Proper Cottage Pie

As a first year student, I once bought a ready-made cottage pie and it's safe to say I NEVER bought one again. The potato was soggy and grey in colour and the meat and sauce was grim - the mince was sparse (even in a Asda Extra Special pie) and the sauce tasted like cheap beef gravy only without any seasoning. 
I only made it a couple of times whilst at uni since, to do the dish properly it's very time consuming.

To make my really rich, meaty cottage pie you'll need:

2x290g beef steak mince

I red onion

2 garlic cloves

2 carrots

3 celery sticks

6 chestnut mushrooms

1 tomato

1 carton tomato passata

1 beef stock cube

1 tsp vegetable bouillon 
250ml freshly boiled water

1 tbs tomato purée

2 tbs ketchup 

2 tbs HP sauce

4 tbs Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp dried herbs 

For the potato topping:

4 large floury potatoes 

2tbs butter/margarine

4tbs milk

Salt and pepper 

Begin by prepping the veg - peel the potatoes, cut into small chunks, put them into a saucepan and cover with water. Wash and finely dice the carrot, celery and mushrooms (don't worry about peeling). Skin, de-seed and finely chop the tomato. Finely chop the onion and garlic, either by hand or in a mini chopper. 

Brown the mince in a heavy based pan in a slug of oil. Once browned transfer to a bowl.

Add the veg and sweat for ten minutes till softened. Add the meat back in with the tomato puree and the passata. Dissolve the beef stock cube and the bouillon in the boiled water and pour in, stir in the ketchup, brown sauce, Worcestershire sauce and the dried herbs. Leave to simmer on a low heat for at least 30 minutes until the sauce has reduced.

Taste for seasoning - you may need to add more salt, pepper or any of the sauces to get the flavour just right to your taste. 
At this point turn on the heat under the potatoes and allow to boil away till soft.
When the potatoes reach mash-able softness, drain them, add in the milk, margarine and seasoning and mash to a perfectly fluffy consistency  slightly runnier than normal mash so it's easier to spread.
Pour the sauce into a deep oven proof dish. Spoon on the mash and spread over the top (don't worry if the sauce peeks through the potato, it all adds to the homemade appeal). Create some kind of pattern on the top of the potato, partly for decoration and also to create crispy bits while it's in the oven.

Cook the pie for 20 minutes until the sauce is bubbling up on the potato and the top looks browned. Serve with vegetables of your choice. 

And there you have it, a low fat, vegetable packed cottage pie. Hope you enjoy!! 

Making burgers Becca style

Hey there, little short one from me today since I forgot to put this into my blog on BBQ's. 
Making burgers is a really lovely thing to do. Yes you can buy really excellent quality burgers in supermarkets these days but I really cant think of anything better than the sound and smell of homemade burgers on a barbecue in summer, or even in a frying pan. 
You can put absolutely everything in a burger. You can use different meats, herbs, spices, binding agents and flavours.
Basic burgers are simple to make and really delicious. To make 4 good sized burgers, you'll need:
400g lean beef steak mince
1 small red onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
To start off you'll need to very finely chop the onion and garlic, either by hand or in a food processor (I have a Kenwood mini chopper which makes light work of chopping and keeps your eyes tear free).
Heat the oil in a frying pan and slightly sweat the chopped onion and garlic until nice and soft - do not colour it. Leave it to cool down.
In a mixing bowl lightly beat the egg and add the salt, pepper and parsley. Adddin the minced beef and the soft onion and garlic. Mix well together - I use my hands as I find it therapeutic but if you prefer you can use a spoon. Split this mixture into four equal patties. Cover and chill until needed.
To cook the burgers, you can grill, fry or barbecue them. To fry or barbecue, heat your pan or griddle to a medium heat. Put the burgers onto the heat and cook for 8-9 minutes on each side until cooked through. 
Serve with bread rolls, salad and relish. 

You can use all kinds of meats for burgers - lamb, pork, turkey or chicken all work well although turkey and chicken need more moisture to hold them together, such as breadcrumbs soaked in milk.
I like to add more flavours and ingredients to some burgers. I like to add two table spoons of chunky apple sauce to pork burgers as well as shopped sage. 
Fennel seeds are lovely with pork, although personally I would prefer the seeds to be ground to powder. 
Lamb is famously associated with mint and rosemary and these would be lovely but I like to be a bit different and add some lemon zest and oregano to the meat.
You can encase a baby mozzarella ball into your burger for some oozy cheesy-ness in your burgers (I know my bestie, Alex loves everything mozzarella touches so that's one for her) and you can add grated cheeses to any burger mix. My family are massive fans of the Mexican spicy cheese so I crumble a bit into my burger mix which spices the meat from within.
Burger accessories as I call them are limitless. You've got the classics of salad and chips with ketchup and but you can make all kinds of burger sauces using a mayo or yogurt base and any number of spices, herbs and other sauces. I like a mixture of garlic mayonnaise, ketchup and whole grain mustard spread over a warm burger bap (or cob as my friends from Leicester say). 

So that's my quick blog on burgers. Essentially, anything goes. Now why did I not just say that in the beginning rather than ramble on for months?

Work at Weddings and BBQ's

Well hello!!
I have returned with my head full of words and my stomach full of my delicious morning Slim Fast milkshake (summer strawberry today).
It's going pretty well - I've lost 4 pounds in a week so I'm hoping i can continue for as long as possible so I can lose my desired two stone :)
I've had a pretty busy couple of days: I went back to work on Saturday after 5 months on uni and while most things are exactly the same, there are some little differences I need to get the hang of.
We had a venue only wedding on Saturday, which means that the couple hire the venue and bring their own food, drinks, staff, glasses, plates, linens and essentially everything you need to run a wedding. Sadly though, this wedding came close to being a disaster. The staff they hired were a bunch of 16-17 year old girls with sour faces who had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. They turned up late and so we had to sort out the deliveries of the drinks and get the caterers sorted. During the ceremony they were talking loudly right by the doors and during meal service they were disorganized as a group and generally looked untidy with messy hair, un-tucked shirts and muddy trainers.It made us realize how good we are as a team. There was only two of us working as we are not supposed to be doing anything for the wedding other than showing people where stuff is and what they can and can't use but because the hired in staff were useless we were pretty busy in the morning. In the afternoon we spent a while folding napkins into various origami shapes and I spent three hours cleaning candle wax off 6 candelabras with a hair dryer. Then we discovered Alison's car had flat tyre so we were outside pumping it up for fifteen minutes. Never a dull shift.
On Sunday though it was business as usual with all our lovely kitchen staff back on with all of our waiting team ready to roll. 
It was a really lovely wedding - colour scheme of pastel Tiffany blue with lots of crystals and diamond details. They had the ceremony outside which was really lovely and they had a harpist playing which set the mood perfectly. They had a really lovely, simple menu of a brie and red onion tart, followed by a parcelle of chicken with a leek and bacon stuffing with a brandy cream sauce and finished off with a pavlova. I always feel you're better off going for a simple, classic menu at a wedding. I often see couples who have tried to please everyone and have given the guests a choice but more often than not this leads to confusion both among the guests who cant remember what they ordered, and in the kitchens when we try to serve a table where they're having two beef, three chicken, four lamb and a vegetarian. It's a massively expensive way of doing things and, in my opinion, unnecessary. It's not about your guests and weather or not they like lamb or if they eat beef, it's about you and your husband/wife.
I ended up doing an 11 and a half hour shift on Sunday since I was there from 8.30am and because I haven't worked there in 5 months I haven't got used to the burning pain in my feet I get after a few hours so driving home changing gears was a whole new level of pain.
We're having some lush weather at the moment (I'm currently sitting in my favorite chair in the garden although sadly I'm having to sit under the parasol so I can see the screen) and so we've had a couple of BBQ's. Yesterday I marinaded some lamb chops in lemon, garlic, oregano and olive oil and left them for four hours. They were so juicy and the lemon really tenderizes the meat. I also made a couple of salads, one pasta one cous cous. I use trofie pasta and a homemade green pesto (use a food processor - large bunch of basil, a lump of Parmesan  grated, a handful of pine nuts, two garlic cloves and a glug of olive oil) although a jar is just as good but add some freshly chopped basil for freshness. Cook a standard mug full of the pasta to al dente and drain. Chop a large handful of baby cherry tomatoes in half and add then to the pan with the hot pasta. Stir through two table spoons of the pesto, transfer to a serving dish and chill until needed.
For my cous cous salad I put however much dried cous cous as I need into my serving dish with half a tablespoon of Boulion stock powder and the zest of a lemon, then pour over enough freshly boiled water to just cover the cous cous. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and allow to steam for ten minutes. Meanwhile, lightly toast a handful of flaked almonds and a handful of pumpkin seeds in a dry frying pan until the almonds are lightly golden and the skins on the pumpkin seeds have split open (they make a very satisfying popping sound). Stir the cous cous with a fork to separate the grains and add in a handful of golden sultanas. Stir in the nuts and seeds and then just before serving sprinkle over a tablespoon of chopped coriander. 
I love a good marinade and I do different things for different meats. For lamb I use a lot of lemon zest, garlic and oregano with a splish of olive oil. Pork likes strong flavours so I do a squirt of tomato ketchup, a teaspoon of seedy mustard and a tablespoon of runny honey. Chicken is good with just some sweet chilli sauce or I also like to just chop of loads of fresh herbs and some olive oil. 
At the moment we have my Nana staying over as well as my brother and his girlfriend so as a special treat for desert we've got a kind of disassembled pavlova. Nana makes perfect meringues and British strawberries are just coming in so I had Annie hulling the strawberries and we got some raspberries too and lashings of cream. Perfect end to a Tuesday of beautiful sunshine!!

Here I am, writing away in the sun!

Eating out and soup making

Howdy, Bloggers! 

As I write this I'm absentmindedly dipping my hand into a bag of Joe and Seph's gourmet popcorn, a product I cannot recommend more for sublime flavour and crunch. I'm eating the peanut butter flavour right now but my other favourites include salted caramel, espresso and the  caramel macchiato and whiskey. You can order online at joeandsephs.co.uk and you can buy it at selected places, mainly in London. 

I feel it's time to talk about the food I've eaten whilst I'm out, partly because I've been to some cracking places recently but also because that way any locals can pop along and see what all the fuss is about - local economy and all that jazz.  

Last weekend my family and I went out for dinner to celebrate my brothers new job and that I have finished university. We went to a place called The Buck and Bell in Long Itchington which is a classic gastro-pub with jazzed up versions of classics like burgers and fish and chips and also do some stunning original dishes. My dad had a gorgeous Asian spiced squid salad followed by pork belly with black pudding mash.

My mum and I shared a platter of parma ham, smoked salmon, baby stuffed peppers, crayfish tails and warm bread with oil and balsamic vinegar (truth be told I'd have been more than happy with just the bread, oil and vinegar as it's one of those combinations I cannot get enough of but the ham was delicious and the crayfish tails were plump and juicy and gone in moments). For my main I took advantage of my parents generosity and went for a rib-eye steak (rare, always) with garlic butter, hand cut chips and salad. The steak arrived, perfectly cooked - if I'm in France I have it blue but English waiters always look at me as though I'm a crazy person if I do it here. The chips were crispy and golden and the garlic butter was garlic-y enough to get strong flavour without overpowering the meat. 

I'd definitely eat there again as there's loads of things on the menu I'd like to try but I need to be in an adventurous mood to take me away from that perfect steak.

I also went for lunch with a friend of mine at the restaurant he works at, The Star and Garter in Leamington Spa. Similar to The Buck and Bell in the classics and exciting twists. My friend dared me to try brie, a cheese which has never appealed to me despite my family being connoisseurs of all French cheese. He also forced me to eat corned beef hash which was also really tasty. I went for a burger this time as I like to see classics done well - no point being able to poach and fricassee a ballentine of rabbit if you can't make a good burger. There was a truly epic barbecue sauce that came with it which I went a bit mad with, spreading all other the meat. My friend had the moules mariniere from the specials board and I am not ashamed to admit that I dunked my chips into that mariniere sauce it was so good. 

Definitely going to bring friends and family back here to eat as the food was brilliant and well priced. 

Since I'm on my slim-fast diet (the burger was 700 calories, 300 of which I burned off cycling 9 miles that evening so I was still in my limit) I decided that I would dedicate today to knocking up a pot of minestrone soup. Since I'm a bit of a fussy eater, I puree the veg down before adding the (trimmed) bacon and (whole wheat) pasta. 

I really enjoyed chopping up all the veggies with my music blaring in the background. The base vegetables for the soup are one red onion,  three garlic cloves, three large carrots and 4 sticks of celery and then today I added a leek and a yellow pepper. I have used courgette in the past and cabbage works well too. I chop all these finely and put them into the largest pot we have.

 I then tipped in two cartons of chopped tomatoes with basil and oregano, a vegetable stock cube and enough hot water to just cover all the veg. Leave it to bubble with the lid lightly covering it for 20 minutes. Once the vegetables are soft, use a stick blender to puree the soup. Then finely dice and cook about 75g of trimmed, smoked bacon and add it to the soup. Boil a small pasta shape of your choice (today I used broken up spaghetti) for 5 minutes, drain and stir into the soup. The moisture from the soup will cook the pasta through. Taste for seasoning - I like mine on the salty side so I add a couple of teaspoons of marmite and let it melt in. Serve with warmed pita bread. I've roughly worked out that this much soup does 6-7 bowls and each bowl is around 150 calories. 

Another calorie controlled meal I'm a fan of is a medium sized baked potato cut open and forked fluffy and then two heaped teaspoons of reduced fat sour cream and chive dip dolloped in. It's creamy and delicious but is only around 200 calories. 

So I'm off for another 9 mile cycle with Daddy Watt followed by my lush homemade soup for dinner. I'd love to know what you're eating since If you're reading this you must have some interest in food!!

Much love, Bloggers, get sharing!! xxxx

Weekend with the family and a spot of baking.

Hey there bloggers!

It's time for blog no. 2! I hope you're as excited as I am.

I've had a really nice couple of days with my parents and my older brother came up to visit with his lovely girlfriend who had got me a cupcake bouquet to help me celebrate finishing uni - the cakes were iced to look like flowers while the cake itself was really buttery and light. I find so often that beautifully decorated cakes can be very bland or dry or heavy but these were gorgeous.

I work at a wedding venue as a waitress and so I see a lot of wedding cakes that don't quite hit the mark.

I'd done a bit of baking myself ready for their arrival - white chocolate and raspberry brownies with a cheesecake swirl (I'll but the recipe at the bottom) which were lush but we had the age old issue of raspberry seeds stuck in our teeth. 

My brothers girlfriend told me she wanted to learn how to bake so on Saturday I made a Bakewell tart - a personal favourite of mine - while she watched on (very simple - line your pastry case with sweet desert pastry, spoon raspberry jam over the top and spread to the edges (no need to blind bake the pastry) and then whisk together butter, sugar, eggs, ground almonds, almond essence and flour until you have a mix at cake batter consistency and spread this over the jam. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake for 35 minutes). I love the idea of teaching other people how to bake and cook but unfortunately I'd have to get some qualifications before I can teach others, plus I'd need to find space where I could do it. I'd like small groups though, maybe 4 or 5 people at a time making a main course and a desert/cake and then being able to take their food home to their families or whatever to show them what they'd achieved. Essentially I want to be Mary Berry, including that section of her job description where she has to flirt with Paul Hollywood. Those two together make me giggle like a child.

A slightly depressing fact in my life is that I weigh more right now than I ever have in my life - I just bought my dress for graduation ball and the only way to get it to zip up over my DD boobs was to get a size 18. So I've made a drastic decision and forked out £25 on three tubs of Slim Fast meal shakes, five boxes of Slim Fast meal bars and a selection of Slim Fast snacks (all this would have been worth a small fortune in a supermarket but on Amazon you can get it at wholesale prices rather than retail). I'm also going cycling with my dad - 9 miles every day - and I'm using the dumb-bells my brother left behind to tone up my flabby arms. I will get back to a size 14 before September. I'm fully aware of how hard it's going to be, especially when I'm working my summer job at the wedding venue surrounded by cake and delicious food all day, and I am worried that doing a 10-hour shift powered by a milkshake and a cereal bar is not going to work well but the work is good exercise for me since I'm standing up 90% of the time. So this is my challenge - two stone (at least) in 5 months. Wish me luck, Bloggers!! 

White chocolate and raspberry brownies with cheesecake swirl.

100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

100g butter
200g light muscovardo sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

100g plain flour

100g white chocolate, chopped

150g raspberries (I used frozen)

 For the cheesecake swirl-

1 large egg

200g cream cheese

50g caster sugar

1 tbs plain flour.

Preheat the oven to 180oC (160oc fan assisted).

Grease and line an 18cm square cake tin.

Melt the dark chocolate either in a microwave or over a pan of simmering water.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, add the eggs a little at a time and mix for a few minutes  Tip in the flour along with a pinch of salt and melted chocolate and mix again, making sure all the flour is incorporated and not all up the sides of the bowl.

Fold in the chopped white chocolate and the raspberries.

In another bowl, whisk together all the ingredients for the cheesecake. Tip 2/3 of the brownie mix into the prepared tin. Pour over the cheesecake mix and swirl the two together with a skewer. Spoon over the remaining brownie. Bake for 50 minutes. Leave to cool before cutting into squares. 

Cupcake bouquet!

My first ever blog ...

As an ex student, I've done a lot of cooking on a budget with limited ingredients. Now, as a very resent graduate (I did my last exam yesterday) I'm looking forward to having more time and ingredients (bought for me by my parents) to experiment with.

My current dream is to be a food writer, to cook and eat food and write about them so I can persuade others to cook real, wholesome food and enjoy it.

I've never written a blog before. 

At university I never had the time and I felt I didn't have anything to write about, and considering I did a Creative Writing degree I thought I did enough writing already.

But now that's all over and I'm starting a new challenge - real life. 

No longer student, lolling around watching Jeremy Kyle in my jim-jams, spending my government money on clothes I didn't need and pot noodles. No more laying in till 10 o'clock and rolling into class with moments to spare and doing my assignments the night before.

Only I didn't do that. Yes, I liked to watch TV but I was always more of a Nigella fan, preferring to spend my mid-morning watching her concoct a feast of "festively adorned baby aubergines with pickled red onion, fabulously juicy lamb skewers and lusciously light lemon cake". And I always handed in my work at least a day before the deadline for fear of the online submission site crashing. 

I won't lie, my first year did contain a fair amount of super noodles, but I did jazz them up a bit with a pinch of chilli.  In my second and third years I had more space and freedom (and money) to be more adventurous with my cooking. I could never do particularly challenging dishes on Thursdays as I finished classes at 5 o'clock so I always tried to make a larger meal on Wednesdays so I had leftovers for the next day. Those larger meals would usually consist of some form of pasta bake or lasagne but always made from scratch.

Weekends would be when I was most adventurous - I only did a full roast once for Christmas, and I had my flatmates cooking with me. I feel that roasts are my mum's department and anything I could do would be abysmal in comparison so, for the moment, I'm leaving that to her.

I'm massively into baking, from just simple brownies and tray-bakes at uni to my more flamboyant cakes at home. My favourites to make are carrot cake with crunchy pecans and an orange scented cream cheese frosting and I also love a simple chocolate and almond loaf cake - the ground almonds make it one of the most moist and delicious cakes in my repertoire. 

I'm told I make a cracking sticky toffee pudding with a pecan toffee sauce but if I'm honest, the recipe is entirely Delia's and so I can take no credit. 

I like quite strong flavours so I use a lot of herbs and spices and citrus. I love garlic so I find myself reining in the amount I add to sauces so I don't overpower anything. 

I love love love the paprika spiced Spanish chorizo sausage and I use it in a lot of dishes, from adding it to simple pasta with sun-dried tomato pesto to using it as a base to a summery rice dish with red peppers.

So this was my first blog! I quite enjoyed writing it. I'm going to try and do at least three a week so I have something to occupy me and keep me organised. I'll be talking about jobs I'm going for, food I'm cooking and eating and general chat about life as a graduate living at home between uni and work.

  I love baking and you can never, ever go wrong with chocolate cake.

 Our uni Christmas dinner complete with goose fat roasties, asparagus wrapped in parma ham and the classic pigs in blankets.

Family dinners are always nice to do so my mum gets a break from cooking. This one is a turkey, mushroom and sweetcorn cobbler.