I’ve got my bunting and picnic preparations underway. I’ve been experimenting with sponge cakes this week so I can be confident that come Jubilee picnic on Saturday – I am not showing up with a stodgy slab of something not worthy of being called a sponge. I’m going off some simple, old fashioned recipes from my Edmonds cookery book. The first one I tried was fine, but not as light as I wanted. The second one, used only a half a cup of cornflour and has turned out just right. Although I did leave it in the oven for a little too long so it is slightly over cooked. My red, white and blue decorations will be spectacular.

In the meantime, we’re finalising what to bring to our little picnic. VC is making cupcakes and sandwiches. She makes the best waldorf chicken finger sandwiches. I am sure someone will be bringing some Coronation chicken. While I would love to see the Golden carriage carrying QEII down the streets of London, I just don’t think I am prepared to battle the crowds. Trying to see the changing of the guard on the best of days is a struggle, I can’t imagine how crazy it will be over the weekend.

Recently I went to make nachos for myself (sorry VC) and realised that I had none of the topping left in the cupboard. I had to come up with something else. I had my heart set on nachos, I’d bought the avocado, corn chips and everything. So I took control of the situation and made my own refried beans. It was pretty dire. No, I didn’t have pinto beans, no I didn’t have 2 hours to soak and cook them, no I didn’t have pork-fat – but did I let that stop me? No. So, as any good cook and greedy guts always does, I improvised. All of the recipes I found contained bacon, lard or pork. I didn’t have any of that on hand and I didn’t really want to make my nachoes more calorific than they already were. I had kidney beans and that was about it, even though the recipes called for pinto beans. I didn’t have high hopes for this meal considering all I had to work with was a dose of desperation and a can of kidney beans.

I have chosen not to post a photo of this recipe. Refried beans don’t look exceedingly appetising at the best of times so I don’t want to alienate anyone who might have made this but was put off by the photo. Even though they might not be authentic, they were still delicious. So much so that I thought they were worth sharing even without a photo.

Refried Beans Recipe

Ingredients:

Can of kidney beans, or similar

Onion (diced)

garlic powder

cumin

chicken stock (a cube disolved in some hot water)

chilli powder (optional)

Method:

Fry off some diced onion in some oil. Add a pinch of garlic powder (half a tsp?) and a dash of cumin (half a tsp?) and saute for a minute (add the chilli here if you like).

Add the beans, about 1/4 cup of chicken stock and some of the liquid from the beans.

Cook until the beans are nice and hot and the flavours have matured and the liquid has mostly cooked off.

Take off the heat, and season.

Mash it till you get the texture you like, whether that be completely mashed or nice and chunky.

It’s been a year in June since we moved. That’s a pretty big deal, I think. For the first time since moving, I have actually started to miss home a bit, my friends, that deep understanding of your own people, the sense of place. But this is part of the journey isn’t it? Getting out of my comfort zone was the reason for the move, and funnily enough, I think it’s just as Maidenhead is becoming comfortable to me, that I am starting to feel those pangs of restlessness.

Our 1yr anniversary will coincide with Jubilee celebrations. I’ve organised to have a Jubilee picnic in Clapham Common with family. I’m planning on making a sponge so I am thinking I should probably source a reliable recipe. I am going to decorate with red,white and blue. Hold your breath for that one.

My fabulous cousin Tegan, is helping to redesign my blog, so it looks a little bit fancier. I am super excited about that and hopefully it will make it a nicer place to visit. Any tips on what you love about your favourite food blogs would be GREAT! Because then I can steal them and become your new favourite food blog.

I will post a recipe on scones that I made inspired by Kirstie Allsop‘s ‘Made in Britain’ show. With a few sneaky secrets I made scones with a more professional texture. Although I happen to think the appeal of scones is the rustic, home-made quality. So I’m a little undecided on the success of that particular venture.

When AT went to Finland for work a little while ago, I was preparing for my usual Nacho-night-Mad-Men extravaganza when I realised I had no refried beans. A tex-mex nightmare about to unfold. But, I did have a tin of kidney beans in the cupboard and with a few clicks online I was on my way to making what was – to date – THE best refried beans I’ve ever tasted.

Since posting my top 5 recipe books, I’ve noticed a popular search for the Edmonds Peanut Biscuits, officially called Peanut Brownies. So I’ll whip some of those up this afternoon and blog about it.

I also noticed an interest in my music post about good tunes to cook to. Recently I’ve been singing along to Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits. A while back I made myself a mix that included The Pointer Sisters (Slow Hand), Linda Ronstadt (Blue Bayou), Dolly Parton (9 to 5, Islands in the Stream) and Sheena Easton’s My Baby Takes the Morning Train. You can tell I was a seventies baby.

And finally, I’ll be receiving a summer hamper from Carluccio’s on Friday that I am to review for Foodepedia, so if anything good comes out of that, I’ll be sure to share it with you.

I thought I’d better set the scene for you. Of course a half a can of Guinness should never go to waste so I gave it a good home while I baked. I found this recipe on twitter, as it had featured recently in a magazine (Stylist to be specific). I saw it and knew I must have it. Even though I’d just been complaining to AT about my weight and even after we’d promised each other that I would not bake this week – I just knew I would not be able to end this day without making and eating this cake.

So I made a quick trip to the store to pick up the ingredients I didn’t have. I couldn’t get my hands on buttermilk so I figured the sour cream in the fridge would probably make a decent substitution (it did). The method was unusual but easy to manage at 7pm on a Tuesday night. Melt this, stir that. But I realised I had masses of batter so I had to make 2 cakes. So I would happily halve the mixture if you don’t want tonnes of chocolate cake lying around. That was kind of a dumb thing to say wasn’t it? Who doesn’t want tonnes of chocolate cake lying around? Particularly this one. It’s a doozy. It’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever made. Truly. I’m a bit of a terrible cake maker to be quite honest. They’re never really as light and springy as they should be.

It smelt strange cooking in the oven but my word, this is a glorious cake. Hot out of the oven it eats like a chocolate pudding without the sauce. It doesn’t need icing at all, in fact I thought the icing was redundant. But, a day later the flavours had deepened and dare I say the bitterness of the Guinness had become a little more evident, but in a very good way. The  cream cheese icing combats any tendency this cake might have of being challenging.

AT couldn’t decide if he liked the Guinness involvement in this cake, but he certainly couldn’t stop eating it. It is moreish. To say the least. It is like a grown up chocolate cake. A chocolate cake for a dinner party or a lady’s afternoon tea or even better a chocolate cake to eat at 9pm when you’ve had a long day at work and you just want something sweet. That kind of cake. It’s not simple and it’s not boring. It is, in my opinion, one of the nicest cakes I’ve ever had and certainly worth the calories.

I realised before posting this recipe, that indeed it has been done before by Nigella Lawson and various other high profile names. The version I shall post is the one I made, that Stylist magazine credits to Tarek Malouf of the Hummingbird Bakery.

Chocolate Cake and Guinness Recipe

Ingredients:

• 250ml Guinness
• 250g butter
• 80g cocoa powder
• 400g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 140ml  buttermilk
• 280g flour
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp baking powder

For the icing

• 50g butter, softened
• 300g icing sugar
• 125g full-fat cream cheese

Oven 170C

Method:

Melt the butter into the Guinness on low heat.

Add combined eggs, buttermilk and vanilla.

Add combined dry ingredients. Stir till just combined.

Pour into cake tin (or two if you’ve only got small tins).

Bake until springy.

Ice with cream cheese mixture. (chuck it all in the mixer and beat till smooth).

Kylie Kwong’s – Simple Chinese Chinese Cooking

Consistently fresh, flavoursome and yet light recipes. It’s exactly the kind of Chinese cooking you want to make at home – not too difficult or intensely flavoured, just simple ingredients and techniques. I particularly love her chicken recipes, the hoi sin pork and her incredible noodle recipes. But the super-duper highlight is the ginger dumpling dipping sauce – which I have featured on this blog before.

Charmaine Soloman’s – Thai Cookbook

I have made so many amazing meals with this book. It tastes like real Thai, not a watered down version. It has authentic techniques and flavours and plenty of fire and piquancy,  but also lots of creamy, peanut sauces and a fantastic sate marinade recipe and matching peanut sauce to serve with and a pretty special Thai Beef Salad recipe.

Edmonds Cookery Book

My mother give me this book. She is a Kiwi and it is a Kiwi brand of baking powder, but also contains many of the recipes she made when I was growing up. Sentimental of course, but a great go-to for anything from sponges to scones to Afghan biscuits. I use this scone recipe when I make scones – and it works out perfectly every time.

Yotam Ottolenghi – Plenty

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that I’ve recently tried to include more vegetables in my meals, lentils and eggplant in particular. Mum introduced me to this guy and I have not turned back since. He is a master of the lentil and has a deep understanding for the potential of the eggplant. I have posted the shakshuka from here, as well as the creamy lentils and spinach. This is a fantastic vegetarian cook book, for those looking for something a bit different but not at all challenging to make or eat. There are recipes in here that will become part of your repertoire for years to come. (ps: I love you Yotam.)

The Australian Women’s Weekly – Old-Fashioned Favourites.

Any Aussie lady will have at least one WW in their arsenal. The recipes can be counted on for excellent results every time. I have posted many recipes from this book, including my delectable (or rather, their delectable) melting moments and the brownie. There are classics in here that one simply must have in their collection.

Hands down, these books are pulled out and used again and again. They have food all over the pages, some have stuck together, there are tears and a light dusting of flour on most of them – but these are the ones I use and love most. I don’t really need recipe books to make the meals my mum made or the Croatian-tinted recipes that have been passed on. I do need help with baking, middle eastern and Asian food and these books have done me well.

I was in the mood for something chocolaty-peanut-buttery and yet easy to make. Cookies is usually the way to go and I know they’ll get eaten by someone other than myself. I haven’t got a photo of the cookies as such, because to be honest, they look pretty bad. I wasn’t in the mood to shape or even pat them down. It was one of those afternoons. But I do highly recommend salting them as per the recipe. I only salted a few thinking it wouldn’t taste very good, but actually it is amazing. These cookies are great, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging about it. They are the crumbly, drier kind of cookie that usually don’t appeal to me, but with the peanut butter flavour and the chunks of chocolate, they will become a firm favourite. I got this recipe from a website called Food 52.

Salted Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 cup chunky peanut butter

1 cup dark chocolate chunks

coarse sea salt for sprinkling cookies

I got it when I was at a book signing at Pierre Herme’s shop in Belgravia for Foodepedia. There were free macarons involved and fans of this sort of thing would have been pistachio-green with envy. But truthfully I find his concoctions too complex for my taste. I must be a macaron peasant, a bon-bon bourgeoisie if you will.  And so if you’re wondering why the poster then? Well, another testament to my pea brained outlook…I like the colours. I like it that there is a poster with colour coordinated macarons. That’s all.

This recipe says to stir in the spinach and creme fraiche (or sour cream) at the end, but I think just the spinach is fine. I found the sour cream to be too creamy – if there is such a thing – and not really suited to the flavours. But that’s just me.

Baked Chicken and Lentils Recipe

Ingredients:

4 chicken legs

275g of Puy lentils

2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes

1 red onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

500ml chicken stock

250ml dry white wine

a handful of fresh thyme sprigs

100g baby spinach leaves

4 tbsp half fat crème fraiche

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 220C.
2. Place the lentils, tomatoes, onion, garlic, stock, wine, and thyme into a medium roasting tin, just large enough to take the chicken in a single layer, and stir to combine.  Top with the seasoned chicken and cover with foil or a tight fitting lid.
3. Place into the oven and immediately reduce the heat to 200°C and bake for 40-50 minutes.
4. Remove the foil and cook for a further 10-15 minutes, until the chicken becomes a rich golden colour, is thoroughly cooked and its juices run clear.  Remove from the oven and place the chicken onto warmed plates to rest.
5. Stir the spinach, crème fraiche and some seasoning into the lentils.  Serve immediately or at room temperature with the chicken.  Great with steamed green beans.

And so the lemon curd cupcake was born. I researched some recipes on line, and decided that I would simply swirl the lemon curd in at the end, like you would when you’re marbling a peanut butter and chocolate brownie. That way you’ll get swirls of dense, lemony goodness. Then I thought of making butterfly cakes, like the kind my mum used to make for special occasions (for example the red jellied coconut cakes) except instead of plain old whipped cream – I would blend lemon curd AND whipped cream. Genius.

Turns out I was pleased with the results of Stork’s baking liquid. I wouldn’t buy it though, because I think why would you use something that’s been over processed when you just use good old fashioned butter. But I guess it’s good for someone in a hurry or someone who doesn’t actually like baking.

Ingredients:

115g butter

115 caster sugar

2 medium eggs

140g self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

zest & juice of a small lemon

Jar of lemon curd

Method:

Set the oven to 180C

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, zest and juice.

Mix flour and powder until just combined.

Put a large dollop of lemon curd into the mix and give it a gentle swirl, not mixing fully.

Pour into 12 paper cases and bake for about 15 minutes.

Cool and top with lemon cream (a large dollop of lemon curd and a carton of cream, whipped till light and fluffy).

Dust with icing sugar.

Dear England,

Your school system is rubbish and you stress me out.

Sincerely,

Anxious, E. Ter

So I’ve been thinking about tomatoes. They don’t always HAVE to go in a salad. I am one of those people who usually puts everything that’s not  rotten into my lunch time salads. But, I have realised that throwing everything into a salad is not always the best approach. For instance, I made a red salmon salad yesterday and on pondering I realised that tomatoes don’t really go. Instead I put in less juicy items including shredded carrot, beets, lettuce and cucumber and of course, creamy dressing (low fat of course). I didn’t miss the tomato at all, in fact it was better without it. (sorry tomatoes, I still love you).

This really goes for any ingredient. It’s all about judgement. Sometimes cucumber just doesn’t work, sometimes it might be carrot or beetroot or the variety of lettuce. My point is after years of just arbitrarily throwing tomatoes in every salad I made, I have now realised that it’s not best practice. In fact, sometimes the simplest salads are the best, I’m thinking now about a spinach, pecan, pear and goat’s cheese salad. That needs nothing more (except dressing). Or how about a rocket, walnut, roast tomato and Parmesan  salad. Perfection – even without cucumber.

I took this photo last year at the famous Borough Markets in London.

Memories…