish the sauce. Leave it to simmer for twenty minutes with the lid on, stirring every so often. For this pasta bake I also add in about two tablespoons of finely chopped chorizo (if using a whole sausage, about a 2 inch piece), a sprinkle of cayenne pepper and a half a teaspoon of herbs de Provence.
The original recipe called for chicken thighs which I swapped for turkey breast. I diced my turkey breast into small, bite size chunks and then added them to a pan with a teaspoon of basil pesto and fried them on a medium heat till cooked through. Add the meat to the simmering sauce to let the sauce permeate the turkey.
Cook enough pasta for 4 people in boiling salted water (always, always salt your water. You're not actually eating all that salt but without it your pasta, regardless of the sauce, will be bland).
Once the pasta is cooked, reserve a cup of the cooking water, drain the rest and put it back in the pan. Add the sauce and turkey and give it all a good stir, adding some of the pasta water if it all looks a bit thick.
Tip this whole lot into an oven proof dish and top with a scattering of black olives, globs of mozzarella and dot with little blobs of basil pesto.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until it's golden and bubbling. Serve with a salad and try to imagine yourself sitting on a sun drenched veranda, sipping an ice cold glass of rose wine looking out over a vineyard. Bliss.
Howdy Bloggers!
Apologies for the wait on this one - I was supposed to write this yesterday since it was national baking day (oh yes) but I had an appalling migraine and the idea of looking at a screen for an hour was horrific.
But here we are on my favorite of all cooking related topics: Baking.
I adore baking. Always have done. When I was a child my Nana (a baking Goddess) taught me the basics of sponges, shortbread, pastry and meringues, culminating in a classic, Lemon meringue pie. A desert nobody in my family, including me, can replicate to her standards.
As I got older I used to do my own experiments. After a trip to our local Ben's Cookies, I perfected my own version of a white chocolate and cherry cookie and after many, many failed attempts I turned out a perfect chocolate fondant.
I have my little specialties - my carrot cake is second to none and also I make a damn good Christmas cake but since it's only Dad and I that eat fruit cake, it's only really his opinion that I've gathered there.
Today I'm going to share my classic sponge mix and give you variations on it to jazz up any occasion.
A Victoria Sponge is a skill you can take right to the bank. EVERYBODY loves cake. This is a fact. Anybody that says they don't like cake is either lying to themselves or they have only ever eaten shop-bought plastic, rubbish cake.
The key to a good sponge mix is your ratio. In my cake mix I have 150g of butter, self raising flour and sugar to three eggs. Therefore it's easy to work out that every egg is worth 50g of the other three ingredients.
So there's your basic 4 ingredients. To make 2 18cm round sponge cakes you'll need:
150g self raising flour
150g caster sugar
150g soft butter/margarine
3 free range eggs
1tsp baking powder
A few drops vanilla extract.
Pre-heat your oven to 180oC (160oC fan assisted)
Grease and line your tins - I use loose bottomed tins as it's much easier to get the cakes out afterwards.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl, holding the sieve up high to get lots of air into the flour. Then simply add in all the other ingredients and beat well together.
(I used to faff around creaming the butter and sugar together first, then adding the eggs and then folding in the flour, but in all honesty it makes no real difference to the finished cake.)
Spoon the mixture evenly between your two greased tins and smooth the tops.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes until you can put a skewer in the center of the cake and it comes out clean (no raw mixture on it) or until you can lightly press the center of the cake and it comes bouncing back up.
Leave the cakes to cool slightly before removing them from their tins. When they're completely cold, sandwich them together with a glue of your choice (I went for jam) and dust with icing sugar.
BAM!! Sponge cake - done.
Now the fun part. You can flavour this cake with pretty much anything you want. Vanilla is your basic. You could use other extracts like almond or you can add fruity zests like orange or lemon. Chocolate cake just needs 50g of cocoa powder in the mix while coffee cake needs a few table spoons of very, very strong, cold, black coffee added to the mixture (three or four good teaspoons of instant coffee dissolved in a small amount boiling water and left to go cold).This is the coffee loaf cake I made for my mum to take to the fete. I topped it with a coffee buttercream - standard buttercream with a few tablespoons of the cold strong coffee added:
I made a really lush orange cake for a friend - three layers of sponge cake with orange zest sandwiched together with orange buttercream and topped with orange glace icing which I allowed to drip artfully down the sides. Needless to say after this triumph I was called upon many times to bake for friends birthdays.
My friend Abbie and I have baked cupcakes for our villages many summer parties - for the Royal Wedding we made a Union Jack out of red, white and blue cakes and for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee we made a crown of cakes, creating jewels using edible glitters and luster dust.
Now, I can hear you all yelling, "Becca! You're on a diet! How can you eat cake?"
Well, truth be told, my dear bloggers, I can't. However, I have discovered a way of making a delicious flapjack without the use of golden syrup. Yes, the whole reason flapjack is so tasty is because of that gorgeous golden gloop (channeling my inner Nigella there), and I won't lie to you, it's not as good as the real thing. But then again, when is anything low fat as good as it's full fat counterpart? Never, that's when. But this is still pretty good, and it even has a little bit of chocolate in it.
The secret here is..... wait for it ..... dates. Yep, those dried up fruits that are used to make sticky toffee puddings so damn tasty.
For these flapjacks you'll need:
150g reduced fat butter (I used Lurpak lightest)
150g soft, stoned, ready to eat dates
3 tbs apple juice
30g pecan nuts
50g dark chocolate chips plus extra to scatter
225g porridge oats
Pre-heat the oven to 180oC (160oC fan assisted)
Grease an 18cm square tin with butter.
In a food processor, whiz together the dates and the apple juice until pureed.
Melt the butter. Add in the oats, nuts, chocolate and the date puree and mix well. The chocolate should melt in the heat of the butter.
Press the mixture into your greased tin, scatter over the reserved chocolate chips and bake for 20 minutes.
These don't have as much of a chewy texture as regular flapjacks but you can eat a couple of squares of this without feeling like a big fat fatty.
There you go my lovelies. Beginners baking. I think you'll soon be able to handle my Soggy Belly Chocolate Fudge cake but while I'm on this diet I can't bring myself to make one only to give it away. I'll see what I can do for you though.
I hope you've enjoyed my recipes and please send me any comments or questions you might have!!
Much love!!
