crumbs - quick family recipes

Summer bruschetta

2012-02-23T07:56:00.005-08:00

Today, finally, it feels as if we've broken the back of winter. I know, at times I didn't think we'd make it either, but it is 16c outside and the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the crocuses shyly pushing through the winter soil. I just hope we get a good summer this year. So Mother Nature if you're listening, do it for the Queen, the Olympiads, OK just me.
I got so excited at the weather earlier today that I contemplated having a Twister lolly in celebration, but thought that would perhaps be the culinary equivalent of doing a raindance, so instead settled on my summer fallback - bruschetta. This is very easy and very tasty and whenever I make it, I wonder why I don't have it every day. Tomatoes in this country are pretty rubbish at the best of times, but in winter forget it. The only way to bring out their flavour is by roasting them, which is what I've done here. But if you have good tasty tomatoes, then there is no need - but they should always be served at room temperature - like strawberries, they lose their flavour when cold.

Roast tomato bruschetta (pronounced brus-ketta)

Serves: 1

Takes: 5 mins prep, 40 mins roasting

A good handful cherry tomatoes

Olive oil (for roasting)

1 slice of bread - ideally sourdough

Garlic clove

few Basil leaves

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt

Pepper

Cut the tomatoes in half and drizzle with some olive oil and put in a roasting tray. Cook at 180c for about 30-40 minutes or until soft and lightly charred.

Good quality bread is a bonus, but not essential. I've made it with stale French bread before, but my favourite is probably Sourdough. Just put a slice in the toaster until browned and then rub it with a peeled clove of garlic. Put it on a plate and pile on the tomatoes. Drizzle with the Extra Virgin olive oil (I've just bought some amazing Greek stuff from Duke's Meadows farmer's market in Chiswick) and a few leaves of torn basil. A sprinkle of sea salt, some ground black pepper and there you have it summer on a plate. Just eat it before it rains.

Gotta Lotta Milk?

2012-02-22T05:30:00.001-08:00

Meet Clemmie. She's my neighbour. That's her with no make up, just after the school run. Yup. As well as a flawless complexion, her house is always tidy, her two little girls are always pristine and she's very organised. Sigh. It can be a bit depressing living opposite Clemmie.
Not only that, but she also happens to be really nice. She's a midwife, who blogs brilliantly about it here, and she delivered my youngest son. I borrow onions from her, she borrows tins of tomatoes from me, we exchange children sometimes.
The reason I made her hold a pint of milk in this picture is because I think I may have discovered her secret. I think it's milk. I happen to know that she gets it delivered every morning. Personally I think that's cheating. Why can't she buy it sporadically from the corner shop in her slippers, like the rest of us? Where's the fun in waking up in the morning and knowing that you've got enough milk for the kids' breakfast as well as your coffee? Not for her the 'dry Weetabix' lottery. Boring!
Well, ok, maybe not boring. Maybe sensible. So, I too have decided to opt for the easy life. It turns out I can get brilliant old-school recyclable glass bottles of organic semi-skimmed milk for 79p vs 58p from Tesco, but that 79p includes delivery from your milkman. Not only that, but the milk man now delivers butter, bread, bin bags, even loo roll for if you get caught out. All you need to do is update your online shopping list before 9pm and the milkman will bring it to your doorstep the next morning with your pint. Delivery is free (or included in the price) and there is no minimum order. Admittedly it is more expensive than your supermarket shop but it's only meant for topping up.
It sounds to good to be true. I'm going to give it a try for a month and I'll let you know how it goes. Meet you back here in 30 days looking groomed, with pristine kids and lots of milk. Claire

Pancakes Pancakes, rah, rah, rah!

2012-02-20T02:16:00.005-08:00

Unlike Claire, I had an ace half term. Unusually ace because the girls behaved perfectly. They slept in (once and only til 7, but hey!). Played together nicely and were generally lovely to be with, which made me lovelier to be with (these things are relative). It was what I imagined having children would be like, before I actually had children. Is this the future? I hope so. We were less the Simpsons and more the Brady Bunch.
Normally in February half-term, I dream of being somewhere hot, but this year I was happy to be at home and we treated London as if we were tourists. We went on the London Eye, saw the Jungle Book performed by the London Philarmonic, watched the Muppets, went to Kew Gardens, and pootled on the South Bank. Even the freezing conditions didn't deter us. As my friend's Scottish granny says "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes."

And now it's over until Easter and I am back in the world of finding lost school ties, signing reading registers and bundling the children on the super bike for the school run. If the doom and gloom of a never-ending February (And an extra day this year. I think leap year days should be made a Bank Holiday. It feels like our bosses are getting something for nothing!) wasn't enough, Lent starts around this time of year. When Christians are asked to give up something for 40 days. This is supposed to be something that you like. It is no good giving up broccoli, say, unless you are a particular brassica-lover. Alcohol (never!) or chocolate (maybe) are popular choices, normally for the first five days, until the giver-upper forgets they've given something up, and then jacks it in all together. Pancake Day is tomorrow and marks the start of Lent. The history goes that it was a good way to use up rich food (eggs, sugar) before the abstinence of Lent began. Anyway, you will find my failsafe batter recipe and some pancake ideas here and here. My favourite is chocolate honeycomb butter or dulce de leche and banana. A great savoury option is the Dutch pancake - with bacon, sweetcorn and strong cheddar cheese. Happy flipping.
Claire says: "Oh fff-lip off with your happy clappy half term! Come round here for some little boy action if you think you're hard enough..."

Chorizo scotch eggs by Mr McDonald

2012-02-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I've been a bit slack in the kitchen of late. This is possibly why, when Crumbs was invited to a blogger event recently, Claire decided to forego the opportunity to spend half a day sans kids and sent me, her husband, aka Mr McDonald, instead.
The event was hosted by One, an ethical food company which donates all its profits to charity, and was fronted by chef Simon Rimmer. All I knew about Simon was that his Manchester restaurant, Greens, served up highly rated veggie food. Unusually for me these days, I was sporting a crushing hangover and was really in the mood for some salt, sugar and meat. Aubergines just weren't going to cut it.
I needn't have worried. As soon as I arrived, Simon announced that we'd be making chorizo scotch eggs. Boom. We made them. We ate them. Amazing. Simon made lamb tikka with curried cauliflower pancakes. We ate that. Possibly even better. For pudding, he knocked up an Earl Grey and prune bread and butter pudding with toffee sauce. I nearly proposed to him at that point but instead just ate the pudding.
On a calorie high and enthused by Simon's chirpy tutelage, I went home and resolved to make all of the above with the kids. [Bear in mind our children are 2 and 4...Claire].Instead I ended up making a bit of the above despite the kids. What had seemed so easy in a room full of adults with a bunch of half-prepped ingredients turned into a 5 hour slog - and that was just to make the scotch egg and bread pudding, I gave up on the lamb and cauliflower. Elbow deep in raw sausage meat or at a pivotal moment in the egg boiling process, I'd suddenly be called upon to change a nappy or break up a fight. I suddenly understood at a deeper level than before what Crumbs was really about and why it's 5 minute recipes are so popular. Anyway, I finally got tea on the table at 6.50pm, with the kids' blood sugar levels reaching a dangerous low. I was almost too tired to eat it and definitely too tired to photograph it but I can assure you it looked and tasted phenomenal! The picture above is the egg I made on the course.
The kids were already in bed by the time the oven pinged to inform us that the pudding was done - a good thing, as we grown ups were able to demolish it un-hindered (although we did leave a modest slice for their Sunday lunch).
Recipes are below for your consideration. 2 tips on the scotch eggs: firstly, for an earthier egg you can swap the chorizo for black pudding; secondly, do yourself a favour and wait until the kids are asleep.
Chorizo Scotch eggs with pepper chutney

Makes: 6 eggs, serve one per adult, half each for the kids

Start to finish: 5 hours, unless the kids are in bed, and then considerably less

6 hard boiled eggs

175g sausage meat

75g finely diced/blended chorizo

1 tbs chopped parsley

1 tbs finely chopped chives

Plenty of salt and white pepper

75g breadcrumbs

75g polenta

Vegetable oil to fry

Mix the sausage meat, chorizo, herb, chives and plenty of seasoning

Divide into 6, press each one flat into a patty and wrap it around the egg. If there are any holes just get a bit more sausage mix and squash it in. With a pastry brush wash each naked scotch egg with egg dip in the polenta breadcrumbs mix. Fill a saucepan with a couple of inches of vegetable oil, get it hot, bubbling. Chuck a pinch of breadcrumbs in and if they sizzle but don't burn the temperature is right. Cook for 4 minutes, turning regularly.

Pepper chutney

1 red onion, sliced

4 red peppers, finely sliced

Clove sliced garlic

8 gherkins, chopped

tbs capers

100g demarera

100ml red wine vinegar

1 finely chopped birds eye chilli

Fry onion, garlic, chilli for 3-4 mins to soften
Add peppers, cook 2 mins
Add sugar and vinegar, boil 10mins, take off heat, add capers, gherkins, season and cool. Serve with scotch eggs.

More half-term fun! Golden Syrup Popcorn

2012-02-15T03:09:00.000-08:00

The chances are you haven't been thinking "Hmmm, I wonder how to get more Golden Syrup into my children's diet." and when it comes to nutritional value the following recipe must be teetering on the edge of a sugary chasm. But it's February half-term, what's a parent to do?
Popcorn is a BRILLIANT way to pass at least five minutes of the remaining 4/5 days of half term, and if you're clever and your kids are a bit older, the chances are you can stretch it out to at least 20.
There is something truly miraculous about turning a load of boring looking seedy-things into a noisy pan of fluffy loveliness with absolutely no effort. Kids love it and even adults find it entertaining (well I do).
As well as fun to do it can prove useful during half-term if you're looking for snacks to take with you on days out. Just put a load in freezer bag and you've got an easy-to-eat snack to whip out whenever hunger/boredom looks about to ruin everyone's day.
If you're lucky and have been strict with your kids (and everyone they come into contact with) there's a chance your children will eat unadulterated popcorn, which means nutritionally it is fairly benign. But if your parenting skills are anything like mine, your kids are probably fairly insistent on having most things with a dose of sugar. This upsets the puritan in me, so I thought that perhaps the sweetness of the popcorn could be, at least theoretically, offset a little by using popcorn as a way of introducing different flavours to the children, so I sprinkled this lot with powdered ginger and it was delicious, but I'm sure you could use other spices. Here is a great piece on making sweet chilli popcorn, so it could also be a way of introducing your children to proper hot spices, if you take it slowly.
Golden Syrup popcorn
This makes one medium-sized freezer bag of popcorn, enough for a family of four's day out
Half a cup of popcorn
3 tablespoons of oil (should have been corn oil, I used olive oil and we're all still standing)
25g butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1.5 tablespoons of Golden Syrup
A sprinkling of dried ginger
Heat the oil in a large pan which has a lid. Get child to throw the cup of popcorn (while keeping a tight grip on the cup) into the pan. Place lid (ideally glass, so you get to see all the action) on top of the pan and wait for the popping to commence. After about two minutes, when all the corn has popped, empty popcorn into a colander. Don't let the popcorn sit in the hot pan as it will burn and, as I know from bitter experience, it's no fun picking out burnt corn kernels. Then melt the butter in the pan and add the sugar and Golden Syrup. Let it all mix and sizzle for a bit. Pour the popcorn in to the pan, put the lid back on and bang it a bit to make sure it's all mixed, then sprinkle over the ginger, A delicious, unnutritious snack for you and the kids.

No hearts. No roses. No card.

2012-02-14T04:56:00.007-08:00

Crikey, it's not like I don't feel the love. I do. I really do. It is just that I don't need one day a year to celebrate my biggest piece of luck to date. Every day is Valentine's Day around our house. Really it is. Except without the chocolates and just with the I love yous. Although that last statement would suggest, I have unwittingly been affected by all this collective romance, I do feel like an island surrounded by a sea of pinkness. Of roses. Of cards that play songs when you open them. And of Valentines Day recipes. Don't get excited. I haven't got one. And now I feel bad. Well a bit.

Crumbs is officially the Valentine Day Scrooge of the blogosphere. I am not completely hard-hearted and although I won't be eating out (too many over-priced set menus and everyone competing to see who looks the most in love) or even eating heart-shaped food at home, I will be going to see Brief Encounter at the cinema with my husband. I've not seen it before, but it is supposed to be brilliant. About a married woman who falls in love with a married man at a railway cafe. On reflection, I am not sure a film about infidelity is actually the one to see on Valentines Day, so as a precaution I will make sure both the husband and I steer clear of train stations in the future. Or any public transport hub come to think of it.
Claire on the other hand is, despite appearances, a bit of a soppy sausage. She's taking her husband to the Saltoun supper club in Brixton to eat a Valentine's Day meal with, ummm, lots of people they don't know. At least they won't run out of things to say and Jay Rayner says the food is good.

Anyway, what are you doing? If you're cooking, tell us what. You never know I may just be converted in time for a trip to Waitrose. There are some good last minute tips in today's Independent. According to the Daily Mail, the M&S meal deal is brilliant, if you're struggling for time/inspiration.

Either way I hope you all have a happy VD and, if you're single, make sure you don't catch one. (I know, I am sorry. I had to.)

Half-term 'fun' plan

2012-02-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

If a Caribbean holiday eludes you this winter, and the recent snow is as close as you are going to get to skiing, then the chances are that you, like us, are spending half-term at home. February half-term, surely every parent's holiday highlight?
I'm not sure how you're going to spend this week but my main aim is to not kill my kids. If I manage to feed/clothe and entertain them, all to the good, but survival is the name of the game.
Unfortunately there are no recipes for that, but one thing that can help is cooking for fun.
Ha! Excuse me while I laugh hysterically. My kids are two and four, so cooking with them is hell. But promising them they can do some cooking with me if they are good is an effective bribe, and that's got to be good?
What I've belatedly realised is that young kids are uninterested in making anything edible, they just want to stir, squidge and generally make a mess. Once you know that, I think the whole thing is a lot easier.
Now I make most of the cake/muffin/biscuit etc myself, but each child gets a mixing bowl, spoon and various things to stir. The youngest gets a bowl full of bran flakes, and eventually when he figures out something's missing I might add some water, and then some rice. It's all inedible, but he doesn't mind, he just wants to stir. The eldest gets the same, but I'll let him do parts of the real cake-making, using the electric mixer, pouring in the milk etc. But when it starts to get tricky and I want to get rid of him I add something else to his mixture, so he wants to get back to it. I'm not saying it's relaxing, but it kills an hour or so, you might get something edible out of it (what you are making obv, not what they are making), and it's warmer than the park.
Here's a list of good things to make with or for kids on those long, grey, damp February days...
Homemade playdough
Salt dough
Homemade butter
Time it takes to walk to the shops bread
Giant edible snowflakes

Sugar Saucers

2012-02-09T02:04:00.000-08:00

I can't stop reaching for the biscuit tin at the moment. Jaffa cakes, normal cake, chocolate chips meant for cakes, handfuls of Crunchy Nut cornflakes straight from the packet. I am a one-woman carb-seeking missile. Of course I am blaming the cold weather and not my complete lack of discipline. I've adopted the philosophy that calories consumed during subzero temperatures are like calories consumed when hungover. THEY DON'T COUNT.

These saucer-sized, sprinkle-coated cookies have been by far the most successful of my recent biscuit-baking/eating forays. They are gorgeous and from the wonderfully-indulgent Outsider Tart cookbook. They are vanilla-flavoured with a chewy centre. I made 10 large ones, but they were a bit too big even for me, so next time, I will make 30 bite-sized ones. You coat the biscuits in sprinkles before baking. I used pastel-coloured ones, but next time will try something brighter, as the heat of the oven bleaches the colour somewhat.

Sugar Saucers

Makes: 10 large, 30 small

Takes: 20 to make, 1hr to chill, 20 to cook

600g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

340g unsalted butter

120ml veg oil

225g granulated sugar

200g icing sugar

2 large eggs

4 tsp vanilla extract

lots of sprinkles for rolling

Line 2 baking sheets. In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, bicarb of soda and salt. In a separate bowl cream the butter with a handheld mixer for about a minute. Slowly pour in the oil, still mixing, then the two sugars, the eggs and vanilla. Still mixing! Slowly add the flour mixture. A quarter at a time, until all mixed. Then put in the fridge for at least an hour, or even up to a few days.

Using either an ice-cream scoop or a serving spoon divide the dough into ten balls. Roll them each into a bowl of sprinkles, so they are evenly coated. Place on the baking sheet and squash down with the palm of your hands until flat. Stagger them as they spread whilst cooking. Bake at 180c for 15-20mins or until the edges are golden. They firm up as they cool. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

If you are making the smaller ones, then obviously divide the dough into about 30 balls and cook for about 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them!

Make your own: giant snowflakes

2012-02-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

The sledge is back in the shed. The snowman, which had a chilli nose, coriander mohican and a carrot willy (the downside of having two little boys is this obsession with willies) has thankfully melted. And my feet have finally thawed. But the kids loved the snow and I for one am happy to keep the magic alive if I can do it while avoiding hypothermia. So, ta da! Giant snowflakes you can make from the comfort of your cosy kitchen.
OK these pictured may look like something used to repel UFOs or birds from the garden, but they are easy to make and nice to eat. They are just tortilla wraps with bits cut out of them to look like giant snowflakes.
Fold a wrap in half, and in half again, and again. Take some scissorsand cut triangles, circles and square shapes – just as thoughyou were making a paper snowflake. Unwrap and lightly brush the top of thesnowflakes with melted butter and place them on a baking sheet slightly apart.
Bake them in a 180 degree oven until lightly browned and crisp (about 4minutes). Then sift icing sugar and a pinch of cinnamon on the snowflakes whilewarm. For an extra-sparkly effect, you can sprinkle on a bit of edible glitter.

Luscious leftovers - Shepherd's Pie

2012-02-05T07:27:00.000-08:00

We roasted a leg of lamb last week. Made little slits in the flesh and poked down sprigs of Rosemary from the garden, whole anchovies from the tin and whole peeled cloves of garlic from the um... corner shop. It was delicious, but even between the four of us we only ate half of it. Freshly-cooked lamb looks delicious, all moist and pink and tender, so I always optimistically wrap leftovers in foil and plan to have it in sandwiches for lunch. But the next day the lamb always looks like it has aged 20 years, smoked 40 Benson and been out all night. Flabby, congealed and grey. It would be like eating Jim Royle, so after guiltily looking at it festering in the fridge for a week, I usually end up shoving it in the bin. But this rite of passage was broken last week when I spotted this post on the housewifeconfidential blog about using leftover lamb in a Shepherd's Pie instead of mince (so obvious, so easy!) and I'll never look back. All you do is fry some soffritto (ready chopped onion, celery, carrots - of course you can chop your own), dice your lamb into small cubes, and simmer until tender with the leftover gravy, a Rosemary sprig and stock (I used chicken stock as I always have some fresh in the freezer or a packet from Knorr in the cupboard).

Shepherd's Pie

Serves: 4

Start to finish: 15 mins prep, 20mins cooking time for mash, 30 mins cooking for pie

300g leftover lamb (or beef) cut into small cubes

1 pack of soffritto or one finely chopped onion, carrot and celery stick

leftover gravy and some meat stock if you need it (packet is fine, of course!)

5 potatoes, peeled if you are not using a ricer, unpeeled if you are!

large knob of butter

salt

pepper

Boil and mash your potatoes with the butter using, if you like, Claire's latest find, a ricer. This means you won't even have to peel your spuds! Season with salt and pepper. Meanwhile fry the meat cubes in some olive oil until browned. Put to one side. Fry the soffrito (or one finely chopped onion, carrot and celery stick) until it is soft. Put the meat back into the frying pan with the softened vegetables and add the leftover gravy (I also put in some leftover frozen cranberry sauce from Christmas) and some stock if you need it. The mixture should be wet, but not too sloppy. Pop in a rosemary sprig. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer gently for 20 minutes. Pour into a ceramic dish and then top with the mash. I always smother mine with strong cheese - like Red Leicester or mature Cheddar. Cook in the oven at 180c for 30 minutes.
PS If you have a more interesting life than mine and won't have time to cook your leftover lamb joint for a while, then it freezes really well. Just don't chop it up beforehand, as the meat dries out quickly.

Juicy fruit loaf and a cup of tea

2012-02-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

Oh, it's cold outside.
It's this time of year I yearn for a second home in the Caribbean. It doesn't have to be grand, just a couple of bedrooms, maybe a palm tree and some sunshine.
The second thing I yearn for is a big slice of cake and a cup of tea. Although more fattening than the Caribbean house, and less likely to make me want to wear a bikini, it is far easier to get hold of, and that makes up for any shortcomings.
But I don't want any old cake. Nope. I want a hearty fruit loaf which can fool me into thinking it's healthy. I want it moist, still warm from the oven, served with a steaming cup of tea.
Maybe now's the time to confess that the slice of fruit loaf pictured above no longer exists. All that's left is a few crumbs on the plate, and the cooling embers of a cup of tea. Gone but not forgotten. This was a fruit loaf like no other. It's from the lovely KitchenMaid blog and is an extravaganza of winter flavours. At a push it could almost be described as the perfect hybrid of cake and Caribbean second home. Made from freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice with thinly sliced banana added to the traditional dried fruit, it has an exotic intensity. And is perfect with a cuppa or as an after school snack. It's not super quick to make, you simmer the dried fruits with the citrus juices for five minutes and then have to wait for it to cool before you continue, but it's worth it for the dramatic flavours. I'd say it took me 10-15 minutes to put together and then an hour in the oven, so not too bad. For all the delicious details click through here and see the recipe on the KitchenMaid's blog.

Thank you! Thank you!

2012-02-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

Hello! Excuse us if we sound a bit flustered. We've spent the last half hour hyperventilating. Apparently we've just been named Quadrille's Food Blogger of 2011. We're overwhelmed! Slightly teary. And desperate for the kids to get to bed so we can crack open that champagne (Ok, Cava, who has champagne anymore?).
But we just wanted to say thank you to everyone who voted for us, we really appreciate it. If you hadn't voted for us we wouldn't have won, and if you didn't read us we wouldn't be doing this. And we love doing this. Mainly because we get such great feedback from you lot. So thanks.
And welcome! If you're here for the first time, we hope you like it. The idea behind the blog is that although your hunger is infinite, your time, money and ingredients probably aren't. Our recipes are quick, easy and delicious (we hope you agree!). We chatter on about other things too, as we're both mums of small children, but we hope our recipes appeal to everyone who likes to eat.
Claire and Lucy xx

Smartie sandwiches

2012-01-31T02:22:00.000-08:00

Would you send your child to school with a Smartie sandwich for their packed lunch? As you're reading this blog, I'd guess probably not. The Daily Mail ran an article yesterday about a mother who did (NB - the mum's been blamed mind, not the dad obviously. He probably normally gives the child alfalfa sprouts, when he's not too busy bringing home the bacon.) which shocked teachers so much, that it prompted an overhaul of pupils' diets at the child's Lincolnshire school. Everyone there gets free meals now, for a trial period. So undoubtedly something good came out of this moral, culinary outrage.

There are 587 comments underneath the piece ranging from calls for the child to be taken off the mum (again little mention of the dad) who is condemned by some as probably a druggy and definitely a sicko. To other people saying that a Smartie sandwich sounds quite tasty and don't we all deserve a treat once in a while? I agree it does sound quite tasty. My children sometimes have Nutella on toast for breakfast, which isn't too much of a leap, and I now feel that I should give Daily Mail readers - well most of them - even more of a wide berth.

The level of interest the piece has generated, illustrates just what a public issue feeding children has become. In the background as I type is Woman's Hour's Jane Garvey discussing childhood obesity - an issue covered by some paper or another almost every day, but pretty much unheard of a decade ago. Most people agree that children are getting fatter (although some don't) and if so whose job is it to make them eat less and exercise more? Is it up to parents or the state? And is a Smartie sandwich really that bad for them?
Lucy
Claire says: "Mmm, did someone mention smartie sarnies...?"

Food co-operatives

2012-01-29T08:37:00.000-08:00

I am not a radical person. I eat porridge. I wear slippers. They are covered in woolly polka dots. But I am a radical shopper. Or more to the point, I buy much of my food from a radical co-operative, Suma.
So as I scroll down my shopping list, clicking on tinned chickpeas and dried apricots (organic, of course) I feel a frisson of excitement. Who knew that buying your Ecover toilet cleaner could be such a thrill?
And not only is it thrilling, it's also cheap. I'd say it's about a third cheaper than the supermarket. To buy from the radical co-operative I formed a food co-operative myself. It's basically a bunch of my neighbours who are as keen on lentils and biodegradable baby wipes as me. We buy from Suma Wholesale but food co-operatives can buy from anywhere; a farm or a greengrocer. It just means that by buying in bulk you have a chance to negotiate on price and bypass the supermarket. Sustain has a great website about all the different types of co-operatives and how to get started. Here is a quick overview for you.
What is a food co-operative?
You might have heard of them before. I think they got popular in the 70s, when a few lone hippies who wanted to eat lentils would get together and buy a 5 kilo bag and split it, because they couldn't get them in the local shops. It's changed a bit over the years. The People's Supermarket is a food co-operative. But what me and my neighbours do is on a much smaller scale. There are about six households and we do a big shop together once every month or two. We shop from Suma as it delivers to our area regularly, and sells the type of things that we want. Baby wipes, Ecover products, lentils, tins of tomatoes, bags of nuts, herbal tea, essentially different types of dried goods (the oats, nuts, lentils, rice etc pictured above is all from Suma). It's not dissimilar to sharing a supermarket shop but you don't just buy one tin of tomatoes, you buy a tray of 12. You don't have to bulk buy everything, they will split packs for you, but generally you are buying a kilo of nuts, or 3 kilos of muesli, which are good quantities when you are feeding a family. On average I'd say the produce costs about two thirds of what you pay at the supermarket, but because it is good quality stuff it's not always cheaper than the supermarket basic ranges. E.g the cheapest pine nuts at Tesco are £2.59 per 100g. A kilo of pine nuts at Suma cost £18.75., so £1.87 per 100g. On the other hand a tin of cherry tomatoes from Tesco costs 74p, and the organic equivalent at Suma also costs 74p. So sometimes it's not actually cheaper but you are getting a better quality equivalent.
How does it work?
Once every month or two one of the group (it's fluid, we invite anyone local, who looks like they may eat lentils or nuts to join!) realises they have virtually no food in the house and Facebook messages the rest of us to ask if we want to do a shop. Generally we all need to stock up on something. We each do an online shop and it automatically itemises what each individual has spent so there are no queries about who owes what. Then, at the end of the week an enormous lorry, driven by the lovely Bill, pulls up outside the house of whoever instigated the shop and delivers all the goods. Then it's up to the rest of us to go round as soon as possible and pick our stuff up. No-one wants to be tripping over boxes of camomile tea for a week, so we need to pick it up quickly. At the same time we pick up our invoices and then individually ring up Suma and pay.
What are the pros?
Good food at a great price and I don't have to go anywhere near a Lidl or Aldi! I can do all the ordering from the comfort of my living room and delivery is free. It's also a friendly thing to do. You get to know your neighbours (and their shopping habits) a bit better. It's a great thing to do with other families because you all get through so much food, so there's always someone who wants to do a shop when you do.
What are the cons?
You have to buy in bulk. Generally I split packets with my neighbours. I've just negotiated two packs of Nairns oatcakes from one neighbour. But you can also call Suma and explain you only want 2 packs of tea, rather than a box of six. Another issue is where to store it. Not everyone has a kitchen where they can store 36 tins of tomatoes. As all the goods are dried I usually store the overspill up in the loft, other people use their shed or cellar.
Occasionally people fall out about money. This hasn't happened to us, Suma's itemised inventory puts an end to that, but I can see that it would be a pitfall.
That's it really. Great quality food at a better price than the supermarket. Radical!

How to fake birthday cake magnificence

2012-01-25T02:31:00.000-08:00

Hello. I'm Barbie. Under this skirt, there are no legs, just cake. Oh, the irony! With vital statistics like mine, you think I eat?

Last week I blogged about how my Barbie cake sponge was looking sad, forlorn and frankly crap, listing on the work surface, destined to be frozen and resurrected as trifle sponge. But as this MAGNIFICENT (yes, the CAPS are justified) cake can testify, nothing is a lost cause in the world of birthday cakes. With the cunning use of shop-bought sponge and loads of readymade icing (The make-up of the cake world. Don't leave the kitchen without it.) I did my six-year-old daughter proud.

The problem was the skirt bit of the cake (cooked in an especially bought 8" tiffin tin) didn't rise and there was no time to bake another. So instead I made a couple of normal round Victoria Sponges, stacked them and balanced the sponge skirt on top, to give the cake height. But it still listed, so I wedged in some shop-bought fairy cakes to stop the wobble. I should have been a structural engineer. My mind has been wasted.
At this point - naked of decoration - Barbie still looked ropy, but icing is sheer genius stuff and if used judiciously you can make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. I kneaded some blue food colouring paste into a packet of ready-made royal icing, which I then rolled out into a circle shape on to a surface, liberally dusted with icing sugar. When it was the right kind of size and about 3mm thick, I lifted it with the rolling pin (again, don't skimp on the icing sugar) I draped it over the cake, starting at one side (not in the middle) to ensure every bit was covered. I then very firmly (you can be firmer than you think) shaped it around the sponge by using the palms of my hands and fingers. The heat gently moulds the icing to the shape of the cake. Be patient and you can ease out wrinkles and repair tears just using the heat of your hands or by rubbing at a spot with your fingers.
Once "dressed" Barbie looked a billion times better, but I still needed some eye candy to distract. Around the bottom, I used an edible silver spray, bought in Sainsbury's, to hide a couple of dodgy bits and I then stuck loads of icing flowers all over the cake (not with real glue obviously, but an icing sugar/water paste).

The motto of this story is, that even if you think your cake is beyond repair, you can fake it. Possibly not if the cake is undercooked though. Then stick it back in the oven until a skewer comes clear. If you've got no time to bake a cake, then shun guilt and buy a plain sponge one and pimp it up with icing.

To recap....

Did I mention icing? Handle royal icing firmly and it will yield to your whim. Spread butter icing with a palate knife (or if you don't have one, use a credit card) dipped in hot water.

Some cakes suggest using meringue icing (egg white and icing sugar) which is my favourite, but it really sticks to napkins so is a no-no for kids parties.

Don't feel guilty about buying all or bits of the sponge. The children won't notice and it is more about what it looks like than what it tastes like. I made this fairy castle cake last year, but instead of baking five separate sponge cakes as the recipe suggested, I baked two and used shop-bought Maderia cake for the rest.

Buy a pattern. Ebay does brilliant ones for about a £5. That is how I made this Peppa Pig cake.

Food-colouring pastes are better than liquids. Funkier colours, less horrible taste.

Don't worry what it looks like on the inside. Birthday cakes are all about appearances. At least when you're six.
Claire says: "Wow! Um, yum? Ok, maybe not. But you're right, it does look magnificent."

Pretty please

2012-01-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

When you first enter the world of blog you are introduced to memes, linkys, blogger charts, challenges and blogging awards. It's a whole new world of etiquette and vocab. But, to be honest, we don't really do much of it because, we think (and we might be wrong) that most of our readers aren't bloggers.
So we try to keep our content relevant to them/you. This means we don't ask you to vote for us in the latest awards ceremony, or "like" us on Facebook while following us on Twitter (although that would be nice!). Instead we just pootle along, writing about what's in our fridge, and hope you're interested and that it's helpful.
However, today is different. Today we're asking you to vote for us. It's the Quadrille Publishing Food Awards and we really want a few votes for their best blog award.
We like Quadrille, their books and their style. We'd really like them to like us. Pathetic really. So, go on, do us a favour. Email them at taste@quadrille.co.uk, put Blogger of the Year, 2012 in the subject line and spread the word!
Thank you!

Meal plans

2012-01-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

Meal plans. Such a brilliant idea. Such a tricky reality. I'd love to do them, and occasionally I do. But mostly I just wing it. I think the trick to cooking so many meals in one week is not to push the boat out too much. Don't try and follow too many recipes. Stalwarts like jacket potatoes with tasty fillings are great. You don't need to think about it, work out portions or wonder if you've got the right ingredients. If you've got a potato you're basically there. On the other hand you don't want to become too stuck in a rut. I LOVE eggy crumpets at the moment. They are really easy and you can do pretty much anything to them, so that allows you to jazz up your repertoire a bit, without having to resort to the recipe books.
I have no idea what I'm going to cook this week. Mr McDonald has come home from the farmer's market laden with cabbage, jerusalem artichokes and celeriac, so hold on to your hats! But below is what we ate last week (more or less, with some memory gaps), a retrospective meal plan, if you will. Lunch is what me, the two-year-old and Uncle Brendan have. Tea is the four year old and the two year old. Dinner is me, Mr McDonald and Uncle Brendan. Hope it's useful.

Monday
Lunch: jacket potato with cheddar and lightly sauteed spring onions
Tea: Brendan's red lentil soup
Dinner: We have the lentil soup that Brendan knocked together for the kids - loads of vegetables in it and a splash of balsamic vinegar for depth. Yum. And then a hearty dip made from artichoke hearts (from a tin, so much cheaper than a jar in oil, about £1.25 I think) whizzed up with cream cheese and lemon zest, served on Dr Kargs crispbreads.
Tuesday
Lunch: Homemade mackerel pate on toast- I make this nearly every week, so easy, healthy, and surprisingly the kids love it
Tea: broccoli pasta - I make this most weeks too, and always manage to forget how delicious it is, until I start plundering my children's plates before they've quite finished.
Dinner: um, can't remember
Wednesday
Lunch: I went to Lucy's today and she served wraps, warmed on a griddle and then slathered with pesto and goat's cheese, served with a green salad. It was absolutely delicious.
Tea: fishfingers, potato wedges, peas - Anya comes over to play every Wednesday and the kids have fishfingers and chips for tea. Both of our boys love Anya coming over to play, and most of it is that they love Anya, but I think a tiny part of it is that they know they're getting fishfingers and chips for tea.
Dinner: Faggots with apple and celeriac mash. Faggots: is there anything that sounds less appetising? But in reality they are beautiful, rich, velvet-y nuggets of taste and iron. I first got hooked on our local farmer's market version, but these were delicious too, wrapped in bacon and came from Waitrose.
Thursday
Lunch: Eggy crumpets (like eggy bread, but with crumpets), with horseradish creme fraiche (tbsp creme fraiche mixed with a tsp of horseradish), with flaked smoked mackerel and chives. Delicious. Even the two year old ate it all and didn't balk at the horseradish.
Tea: bangers and celeriac mash with French beans (French beans are a new discovery. I buy them frozen and although they don't mention on the packet where they come from, I assume it's nearer than Egypt or Kenya, where many of the fresh ones are imported from, just because it's more economical).
Dinner: um, ummm, nope, no idea.
Friday
Lunch: sausage casserole - My top tip is to always cook the whole pack of sausages, even if you don't need them all. This is because you can then put together a sausage casserole in as much time as it takes to open three tins; onions, haricot/butter beans and tomatoes. Sling in some capers, a few of those grilled red peppers that come in jars and ta da! Sausage casserole in minutes. But if you actually have to cook the saussies as well, it adds another 10-15 minutes on to the cooking time. Despite this being my top tip, do I ever actually do it ...
Tea: Faggots! They loved them. I told them they were "special sausages".
Dinner: griddled salmon with a miso noodle soup

Alone in the kitchen, botched cakes, cheesy leeks and other things

2012-01-19T13:48:00.000-08:00

Everyone else in the house is tucked up in bed and I am sat in a partially-lit kitchen listening to bluesy music and enjoying the peace of having the downstairs to myself. It is such a rare occasion, that I am tempted not to go to bed. Ever. But to savour this moment free of the reverberations and demands of other people, for as long as I can. My children are three and nearly six and I have recently become conscious that we are a proper family now, with all its idiosyncrasies, instead of two bigger people looking after two smaller people, which on reflection was less complicated, I suppose.
Much though I long for silence and solitude, the odd thing about being a mum, for me, is that when I get it, the enjoyment is fleeting. In the still of the house, I feel bereft almost and like I want to wake everyone up and check they're ok. But then if they did actually get out of bed, the spell would be broken. Is it part and parcel of being a mum that you never feel you are quite in the right place?

Tonight's blog was supposed to be about the triumph of my eldest's birthday cake. It is her party on Saturday and she asked for one of those hideous Barbie cakes, where the doll's torso emerges from a Victoria Sponge skirt. They are completely revolting and, perhaps I am projecting, but they remind me of naff loo roll holders from the 1980s. Found at the homes of people who had those floral china signs on the bathroom door - saying bathroom, in case the presence of the bath hadn't reassured you. The Barbie cake is also a bugger to make. Or so I have found. I bought the right bell-shaped mould, but it all looks too small, too wonky, a bit burnt and rather forlorn. I am not making another one, at this juncture I'm going to see if I can ice my way out of it. As long as it looks good to a six-year-old's eyes, it doesn't matter what it tastes like, as no one eats birthday cake anyway. Many is the time I have fished some out of the bottom of my handbag, weeks after a party, squashed and with the indentation of my car keys in the Peppa Pig napkin.

Of course, I could waste this time in the house on my own, cracking the Barbie cake code, just so I have something to blog about, but I'm not that devoted and I know that you all are secretly hankering after a recipe for leeks. You're in luck. This one is foolproof, quick and easy, so I'm just going to write it. No lists or recipe as such. All you do is take one leek per person, slice it into coin shapes, put it in a pan with a splash of water and a knob of butter and semi-braise it until the leeks are soft. You could, I suppose, use chicken stock, if you have some to hand. Make sure the leeks don't brown. Burnt leeks are bitter. Take it off the heat and stir in about a dessert spoon of cream cheese per person (by cream cheese, I mean Philadelphia-type stuff, but buy own-brand, it is half the price), season with salt and pepper, maybe sprinkle with grated Parmesan and eat. This is good in jacket potatoes, but works well with lamb or any roasted meat.

Now, excuse me. A sofa awaits me and me alone.

French children don't throw food

2012-01-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

At the weekend I read an interesting piece in the Saturday Times about why French children don't throw food. I was intrigued and irritated in equal measure. Apparently all French mamans get their figures back after three months, they're not as frazzled as their Anglo-counterparts, and their children not only have their tantrums quietly in their bedroom, but always say please and thank you.
Yup, that's when I started to heave.
But there was one part of the article which stopped me from feeling sick, and actually made me feel a bit smug. It's the bit about getting children to eat properly. After reading this I realised that I'm not the appallingly slack mummy I've always thought I was. Rather, I am French (a bit like Vanessa Paradis, left). Because, like me, French mothers don't give snacks.
The reason I don't give snacks is because generally I'm pleased with myself if I've left the house and still got my phone, two kids and the front door keys on me. Nappies and a drink is a bonus. Snack? That's just beyond my capabilities. The flip side to my rubbishness is that people always marvel at what good eaters my children are. I tell them it's all down to fantastic parenting, but the truth is that they are BLOODY STARVING. And in my experience kids eat when they are starving.
Supermarket shelves seem to bulge with ever increasing ranges of snacks, mini-boxes of fruit, cereal bars etc, and while that continues I think it's inevitable that we are going to have to battle with our children to eat more challenging food such as vegetables.
The other thing I do, which I swear makes my children really good eaters, is to eat their food if they don't want it. They don't have a long window of opportunity to eat their tea. If they start fussing or saying they don't want it, I say that's absolutely fine. There's an apple in the fruit bowl and I'll eat their tea. It's amazing what effect this has on their appetite (and my waistline). This is all my own idea. I don't think French women do it. If they did they would never return to their pre-baby figure in three months...
The other sensible things that Pamela Druckerman wrote in her book French children don't throw food: parenting secrets from Paris are...
- parents should be dogged about introducing a child to new foods and not to give up even after they have rejected a food three or more times. Ask your child to have just one bite before moving on to the next course.
- Parents should never offer a different food to replace the rejected one.
- React neutrally if they will not eat something, so they don't feed on your behaviour
- Eat the same food as your child, don't give them choices. Everyone in the family eats the same food.
- Eat with your children when you can, at a table rather than in front of the TV
- Give children their meals in small courses. Start with vegetables as a starter - sliced avocado, tomato in vinaigrette, steamed broccoli with soy sauce. Once they've made inroads to that, you can serve the main, then pudding.

Cherry clafoutis

2012-01-15T08:38:00.000-08:00

My husband was cycling home from work last week when a woman opened her car door without looking. A fraction of a second later he was flying through the air, landing with an awkward thud on the road. After a breathless phone call from him, I picked the two children up from the dining table, where they were eating tea, thrust them in their car seats and drove to meet him at the kerb. I got there just seconds after the ambulance arrived, and had a few moments to see him before it whisked him away with a suspected broken shin.
I drove home with a shoeless two-year-old (there hadn't been time to get him properly dressed) and a subdued four year old, finished giving them their tea, asked a neighbour to babysit, and drove to A&E for a quick whisk through the system.
After an hour we were told it wasn't broken, just badly bruised and he needed to keep it up with an ice pack (preferably frozen peas). We drove home (via the fish and chip shop) and spent the evening counting our blessings, thinking of what might have been (it's a busy road but fortunately he wasn't hit by any oncoming cars) and marvelling at the restorative powers of fish, chips and slightly flat cava.
But we didn't have any frozen peas. Instead I had some 480g packs of frozen dark sweet cherries from Sainsburys, which are on offer at the moment, three for a fiver. A very good deal, I'm sure you'll agree. And it meant I didn't flinch when I realised that this was all I had to put on Mr McDonald's leg. What it does mean is that I have a lot of defrosting cherries to use up. So I've been making cherry clafoutis. Cherries are surprisingly difficult to cook with, if you have a glut. Cherry pie has too much juice for my liking, but a clafoutis is simple, tasty, and this was a nice injection of summer on a cold wintry weekend. I recommend it, I just hope your defrosting process isn't as traumatic as ours.
This recipe is a from Niki Segnit's fantastic The Flavour Thesaurus. If I was brave I'd introduce some ground almonds in there instead of plain flour, but I'd had too many unpleasant surprises that weekend and couldn't risk it.
Cherry clafoutis
Serves: 8 slices
Start to finish: 10 minutes plus 30 mins in the oven
500g pitted cherries
Vanilla pod and seeds
250ml milk
2 eggs and one additional egg yolk
125g caster sugar
75g melted butter
50g plain flour
Put the cherries in a buttered 23cm oven proof dish (I used a silicone cake mould). Split a vanilla pod and scrape the seeds out into a saucepan containing the milk. Bring it to boil and then set aside to cool. Whisk two eggs, one egg yolk and the sugar until well combined. Add melted butter and whisk some more. Sift in the flour and whisk until smooth. Remove the vanilla pod and whisk the milk into the batter. Pour this over the cherries and bake for 30 minutes until set and golden on top.

Something for the weekend - Black Velvet

2012-01-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Guinness is a vegetable, right? A bit like Marmite? When I was growing up my Granny used to drink a half pint a day on the recommendation of her doctor. Something to do with having lots of iron. Like broccoli. Although I don't think many GPs would "prescribe" it now, (although some research shows that it can prevent blood-clotting, proof that drinking is good for you). Nutritional benefits aside, it tastes grand and will probably make your tastebuds do a merry Irish jig with happiness. It tastes especially good when mixed with champagne and served in a flute as a Black Velvet cocktail. I had my first last weekend at the Shelbourne hotel in Dublin on a child-free mini-break. (Mini-break! I had almost forgotten the very words!). It went down very easily. The depth of Guinness was cut through by the dryness of the champagne, but it still had the creamy/irony tang you expect. It was, in short, delicious. And it should have been at 18 Euros a glass. No wonder the country's on its uppers. It is the perfect winter cocktail. Not too alcoholic so a perfect way to ease yourself back into drinking after a cursory attempt at a January detox. It is also vaguely warming and easy to recreate at home, with a can of Guinness (not the same as straight from a barrel on the Emerald Isle itself, but hey) and champagne or sparkling wine.

All you do is half fill a flute with cold Guinness and then carefully, tilting the glass slightly, top it up with cold champagne. Drink it possibly whilst River Dancing in the manner of Michael Flatley, who incidentally once said: "Between you and me, a few pints of Guinness and I can go even faster, you know." Slainte.

Kit - potato ricer

2012-01-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

When I first discovered that potato ricers existed, I wondered what was wrong with the world? Who would spurn the potato masher - such an effective piece of kit? And what kind of kitchenware addict would welcome the additional clutter of a clumsy ricer in their cutlery drawer? People with too much kit and too many drawers, was my answer.
But, people, I do not have much kit (hardly any) and just three drawers in my ENTIRE kitchen, and I have to confess that I have converted. I am now a potato ricer lover. Yes. It's not an easy thing to confess to. It's not an easy thing to say. Potato ricer lover. People don't always take me seriously. More fool them.
Not only does the ricer mean I have smooth, chef-quality mash potato in seconds, but I don't have to peel the potatoes either. Take that you non-potato ricer lovers. I have no idea how the ricer peels the potato, but that just adds to the doe eyed mystery of it all. I pop the boiled potatoes in the ricer, exert a little pressure and, ta da! Perfect puree in the pan. The only fiddly bit is taking the peel out of the ricer before I put more potatoes in it to be riced, but that is far less fiddly than actually peeling them. There is also less washing up - one ricer vs a peeler and a masher. I'm sure the ricer is quicker, it certainly requires less exertion than a masher, and the end result is infinitely better than your normal mashed potatoes. Just remember to mash the potatoes back into the pan, which is over a low heat, so the potatoes don't get cold. And you need to add some milk and butter, maybe a sprinkling of salt and pepper, to get the full flavour of the mash.
Ricers are relatively cheap, mine was about £14 but I just saw one in TKMaxx for a fiver, damn! Not bad for something which will change your life.

Crushed roast carrots with cumin and goat's cheese

2012-01-08T02:27:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, these carrots look too good to eat. But eat them I did in this delicious recipe from the Riverford Farm Cook Book. I ate at their restaurant in the South Hams in Devon in summer and odd though it may sound, the tasty and original way they cooked vegetables excited me. Really. Vegetables were not simply boiled or baked marginals making way for the meat star, but took centre stage in their own right. You almost didn't need anything else. There was braised fennel, broad beans and bacon and a potato and mushroom gratin. All enthused with the holiday spirit when we got home we decided to experiment. We tried different ways of eating cauliflower other than with cheese (in soup, roasted!), to braise peas with chicken stock, lettuce and spring onions and best of all this carrot recipe. It is one of my new favourites and it is a great mid-week supper, not as a side dish but as the main event. It is dead easy to cook.

Serves 4 as a side, 2 as a main

Takes 5 mins to prep, 50 mins to cook

750g carrots

4 tbspns olive oil

2 tspns cumin seeds (dry-fried and then ground)

2 tbspns pine nuts (dry-fried)

100g goat's cheese (I've also used Feta)

1 tbspn chopped mint (oregano or marjoram)

good extra virgin olive oil for drizzling

Scrub and trim the carrots, then cut in half lengthways. Roast them with the olive oil for 50 minutes at 180c. They should be tender, lightly browned and slightly caramelised.
Mash them with a fork and mix in the ground cumin. Put on a serving dish with the pinenuts, cheese and herbs. Drizzle with the oil and serve with pitta bread.
Claire says: "I cooked this at the weekend and it was a delicious (and easy) lunch. Roasted carrots, is there anything better? We did it with Feta and it was yum yum."

French onion soup

2012-01-04T15:12:00.000-08:00

So, I had just written that post the other day about vegetable recipes when my husband rang me on his way home from work and said "shall I get anything to go with dinner from the shops?"
And I thought; dinner? What's that? No idea. Oh, wait a sec, I think that's something I'm meant to be involved with. And then real brain connected with blog brain and I realised that despite blogging about vegetable recipes/cooking/feeding your family, there was nothing for tea. Not a thing. I didn't let on, I just said "get some veg". He got onions. We actually had onions, pretty much nothing else, but we had onions, and now we had more.
So, I made French onion soup.
This isn't a quick recipe. Oh no. It's not something you just whip up on a whim. There is a whole lot of chopping involved. If you have a food processor, I'm very happy for you. Unfortunately, I don't, but I do have very onion-y smelling hands.
But they are worth it. The soup was sweet, caramel-y and delicious. In my experience a lack of ingredients can always be made up for by spending time on cooking. This is a Jamie Oliver recipe, but I think it's not dissimilar to every recipe for French onion soup (he calls it English onion soup as he uses Cheddar and sage). It's definitely the best thing to do with two bags of onions. And you see that bread in there? That's brown soda bread. I made that. See, I'm not completely crap.
English Onion Soup with sage and Cheddar
Serves: 8

Start to finish: ages...30 mins chopping, 65 mins simmering, 5 mins under the grill
knob of butter
olive oil
handful of sage leaves
6 cloves of garlic
5 red onions
3 large white onions
3 banana shallots
300g leeks, trimmed and sliced
salt and pepper
8 slices of good quality stale bread - 2cm thick
200g freshly grated Cheddar cheese
2 litres of beef stock
Worcestershire sauce
Put the butter and two glugs of olive oil, the sage (minus 8 leaves for garnish) and garlic into a big pan. Stir it all and add the onions, shallots and leeks. Season with salt and pepper. Place a lid on the pan, leaving it slightly ajar and cook slowly for 30 mins, without colouring the vegetables too much. Then take the lid off for the next 20 minutes so the onions become soft and golden. Stir occasionally so that nothing catches on the bottom. When your onions and leeks are lovely and silky, add the stock. Boil and turn the heat down and simmer for another 10-15 mins.

Toast your bread on both sides. Turn on grilll to max. Ladle soup in to heatproof serving bowls on a baking tray. Tear toasted bread over each bowl so it fits like a lid. Dunk the bread a bit, if you want. Sprinkle with grated cheddar and drizzle a little Worcestershire sauce.
Dress your reserved sage leaves with some olive oil and place on top of each slice of bread. Put the baking tray under the grill, melt the cheese till bubbling, but make sure it doesn't burn. Then remove from grill and serve. Yum yum. Red wine not obligatory (we didn't, sigh, it bein' Jan and all) but it would be nice.

2012 - The Year of The Vegetable

2012-01-03T08:37:00.000-08:00

Christmas was brilliant this year. And not just because of the over-zealous LED fairy lights that lit up our Christmas tree. We had an idyllic time with family and friends, but after 10 days of over-indulgence, I'm kind of glad it's over.
With Mr McDonald back at work, and the food in the fridge back to its normal spartan self, it's goodbye to mince pies for breakfast, Christmas pudding for lunch (as a main course), and well, we still have loads of chocolate, so I won't rule it out as a staple for tea.
January is traditionally the month when you decide to give up all the things which make life worth living, such as booze, decent food etc. But I have never really felt the urge, always figuring that January is so drear anyway, why make it worse? But Christmas this year was so decadent, so fuelled by booze and rich food, that for the first time ever I feel the urge to detox.
So January 2012 heralds in a new, abstemious era, which, knowing me, will be heralded out again in a couple of days. So far: no alcohol has passed my lips for TWO days! I know. That's pretty much a record. And I may manage a third, but I don't want to push myself too hard. And while looking at the blog's stats *pushes glasses up nose to read clipboard better* I notice that one of our most read stories is a piece on non-alcoholic drinks for grown ups, so I reckon you lot may be on the wagon too.
I haven't eaten much meat since New Year's Eve either. Except some liver which is less meat and more medicine (bloody delicious medicine at that, chicken liver parfait, so yum and bursting with iron). And that leads me to make a Crumbs announcement. This month we are all about The Vegetable (that's a romanesco cauliflower pictured above). Lucy grandly declared at Christmas, with her mouth stuffed full of turkey, that "2012 will be the year of the vegetable". And at this time of year it seems a very sensible option, in terms of health, wealth, and the environment. So all our January recipes are going to be delicious vegetarian recipes.
But, as ever, we don't know all the answers. If you've got a great veggie recipe you're dying to share, just whack your blog post's url in our linky below(I know, I know, we've got a linky! Who'd have thunk it?) and spread the word. If you don't have a blog, just a stonking veggie recipe, send it to me (claire.m.mcdonald@hotmail.co.uk) and if I can I'll make it and blog about it.

Happy Christmas

2011-12-24T15:56:00.000-08:00

It's a quarter to midnight. The children are asleep, the presents are finally wrapped, the bread sauce is done and I swear I saw four orange lights fly through the sky tonight, as though on the corners of a square (really I did, around 5.15pm, s.e. London, anyone got any ideas? I can only think it was Santa).
This is just to wish you all a very very happy Christmas. We hope it's everything you wished for. See you in the New Year.
Claire & Lucy xxx

On the eighth day of Christmas... a herd of reindeer cakes

2011-12-22T06:46:00.001-08:00

In ten minutes time I have a herd of not reindeer, but 3 and 5 year olds descending on the house for the children's annual Christmas tea. The party is now so firmly ensconced in family tradition that I can't pull out of it, even though at this point in time I want to, it obviously being insane to entertain little people three days before Christmas when none of the presents are wrapped, nor the food shopping thought about, let alone bought. Anyway, deep breaths. And some more. In through the nose, out through the mouth. That's better.
I made these little Rudolph cakes this afternoon. They are simply shop-bought chocolate fairy cakes (I had planned to make my own, but best laid plans etc) with chocolate covered pretzels from M&S stuck in to the icing as antlers and dyed marzipan blobs and silver balls for eyes and noses. The girls think they are the bees knees and I reckon they let me off the hook for buying everything else bar the ham sandwiches. Happy Christmas. Lucy
Claire says: "Wow! I'm impressed. I though this was going to another one of those 'look at this other blog, they had a great idea, and I'm going to make it, really I am' kind of posts. Instead you really did make these. And take the pic. And use the pretzels as reindeer antlers. Inspired!"

On the seventh day of Christmas... we thought about parsnips

2011-12-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

I love a roast parsnip. The crispier and chewier the better. You always need to cook more than you think you need as they have a habit of shrinking when cooked. I think about 1kg for six people is a good rule of thumb. If you have time take the nasty, woody core out with a knife, but generally you can just peel and top and tail them before cutting into wedge shapes. I've tried mine lots of different ways - honey, maple syrup or simply plain - but the one recipe I return to again and again is cooking them with a Parmesan and thyme coating. Delicious.
I'd advise parboiling the wedges for about five minutes, before tossing them with a dessert spoon of thyme leaves and 100g of finely-grated Parmesan. Then tip the coated wedges carefully into a roasting tin containing two tablespoons of hot olive oil and roast for up around 40 minutes. Toss them occasionally to stop them sticking.

On the, ahem, 6th day of Christmas: clementine drizzle cake

2011-12-20T08:17:00.000-08:00

I love a drizzle cake, me. I think it maybe genetic, as both my children love it too, as does my sister and her two daughters.
Anyway, this year we are having Christmas at hers (hurrah!) and rather than do a Christmas Cake she suggested I do a lemon drizzle as the kids would prefer it. I know. Mental. I told her it was RIDICULOUS. Lemon drizzle? For Christmas? Anyway, she's quite persuasive, so I'm doing a drizzle cake for Christmas. But, just to add some kind of Christmas angle I'm going to make a clementine drizzle cake. Inspired? Me? Ok, maybe a little bit.
I've had a trial run and I think it works well. Admittedly you don't get the mouth-puckering sourness of a lemon drizzle as clementines are sweeter, but the flavours are lovely and for a seasonal twist I think it's just the ticket.
Clementine drizzle cake
Start to finish:
Serves: 8 slices
200g soft butter
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs
50g plain flour
125g ground almonds
zest of 2 clementines
Drizzle
Juice of three clementines
3 tbsp caster sugar
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Line a 20-22cm cake tin, or make your life easier and use a silicone one. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then slowly whisk in the eggs, then the flour and then the almonds and lemon zest.
Put it all in the tin and bake for 40 mins. Meanwhile mix the juice of three clementines with the 3tbsp caster sugar for the drizzle. Remove cake from oven and prick all over with a chopstick or skewer and drizzle the mixture over the top. Leave in tin to cool.

Book review: Angel Adoree's The Vintage Tea Party

2011-12-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

In another life I would have been a glamorous red-headed cake baking hostess who could whip up a macaroon in her sleep. In another life I would be Angel Adoree.
Rather than dishevelledly stumbling through the day with a smear of Weetabix on my shoulder, I would prance in my high heels and chignon, cavorting with similarly vintage-clad chaps. I can but dream. In fact, I can do a little more than that, I can read.
Angel Adoree's Vintage Tea Party cook book is an invitation to her world. It's beautifully illustrated with pen and ink drawings, as well as photos that have been styled within an inch of their lives. Chocolate toast is cut in to heart shapes and displayed on a toaster/candlestick, while a painted monocled crow looks on. It's difficult to describe but it is beautiful. Have a look here to see what really goes on inside.
Not only are there recipes for lemon scones with lavender cream and pork and lemon quail Scotch eggs, there are also Dr Cottonbottom's instructions on how to make your own Art Deco-inspired aprons, a section on how to decorate china, how to tie the perfect headscarf, and the best way to put on false eyelashes.
Who to buy it for: women (obviously, not many men I know wear false eyelashes or headscarves, but maybe I should branch out?) who like to dream. I think it's the perfect present for a sister, sister-in-law, or niece who hasn't got children. It's quite aspirational, showing you a different life, and one that's probably a bit off limits if you have children and are over 35. But if there is a young woman in your life, this is a great and beautiful book which I've spent several hours looking at.

Review: The Silver Spoon

2011-12-19T07:08:00.000-08:00

Little did I realise when I was contacted by the publishers and asked if I wanted to review The Silver Spoon, that it was a cookbook of such pedigree. First printed in 1950 it is now the most successful cookbook in Italy and a very popular wedding present.
Originally a select group of cooking experts were commissioned to collect hundreds of traditional recipes from around the country. Since then it has been constantly updated, most recently this year, and now has more than 2,000 recipes in 1,500 pages, which could explain why it weighs a ton.
It is the definitive Italian cookbook and with that many recipes there are sure to be several (hundred) which will tickle your fancy. What I also like is that while many of the recipes are so simple and delicious sounding, they use very few ingredients, most of which you already have in your fridge. Although there are some exceptions, one recipe I looked at required "pounded pork fat".
It is set out in an almost encyclopaedic way, with explanations of the differences between canapes, crostini and tartines. There are illustrations showing what each cut of meat is called in English and Italian, plus the best way to cook them. There are prosaically named dishes, such as Potatoes and Onions Baked in an Earthenware Dish which have been translated from the more poetic-sounding Italian. If ever you are unsure what to do with those globe artichokes you so enthusiastically bought from the farmer's market, there are 18 eminently do-able recipes for them here. To be honest, if you could only have one recipe book on your shelf, then this would be it.
Who to buy it for: The Italian food aficianado, the novice chef, basically anyone who cooks at home and wants to learn.

On the fourth day of Christmas I dreamt about this cranberry and almond wreath

2011-12-18T06:12:00.001-08:00

Up until yesterday, I thought Christmas wreaths came in only the door-hanging variety, but then I found this recipe on possibly my favourite food blog - thekitchn. It is part of the brilliant apartmenttherapy design blog - on which I spend far too much time admiring other people's homes, that are far tidier and more stylish than mine will ever be.
It is a sweet bread wreath stuffed with cranberries and almonds that the writer - Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan - has made with her mum (and now her five-year-old daughter too) every Christmas since she was a little girl. I have to confess this is her picture not mine, as I've not made it yet, but the 50-odd comments on her blog suggest it is pretty easy to make, although perhaps more labour-intensive than I am used to. I plan to make it on Boxing Day morning with Claire, whilst our husbands look after the children. We will eat it for brunch, possibly after a riverside walk in the snow. Well, that's the dream.

Book review: Ginger Pig Meat Book

2011-12-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Ginger Pig is the platonic ideal of butchers. They raise their animals on the Yorkshire Moors and sell the meat through their London shops. When it comes to traceability, you don't get much better than that. Unfortunately you can't buy it online, but if you want a flavour of what really good meat should be, you can buy their recipe book through Amazon.
It is a beautiful, beautiful book. Making meat look good in photos is tricky, but this book manages it. The photography is stunning and mixes images of cooked meat with the living animal. The shot of the soft downy ear of a Tamworth pig makes you want to stroke the page (or actually stroke the page, as I did). Wintry ferns against a cold white sky give a sense of what those Yorkshire Moors are like. A tattooed butcher holds up an impressive cut of raw beef to the photographer, a farmer feeds a newborn lamb with a baby bottle, an old farmer carries one of his geese. Then there are the pictures of the cooked food; Barnsley lamb chops with garlic and anchovies; beef bourguignon pie; mid-week meat loaf with spiced tomato sauce. This book doesn't shy away from where meat comes from, it celebrates it.
The recipes are simple, delicious-sounding and rely on good quality meat. With only a few ingredients in each (Barnsley chops: chops, garlic, anchovy, rosemary and that's it) you want the meat to sing. And that's the point. With good meat you don't need to do much, it really is the fastest of food. There are definitely quite a few recipes I can see will become staples for my family, but in a way the recipes are the least of it. The book is divided up into months of the year, and each chapter is introduced with an eloquently written passage on what happens in the farm at that time. We learn about lambing in March and how ewes who have three or four lambs may struggle to support them, so one may be taken and given to a ewe whose lamb was stillborn. To stop the bereaved ewe from rejecting the newborn, they rub the lamb with the ewe's afterbirth, if that doesn't work the skin from the stillborn is removed and placed over the living lamb. Who knew there was so much gorey drama in a lamb chop?
The first part of the book is given over to informing us about meat, what characterises the different breeds, how to choose a decent bit of meat, what the different labelling systems mean. Buying meat can be a very complicated process and it can seem easier to ignore the ethics of it all and just buy the stuff you're faced with at the supermarket. This is a great book for demystifying it.
Who to buy it for? Anyone who cares about their food and eats meat. Typically meat is seen as the preserve of men and perhaps this book might bring a lot of happiness to a carniverous uncle or husband. But I'm a girl and I LOVE it.

On the third day of Christmas.... we panicked

2011-12-17T01:58:00.000-08:00

Today is the 17th December. That means Christmas is in, uh, eight days. Meanwhile we are only on day three of our 12 days of Christmas special. Whoops. Maths was never my strong point, but even I can work out that we are going to run out of time. We hope you'll forgive us. We've been too busy drinking eggnog. So in homage to our favourite seasonal song, today we are going to blog the most popular recipes from LAST CHRISTMAS, in the hope that you won't be once bitten, twice shy. Please don't keep your distance, because you still catch our eye.
Ummm, anyway, to recap here are some of last year's most popular festive recipes. These ever-so-easy, home-made decorations still have pride of place on our tree. We will be serving these goat's cheese and onion marmalade canapes again on Christmas morning with this bling bling champagne/cava cocktail.
Aunty Joy's Christmas Cake is the fruit cake to end all fruit cakes. It is quick to make and delicious to eat with port and cheese or simply on its own. This post on making marzipan fruit with children was one of our most popular from last year and we are going to get rolling later this afternoon. If you've people coming on Boxing Day this slow cook pork shoulder is a great crowdpleaser. And if you, like me, are stressed out about the thought of peeling all those potatoes for Christmas lunch, then don't. Boil in the bag rice is a great alternative. JOKE! Well, kind of you could still cheat. And finally, we love a sprout, but no one more than my husband. He is a connoisseur. Read his recipe here.

My week in food...

2011-12-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

This "my week in food..." is a sporadic post me and Lucy do when we have stuff to talk about. Most weeks are "Monday, picked Weetabix off floor. Tuesday, scrubbed Weetabix off chair. Wednesday, discovered blow torch is good at removing Weetabix off table." It's not that interesting.
But sometimes it is quite interesting. Like last week. This is what I did:
Monday: Got phone call from school to say that my four year old had discovered the "snow" on the creative table was salt. He loves salt and with no mummy around to stop him, it was like Christmas come early. He tucked in with a teaspoon and was promptly sick. I'm hoping he's learnt his lesson. But I doubt it.
Tuesday: This was a bit more fun. I headed out to Piccadilly, to the Athenaeum's new pudding parlour. It was perfect for a bit of girly hedonism, and I met up with fellow bloggers for a chat and champagne. Delicious morsels of pudding were arranged artfully on a large table, and waiters floated around offering dessert wine or champagne. As fellow-blogger Sarah from MaisonCupcake said, "it's the hen party for the people who won't go to the hen party". I tucked into the chocolate mousse, which was contained in a chocolate bowl. I don't know who first figured out that the bowl was chocolate - it must have been a bit of a risk, taking that first bite. There were champagne jellies, fruit tarts, lemon meringue, mince pies and marshmallow pops. Every pudding was bite-size, making it possible to tuck in with one hand, while holding a wine glass in the other - a hugely important and underrated element of a sophisticated night out. The whole caboodle was organised by Janis from the Really Kid Friendly blog, and Laura from The London Baby, who are both always on the money when it comes to great new things for us to do around town. And thanks to Jen from Jenography for photo above, I stole it from her site as I was far too busy eating to take pix on the night.
Wednesday: Tonight dinner was from Asda. Yup. Doesn't sound hugely alluring does it? But when I say dinner consisted of Wagyu burgers, it does sound a little more interesting. I'm not entirely sure these Wagyu cattle were massaged by geishas as great Wagyu beef should be, but they did taste a lot nicer than your typical supermarket beefburger.

Thursday: Mr McDonald and I hit the town. Twice a year we go out for a really delicious meal in town. As it was a bit close to Christmas we decided not to book anything - too many office Christmas parties. We started off at J Sheekeys Oyster bar in Covent Garden for oysters and champagne (a glass of champagne and 6 oysters for £17) and just couldn't leave. It was so gorgeous, with mirror panels, leather banquettes and stools at the bar, we ended up ordering potted trout and smoked haddock rarebit to keep us going. But the real star of the show was ta da! The wine. Amazing. I do like a glass of wine, but to be honest, I'm not that bothered about what it is. But this was different, I ended up sharing mine with my husband excitedly saying things like "can you taste the smoky berries? I think it's got tones of cinnamon." I never say stuff like that normally, but it was D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S. And about six quid a glass, so nothing hideously expensive, just a spot-on wine list. We ended up in Polpo, Soho, downing Sgroppino, which despite sounding like an STD, is a sorbet limoncello served with two straws. Yum.
Friday: This was the night of the Christmas school fair. There were biscuits, there was reindeer poo (at the bargain price of 50p a packet), there were chocolate santa bars, snaffled out of the kids bags of loot from Father Christmas. I don't remember there being much in the way of nutrients. That's Christmas for you. Claire

The joke's on us

2011-12-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

I know this is the moment you've all been waiting for. The winner of our jokes for chocolate competition. I know you are not supposed to laugh at your own jokes but I genuinely don't know any one funnier than myself. Oscar Wilde had nothing on me. But my husband said it would be bad form to award the chocolates to myself. He's such a spoilsport.
I loved the fact that although you weren't asked, many of you made food-themed jokes. Like Susanna: What cheese would you use to tell someone to cover their horse? Masc-ar-pone. And Gill: Knock knock  Who's there?  Lettuce  Lettuce who?  Let us in and we'll tell you!
I am embarrassed to say that it took me six readings and the help of lots of tweeters before I got Jo the Hunter's joke What sort of cheese is not your cheese? Nacho cheese.  And although I was tempted in an emperor's new clothes kind of way to give her the prize, I didn't. Sorry. Ben Hall gets a special recommendation for the most revoltingly scatological joke: Why did the baker's hands smell? Because he kneaded a poo. And I particularly liked the way Ruth segued humour with children, nativity and "Baby Cheeses". And this from Helen made me LOL (first time, I've used that acronym, I feel I've crossed a rubicon) I found an easy recipe for cookies. It said put all ingredients in bowl and beat it. There must have been something wrong with this recipe. When I got back, everything was the same as when I left.
But the winner was chosen not for the quality of the joke but because the teller - Cassia - is a teetotaller chocaholic and frankly I feel sorry for anyone who has to cope with Christmas Day sober. So.... What's the fastest cake in the world?  Scone.  I know, I apologise. It's TERRIBLE. Pathetic, by her own admission, but needs must. A box of Hotel Chocolat chocs are winging their way to you, Cass. Just don't forget to pick out the liquers.

Gingerbread House

2011-12-12T05:58:00.000-08:00

Check out this work of art. Not made by me, obviously. Or Lucy. As you may have guessed, we're more Ikea-kit kind of girls. But this example may convert us (next year...). It was made by Helen Nathan, author of the Flossie Crums baking books, and she swears it's really easy, with not a piping bag in sight.
Those are mini-Shreddies on the roof by the way, and I love the penguins. Here she gives us the benefit of her wisdom and several crafty shortcuts to making a house which looks like this.
When my eldest daughter was three, she and I were flicking through a Christmas magazine and she spotted the most wonderful gingerbread house. "Mummy I want one of those" she said.
Now some women 'do yoga'. I bake. So the candy covered gingerbread house that had 'real' glass windows made from crushed up boiled peppermints and snowmen and penguins in the garden didn't fill me with dread, just excitement.
Molly and I set to work. Dean Martin and Fred Astaire were singing 'white Christmas' in the sitting room, the smell of freshly made gingerbread filled the air and I stood there, covered in icing sugar, feeling like a wonderful and rather smug mother.
But DISASTER! Because we had constructed the house before the gingerbread had had time to fully cool, the foundations collapsed. I returned to the kitchen to find the walls had caved in, the snowmen were smashed and Pingu was headless.
Now, why submit ourselves to this kind of trauma when Ikea sell a perfectly acceptable gingerbread house kit? I agree, but the smell and taste of one you've made yourself is something altogether different.
This year my three girls, Molly (now 14), Rosie and Lottie made the gingerbread house pictured (with a little gluing help from me). It’s now been a Nathan tradition for 11 years (one of the best things about being a mum is creating your own traditions) and we have honed our skills and now can offer you the cheats guide…
Gingerbread house recipe - tip number one, read this through all the way to make sure you've got everything you need!
Ingredients
This is enough to make gingerbread for a house which is about 20 x 25 x 20 cms. If it's your first time I'd suggest making a small house (so halve the quantities I've given you) and in the years to come, as you progress, get bigger and even consider adding an extension!
250g unsalted butter
200g dark muscovado sugar
7 tbsp golden syrup
700g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 tsp ground ginger
1 x 500g ready-rolled icing
Edible glitterMini-shreddies
Before you start you need to cover a board with icing to act as a base. Choose your chopping board, dampen it, and unroll the ready-to-roll icing over it, until not board is visible.
Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough.
Leave it to rest in the fridge for about an hour.
Download a template from the internet and cut it out. Ensure the front and back of the house are the same size, that the two sides of the houe are identical, as are the two sections of roof.
Now here is cheat tip number two. Only make this house if you have silicone baking sheets or are willing to buy some. What you don't want to be doing is having to transfer each large slab of gingerbread to a greased tin. If you have silicone sheets you can roll the dough directly onto it. There are six house panels and the chances are you won't have tins or an oven big enough to cook them all at once, so you will probably have to bake in relays. Divide your dough into six, roll out the first piece on the silicone to the thickness of two £1 coins and cut around the template. Pop in oven and repeat with the five remaining balls of dough. Roll out about a sixth of the dough to the thickness of two £1 coins. Repeat with remaining dough, each time adding the trimmings from the previous ball, until you have two side walls, a front and back wall and two roof panels.
Bake all the sections (except the front and back) for 12 mins or until firm and just a little darker at the edges. Leave to cool for a few minutes to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
For the front and back of the house, bake for 8 minutes, then where you have cut out windows, fill the spaces with crushed up boiled peppermints and pop back in the oven for a further 5 minutes. The boiled sugar sweets will melt and form perfect panes of glass. Do not remove from silicone until completely cold or the 'glass' will crack.
Now, go wild with your decorations, You need to decorate the panels before you build the house. My kids like shreddies and edible Flossie Crums fairy glitter on their roof, but flakes of almonds look beautiful too.
Now, to the construction. Don't do this until everything is completely cool - best to wait until the next day. Most people use royal icing. But here's cheat number two. Ready-to-roll icing can be rolled into sausage shapes and used to construct the house, no piping bags needed. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then roll the ready-to-roll into sausages along the bottom of each main panel (ie not the roof yet), and along the sides of each panel and put up your four walls. Allow to dry, ideally for a few hours or over night.
Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on. You may need to hold these on firmly for a few minutes until the icing starts to dry. Dry completely, ideally overnight, again. Now decorate the garden. We used our ready to roll icing, which is just like play dough but tastes delicious.
The girls made penguins, snowmen, little presents and even some little sheep.
Finally, we have a gallery of cakes on the Flossie Crums web site and we'd love you to upload any of your creations, to share with other cake lovers.
Happy baking and happy Christmas!

On the second day of Christmas... we went crackers for mince pies

2011-12-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

I know it probably gets very boring, someone telling you, that you can't beat a homemade blankety blank, but sometimes it is true. And such is the case with mince pies. I know all the foodies are raving about Heston Blumenthal's ones from Waitrose that come with a rather clinical-sounding-but-all-the-rage pine sugar (bleugh) but I still think that you're better off making your own. All you need is some shop-bought pastry and some shop-bought mince meat. An oven. And a pair of hands. I like using filo pastry as it low in fat (these pies are about 4g each compared to about 11 in a normal one) and you can fashion them into Christmas cracker shapes. I know I am a genius. I made that one up all by myself! Kirstie Allsop watch out! They take minutes to make, 15 to bake.

Four sheets shop bought filo pastry

2 tablespoons mince meat

1 tablespoon melted butter

icing sugar to decorate

Makes: 8

Takes: About 20 mins including cooking time

Take four pieces of shop-bought filo pastry. Lay two side by side on a work surface (I didn't bother flouring it, as the sheets are there for a matter of minutes and don't seem to stick) and brush the top of each with butter. Layer another sheet on top and then - with scissors - cut each sheet into four. Put a heaped teaspoon of mince slightly to one side of each small square, distributing evenly into a line but leaving about a cm at each end. Roll the pastry over until you have a roll shape. Pinch the pastry in where the mince ends to create a Christmas cracker shape. Put them on a lined baking sheet and cook for 15 or so minutes at 180c until golden brown. Allow to cool slightly before eating, ideally with brandy butter. Yum. Lucy
Claire says: "I love mince pies, and am very fortunate to live up the road from a little bakery which makes delicious ones at 50p each, which is enough to stop you gorging, but little enough to allow you to indulge. If I didn't, I would definitely make my own. Well, make my own in the same way Lucy makes hers. From a quick look around the internet, Sainsbury's Taste the Difference mincemeat, and Waitrose own are meant to be the best this year."

On the first day of Christmas.... I made Jamie Oliver's Get Ahead Gravy

2011-12-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

In the run-up to December 25th we will be posting our version of the 12 days of Christmas. Recipes that we've tried and tested, so you don't have to. First up.... gravy

Gravy can make or break a roast. But what a faff. I find it the most stressful part of the meal. You're hot. You're bothered. The potatoes are perfect. The meat is resting and all you want to do is sit down and eat, but instead you have to make some blinking gravy. It can be touch and go - at least in my house. Sometimes it is perfect, other times greasy/lumpy or scant. So for the last few years I've bought gravy for the Christmas roast. Cook do a great turkey one, but this year I spotted a Jamie Oliver in one of his seemingly ubiquitous Christmas recipe specials. It is called Get Ahead Gravy and I made mine this morning and am just waiting for it to cool before freezing it for the big day. You basically roast some chicken wings with onions, carrrots, celery (the holy trinity for flavour) with some star anise, rosemary and sage. Add flour, water, simmer and there you have it... a stress-free Christmas gravy.

10 chicken wings

2 carrots

2 peeled onions

2 celery sticks

2 large rosemary stalks

6 sage leaves

2 star anise

salt

pepper

olive oil

60 ml port or sherry (optional)

2 tablespoons cranberry sauce

Start to finish: 2 hours, but only about 15 min is prep

Serves: one turkey

Roughly chop the celery, carrots and onions. Put them in a roasting tray with some salt and pepper, star anise, sage leaves, rosemary and the chicken wings. If you bash the wings up a bit first the gravy's flavour will be deeper. Add a good slug of olive oil and roast for 1 hour at 180c. Take out of the oven and put the tray over a medium heat on the hob. Add 3 or 4 tablespoons of plain flour which will thicken the gravy and soak up the fat. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring all the time. Then add 2 litres of hot water, boil vigorously for 10 minutes and then simmer for 30 minutes. Add the port or sherry if using.
Pour the mixture into a sieve over a bowl and push as much as you can through the holes. You should be left with a deep, thick, rich gravy. (Just a point - on the Jamie Oliver website a few people commented they didn't like the star anise flavour - I do but leave it out if you're not keen/sure) Allow your gravy to cool before freezing for the big day. It will then need finishing off just before serving the turkey. While the turkey is resting, take the roasting tin and spoon off any excess fat. Then pour the gravy in with all those delicious meat juices and crusty bits and heat through. Add the cranberry sauce and there you have it - stress-free Christmas gravy.
Lucy

Free chocolate..... really.

2011-12-07T01:43:00.000-08:00

For some people Christmas is a time of contemplation. A time to think about baby Jesus. A time to ponder world peace. A time to try to be a better person. For us it is mostly about a tin of Cadbury's Roses, bread sauce sandwiches (so wrong, but so right) and those little orange and lemon jelly slices. Contemplation is good, but contemplation whilst eating your fourth Hazel Whirl BEFORE breakfast is far better. I some times think the world would be a happier place if we all ate more chocolate. So we have some to give away. A posh box worth about £25 from Hotel Chocolat. So just this once, we are breaking our no competition rule. All you have to do is send us your favourite joke. Make us laugh. Go on.
What with the economic crisis, war in the Middle East, and the thought that this time next year Newt Gingrich could be the most powerful man in the world, frankly we need a giggle. The winner gets the chocolates.

I'll start off...

A boss wants to motivate his staff so he puts up a sign saying "THINK" above the basin in the staff room. Upon returning he finds a new sign above the dispenser saying "THOAP"

Boom, boom.

Lucy

Christmas carnival

2011-12-06T00:32:00.000-08:00

People often ask us to put more pix of ourselves up on the blog. Being modest young ladies, we're reluctant, but after a successful blogging strategy meeting in Rio, we decided to throw caution to the wind et voila! I'm the one on the left, Lucy's on the right, and Knackered Mother is in the red hat at the back, suffering from a rare attack of modesty and covering her right cheek (facial cheek, obv, those pants left little to the imagination).
While over there we thought it would be a good idea to do a Britmums blogging carnival over here, so ta da! Here it is.
We asked fellow bloggers to send over links to any posts they had on a Christmas theme and the response was immense. Take a look for yourself.
Red Ted Art's Blog
This is a brilliant post from Maggie on making edible Christmas ornaments. She makes rose, orange and lemon flavoured biscuits with her children, and comes up with brilliant tips on cooking with children. Give them their own bowl - it might seem like more washing up, but it's worth it in the long run. Hold back on sprinkles, they'll just pour them everywhere. Save some of the dough for when they are in bed and make some slightly more presentable decorations when they are asleep.

The Family Friendly Net
Online Advent Calendars - who'd of thought it? But what a great idea and this is a round up of the best ones.

How to Cook Good Food
Christmas pudding truffles. Do I need to say more? What a brilliant combination of flavours. If I weren't here writing this, I'd be off making these. Yum.

Knackered Mother's Wine Club
Tales of what wine to serve when your neighbours "swing" by...

The Mum Blog
Click here if you want to see an 89 year old Dutch lady making sassy and stylish look really easy, plus her fantastic recipe for crunchy shortbread stars to hang on your tree.

Science Sparks
This is a brilliant blog run by two science nuts, one of whom is a science teacher. They want to encourage young children to question and think. This post takes a closer look at Christmas trees, and how they work. Why are they evergreen? Why don't the needles fall off?

Tiger Tales
This one contains pictures of six week old baby in Santa outfit. Asleep. So cute.

Mother Wife Me
A wry look at the art of Christmas card sending, who to keep on the list, who to knock off. Plus the eternal question; where's best to buy presents - the High Street or online?

Farmer's Girl Christmas
If you haven't made your Christmas pudding yet (what do you mean you're buying one?) take a look here for a great recipe.

Jenography
Thinking of going ice skating this Christmas? Check out Jen's great review.

Serial Crafter
Take a look at these specially customised, beautifully made Christmas stockings.

Mummy's Busy World
This week the busy world gets really busy and make their Christmas decorations.

MummyMummyMum
Another great recipe for gingerbread stars to hang from the Christmas tree.

Little Sheep Learning
This post is invaluable if you have a child with special needs. It talks about all things you need to think about before the festive period begins. Will the relaxixng of usual routines disrupt your child, do you need to reschedule appointments, and can you teach your child about the magic of Christmas?

The Good Life Bloggers
Find out why recycling is a bit of a cop out, and reducing your waste is key.

Lucky Lady

2011-12-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you remember but a while back I mentioned competitions and how we never do them, but we do like to spread the love. So when someone offers us something, frankly AMAZING, to offer our readers, we find it hard to say no. Because dear reader. We want to give something back to you. We're nice like that. We just ask that you leave a comment now and then, or tweet us (@crumbsfood, @clairemaccy) or leave us a note on Facebook, just so we know that you exist. And once we know you exist we just give you stuff for free. Yep, it's that easy.
So far we've given a great Foreman and Field hamper, plus a large amount of porridge oats. And this time, well this time it's a biggy. We're giving away another fantastic Foreman and Field hamper for Christmas. It contains amongst other things 200g of London Cure Sliced Smoked Salmon, some Keta Caviar, a Kelly Bronze Turkey which serves 8-10, plus chestnuts, the most delectable bacon I have ever tasted, stuffing, chipolatas plust 500g of Colston Basset Stilton. There is also a selection of Knorr stock, because those nice people at Knorr are the ones who are giving us this stuff to give away. I have no idea why, but I'm not complaining. There are more wonderful things in the hamper, but I won't go on as it just gets depressing for those of us who haven't won.
So...*drum roll*...who has won?
A certain Ms Pattie. This lady is the author of not one, but two brilliant blogs, and she is great at keeping in touch with us through comments and tweets. Thanks Janice!
And the moral of the story for everyone else out there? Drop us a line...

Turkey and all the trimmings

2011-12-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. My name is Claire and I've never cooked a proper Christmas Lunch. I've dabbled, but I've never done the whole shabang for kids and grown ups. And, you know what? I don't think I'm alone. I think there's loads of us out there, who had kids in our thirties, and when the children were young we were off the hook as we went to our parents for lunch. But as our kids get older the turkey baton (or drumstick) is handed down from one generation to the next.
I have reached the ripe old age of *muffled coughing* without ever having to do it, and this year is no different. My ~~poor~~ lovely sister is doing it, I just need to bring over the prepped veg and even I can do that.
But I've been feeling a bit guilty about it all. Maybe less womanly. What kind of mum doesn't know what to do with turkey giblets? Can I really call myself a mother if I've never even forced Brussels sprouts on a large group of people? I have my doubts. So when Tesco Real Food challenged me to make an entire three course Christmas lunch for four for £40, I thought it was a good chance to prove my womanhood.
My menu was...
Roast turkey (£15) with cranberry, chestnut, thyme and bacon stuffing (£4.50).
Served with roast potatoes (£1.60), balsamic red cabbage (£1.83), shredded Brussels sprouts with bacon and pine nuts (£2.80), and bay bread sauce (£2.65).
***

Clementine sorbet (£2.80)
***
Homemade chocolate truffles (£5.91) served with coffee (£2.19)
Grand total: £39.28
My priority was to have an organic or free range turkey and the only ones like that available in mid-November at Tesco was this, so I had two. Then all the other dishes had to fit into budget around that.
I like to gorge myself as much as the next person, but personally (and it's my Christmas lunch so I can do what I want, hurrah!) I get a bit bored of starters and want to attack the main event asap, so I skipped them and did two light puds instead. This meant we not only stayed in budget but have also remained this side of obese. I do love a Christmas pud though, so I'd suggest having that after a leftovers dinner.
The other criteria for making this was that I had to make it on a weekend when my husband was away. He planned to get back an hour before lunch was scheduled, so the meal had to be made with a 2 year old and a 4 year old in tow. Ah yes, the joys of cooking with kids! The only way to do this and remain sane was to prep everything the night before and just cook it on the day. This proved remarkably workable, and the prep sans kids took 3 hours, and the cooking (with children present) was just as and when. The only bit that got fraught was that hour before serving, and in my experience that is always a bit of a nightmare. Fortunately husband was back by then, and I could have a meltdown all by myself while he played with the kids in the garden.

Once I'd prepared everything (and photographed it) we all sat down and ate what was actually a delicious and remarkably stress-free Christmas lunch. And I feel all woman again *adjusts bra*.
I'll post the recipes and timings a bit closer to Christmas.

Eating my way around Tokyo. It's a hard life.

2011-12-01T02:53:00.000-08:00

Last month I spent 48 hours in Tokyo with a team of M&S product developers. Their job is scouting the world to bring back the latest food trends. I know! They get paid to eat! Abroad! Despite dropping loads of hints, they've still not offered me a job. The article is in today's Times, but non-subscribers, can read it here - for free!
If I had to choose a list of things to do before I die, eating sea snail would probably not feature in the top 1000, but when you’re on assignment in Japan with the team of product developers who decide what the UK is going to eat not just this year, but the next and probably the one after that, anything goes.
Sea snail – or abalone as it is often called - was just one of many unusual foods I ate during a tasting trip in Tokyo with Marks and Spencer's trend-hunters.
Over the course of two days I ate melt-in-your-mouth Wagyu beef washed down with sparkling sake, enjoyed a Japanese tea ceremony, tried a wasabi KitKat, bought coffee from a street vending machine and ate sushi fresh off the boat at a counter in the world’s biggest fish market,Tsukiji.
Members of M&S’s 30-strong product development team regularly travel the world to find – and potentially bring home – the latest fashions in food and packaging.
Product developer Lucy Clark says: ‘Cosmopolitan cities like Tokyo are brilliant places to visit for ideas - they’re like a microcosm of what the country has to offer. At M&S we aspire to lead not follow, and this means bringing or creating something completely new to the customer. Travelling is an incredibly effective way of filling up our brains with the building blocks for real innovation.”
Former director of the Michelin food guide, Jean-Luc Naret, calls it “the world capital of gastronomy“ so it is no surprise that chefs and foodies flock there for inspiration.
The Japanese are food-obsessed. Tokyo has more Michelin starred restaurants (in 2011 there were 266 – 14 of which had three stars) and quality food halls than any other city in the world. Yes, that includes London, New York and Paris. Where else could you buy a packet of butter -Echire- for ten pounds at a shop that sold nothing else? Yup, that’s Japan.
Retail analysts regard M&S food researchers as Europe’s best and they are nothing if not committed. During our 48 hours they ate everything from prawn head tempura (crunchy and delicious), wasabi chocolates (rich but tangy), a yuzu éclair (sweet and citrusy) to sea urchins (never again), fried lotus root (light and crispy) and a clam the size of my fist (delicious).
Dishes are shared out and chosen because they are either a speciality or pertinent to research. Even though something as outlandish as sea snail would never make it in to an M&S store (abalone Kiev anyone?) the team believes nothing ventured, nothing gained. We even discussed what the cod sperm we saw for sale at Tsukiji market would taste like. Thankfully no one suggested trying it – though I fleetingly worried they might.
Julia Catton, the innovation director at Kinnerton Confectionary- one of M&S’s main suppliers, travelled with the team. She says: “These trips are all about inspiration. You won’t necessarily be able to use everything you see on the day – but you never know when it could inspire you further down the line. I think of it as creating a food library of flavours and textures to draw from in the future. It helps us to be different.”
What struck me was how different real Japanese food was compared to the sushi or chicken katsu I eat at Prêt a Manger, Yo Sushi! or indeed M&S. The team says the biggest challenge is striking a balance between authenticity and the British palate. Everything has to be filtered through a customer’s eyes.
A good example is that sushi is now a high street best-seller but it flopped when it was first introduced 10 years ago, because the British public was not ready.
Lucy says innovation is the key to success and that customers trust M&S to bring them good quality, new foods they can’t find anywhere else.
Edamame beans, wasabi peas and high-quality sake have all been “discovered” on previous trips and although the team would not reveal the exact ideas they were taking home this time – it takes competitors just eight weeks to copy – one flavour they were all loved was the citrus fruit, yuzu.
As the inventor of the cult Percy Pig sweet, Julia is the nearest the confectionary world has to a Queen and if yuzu gets her stamp of approval, chances are customers will like it too. She says, “It’s a cross between orange and lemon, so it’s not completely alien to people because often there’s a sense of fear about a new flavour. People want something new but not too far outside their comfort zone.”
This trip’s focus was cakes and confectionery and if you thought Japanese food was all about raw fish and rice, then think again, because their patisseries rival Paris’s. There are specialist shops with exquisite handmade truffles in every colour of the rainbow that look almost too good to eat. Some chocolates are so temperature-sensitive that their boxes are filled in front of the customer with dry ice, so they won’t spoil on the way home. And you can forget your orange cream, the flavours seem suitably exotic too - cherry, yuzu, sesame, green tea and wasabi. Julia has already tried to pair wasabi with dark chocolate, but struggled with the balance of flavour, but was so impressed, she wants to try again.
The other main area of interest was packaging and in the dozens of exquisite food halls across the city, stunning displays elevated humble groceries into grand works of art. The emphasis on presentation was simply mind-blowing.
Honey was sold in stylish glass atomisers; slices of cake were individually wrapped, origami-style, in patterned paper; bright orange sweet potatoes were cooked over hot black stones and honeydew melons individually cosseted in beautiful fabric.
Product developer Jenny Bateson particularly liked the way biscuits and cakes often came individually wrapped (a bit like posh teabags) in boxes instead of sold in one big packet. She says, “It makes it feel more of a treat and although it does involve extra packaging, the biscuits would stay fresher so you’d potentially throw less away.” They also liked sweets that came in strips, not bags.
Packaging is also more tailored to the country’s ageing population: lids are wider and thus easier to grip, tins all have ring-pulls and packets have transparent windows, so contents are more easily visible.
Other than the obvious issues of taste, there are other limitations as to what products will work in the UK. Cost, production, transportation, storage and safety are all important. My favourite find of the trip was a kid’s lolly (see picture) that literally lights up from the inside. There is a bulb in the middle, which you turn on with a switch at the bottom of the stick. Genius. Disappointingly Julia said it would never meet M&S’s stringent safety standards. Nonetheless, I brought some home for my children who not only loved them, but have lived to tell the tale.
My absolute culinary highlight was the Wagyu beef. When raw it looks practically white because it is so marbled with fat (the cows are apparently massaged and fed beer) but when cooked it is so so soft – what you always hope steak is going to taste like, but never does. I’ve thought about it every day since I returned a fortnight ago, but sadly high production costs make it too expensive for M&S to stock.
And as for the sea snail- even though the one I ate was cooked by a Michelin-starred chef - it still felt like chewing an eyeball. Thanks in no small part to M&S and their search for the favourites of the future, Britain’s culinary habits have crossed countless frontiers in recent years, particularly in the sphere of convenience foods. Mercifully, St Michael sea snails still seem a long way off.

Lucy

Book Review: Flash Cooking by Laura Santtini

2011-11-30T04:01:00.000-08:00

My husband has just fallen in love, and it's not with me. I'm trying to decide whether I feel jealous, but actually I think I just feel a bit excited. Like I know things aren't going to be the same around here anymore. There's going to be a bit more fun. That's because the object of his affection is a recipe book called Flash Cooking by Laura Santtini published by Quadrille and not a woman. If it was a woman I'd be really annoyed.
The subtitle of the book is Fit Fast Flavours for Busy People, and this is why my husband loves it so much. Everything is fresh, healthy, low in fat but high in umami flavour. All his favourite things.
Recipes for Flash Ma(yonnaise)-Yo(ghurt) crusted salmon, or broccoli and lemon soup are accompanied by recipes for "flavour bombs"; salsas, marinades, seasonings, glazes or pastes. These are combinations of herbs, spices and sauces which can be added to the recipes to ramp up their intensity. For example I made the Western rubinade yesterday, a pesto of onion, garlic, sage and rosemary which I rubbed over a chicken which I then roasted. There's enough left over for me to use it as the base pesto in an open tart today. Her recipes for "finishing yoghurts" sound fantastic and would pep up any soup or casserole. The Indian one is a combination of turmeric, coriader leaves and mango chutney. Yum. The Middle Eastern one is harissa, lemon zest, mint and optional crushed rose petals, all added to a large dollop of Greek yoghurt. What wouldn't taste better with a load of that stirred in?
If you wanted to, this book could really take you to culinary new places and teach you how to cook in a very flavourful new way. However, it's also great if you just want to follow a recipe.
Who to buy it for? This is the perfect present for people who love food, who are confident in the kitchen and want to broaden their repertoire or get out of a culinary rut. They like to eat well and eat healthily, are happy to experiment a bit with different ingredients and flavours. They keep meat to the recommended two or three times a week which means they eat a lot of vegetables and want exciting recipes for them. At the risk of sounding sexist, I think a lot of this criteria is quite female, so this is definitely one for the ladies. And my husband.

A review of Lapland UK that has very little to do with food

2011-11-29T03:59:00.000-08:00

See that man on the left there? Yeah, him. Father Christmas. Well, I met him yesterday. I did...... I know that's what I thought too - but it turns out he is real and lives on an industrial estate in Kent. Well, that's underplaying it somewhat. His home is Lapland UK - a multi-million pound, snow-strewn Santa's Grotto, about half an hour south of Tunbridge Wells (the place where all the outraged letters come from). It opens for a month every year before Christmas and costs about £60 a person (no kiddy discounts here) and although my tickets were free through my husband's work, I will try to be objective about whether a four hour experience is worth potentially blowing the whole Christmas budget on.
My children are three and five and very much believe in Father Christmas in such a cute, earnest way, that it makes me went to press pause forever. The day they stop believing, will be the day that frankly they can find a new mum. Not being able to use Santa as a threat against bad behaviour from September onwards would kill me.
The Lapland UK experience (I know, I hate that word too. These days everything has to be an experience. Suggestions for a less irritating noun are welcome) begins with a personalised invite through the post for each child. My 5yo slept with hers under her pillow for a week. She couldn't believe her "luck" at being asked. It was like she had won a Willy Wonka golden ticket.

It took about 90 minutes to drive to Lapland UK from West London and once parked, you pretty much go straight through to a gatehouse manned by a couple of elves/out of work actors. At this point there are about 50-odd of you and all the children are given passports with stamps to collect through the day for various activities. After an elfin performance worthy of panto, the group split and half go to Santa's workshop to make toys and the others to Mother Christmas's kitchen to decorate gingerbread. Then you swap over. It is very slickly organised. The kids loved it and there was none of that tawdriness or forced jollity you some times get with group events. However, this is no place for cynicism and if any grown-ups try to opt out of the communal singalongs, they will be singled out for a solo. As a man called Nick in my group, can testify.

That takes up about an hour and a half and then you go outside into a winter wonderland for 90 minutes free time. There is a big European-kind of square with snow-clad trees (from the same special effects team that do the Bond films), a small-ish ice rink, a mulled wine stand, and a really delicious sausage stall courtesy of Banger Bros. We all had hot dogs with crispy onions, twice-fried chips and oodles of mayonnaise. It was also - at £3-4 a sausage - not a mega rip-off. In fact once inside, I didn't feel mega-fleeced, although I begrudged paying £2 for parking and £10 for a photo with Santa - surely those should have been included in the entrance fee? It is Christmas after all.
Luckily for us it was one of those crisp winter, blue-sky kind of days and we happily mooched around outside from stall to stall. Had it been raining, I think it would have been pretty miserable. There were even real huskies to pet and a little post office, where you could write a letter to Santa. But by far the best bit was obviously meeting the man himself. Each family is taken by an elf through a maze of snow-covered Christmas trees to Father Christmas's log cabin. There are ice skates and snow shoes hung outside and inside sits possibly the finest looking Santa I have ever seen. His robes are rich red, his beard cumulus-luxuriant and there is not a whiff of stale sherry on his breath. He knows my children's names and what their pets are called. He even knows that one of our cats has seven toes (Well 28 all in. This is actually quite common - the official name is polydactyl). Obviously, this all came via me, but the children are blown away and wonder if he perhaps chatted to the cats when he came down the chimney last year. Like I say, indescribably sweet. Then you are given a very good quality (and frankly, it'd have to be given the entrance fee) furry husky to take home. A toy one that is.

So all in all, a pretty special day for the girls, which made it a pretty special day for us too. I don't think I gritted my teeth once which on a family day out is pretty rare for me.
So the billion dollar question, well the £240 one, would I pay to do it again? We had a great day and I am sure my children will cherish the memories until they are old enough to know better. But it is an awful lot of money, so if you're loaded and won't really notice it, then you'll have a ball. But if it would make the difference between a good January and a bad one, I'd do yourself a favour and just visit your local Santa and ice rink instead. The children won't miss something they don't know exists. Lucy
Claire says: "It sounds amazing. I think if I ever go it will be when the children are older (they're 2 and 4) because I want them to appreciate and remember every second, because it really will be a once in a life time opportunity. Also, if I wait a bit I may be considerably richer than I am now...well, here's hoping!"

Nigella's Mexican Lasagne - Easier than it sounds.

2011-11-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

Nigella's Mexican Lasagne

Making real lasagne can be a bit of a hassle. It is all those stages. First the meat sauce, then the white sauce, then the assembly. Claire never makes it. In fact she is quite strident about not making it. Like it is some kind of house policy.
I, however, make it a lot: in bulk to be frozen and defrosted as needed. I love lasagne in an almost Garfield-like fashion. I eat it a lot. Meat. Spinach. Roast veg. And now this new kid on the block - Nigella's Mexican lasagne. It has the advantage of being Speedy Gonzales to make. The lasagne is actually tortilla wraps. The filling is essentially tomatoes, black beans and sweetcorn. It takes a while to cook, but involves only 10 minutes or so of actual prep time. And it is delicious. Even the committed carnivore that is Mr McDonald loves it, and has been known to have seconds. It is not one for my kids (too young, too spicy) but is a great week night stand by for grown-ups. If you shop cleverly it can be a dish to fall on back when you think you've nothing in the fridge.

From start to finish: 10mins prep, 20 mins sauce simmering, 30 minutes in the oven

Serves: 6-8

garlic-infused oil

red pepper

one chopped onion

one chopped red chilli

one bottle of passata

salt

four flour tortillas

250g goat's cheese (normal Cheddar will do)

2 400g tins black beans

2 small tins of sweetcorn

pie dish or cake tin - about 20cm diameter

Use some garlic-infused oil to gently fry one onion with one diced red chilli and a chopped red pepper. When they have softened, pour in a bottle of passata and simmer for about 20 minutes with a hefty pinch of salt. In the meantime rinse two tins of black beans under running water and then mix with 250g of grated goat's cheese (keep a handful back), and the sweetcorn. If you have a suitable pie tin (about 8cm deep and 20 wide) then use that, but I used a springform cake tin of the same dimensions instead. Start off with a quarter of tomato sauce, then a tortilla, then some goat's cheese mixture, then some tomato sauce, then a tortilla. Do this two more times - but reserving a couple of spoonfuls of tomato sauce. End on a tortilla, spread over the remaining tomato sauce and sprinkle over the cheese. Bung in the oven for 30 minutes at 180c. If you leave it to stand for 10 minutes, it'll be easier to serve - ideally with guacamole, sour cream or yoghurt. Lucy
Claire says: "I love lasagne. I really do. But what a faff. Any recipe that has more than one stage is generally ignored by me, and lasagne as three! But I love to eat it, and often order it when I go out. I also have a couple of friends who make fantastic lasagne, so I just invite myself (and the kids) round there more than I should. Lucy, this sounds yummy, shall I pop over?"

Guiness and black

2011-11-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Although not food, this glass of deliciousness is as sustaining and nourishing as any meal. More specifically, any pudding. It's a large glass of Guiness draught with a dollop of Ribena in it. It might not sound like much but I promise the end result is far more than the sum of its parts. It's blackcurrant creaminess makes it like alcoholic ice cream for grown ups.
And to be honest, I never thought I'd say it, but recently I've got a bit bored of wine (sorry Knackered Mother). And obviously just because I'm a bit tired of wine doesn't mean I should be alcohol free, oh no. So this is my tipple of choice at the moment and I heartily recommend it.
I've been drinking it for a while now but I've been loathe to post about it. Not because I like to keep foodie secrets, nor because I'm embarrassed (my sister has just accused me of being studenty in my tastes). But because I knew I would have to take a photo of it. To get the light right I'd have to take the photo during the day. Exactly. Hic.
Anyway, this is a short post because, well because there's a big glass of deliciousness waiting to be drunk. And children to be cared for. Hmm, I wonder how this afternoon is going to pan out...Claire

Book review: Valentine Warner's The Good Table

2011-11-22T07:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, let's just accept it. Christmas is coming. I'm actually feeling quite perky about it. My kids are now 4 and 2 and perfectly aged to enjoy the crazy consumerist nonsense. We visited the reindeer in Covent Garden on Saturday, and it's not even December! We are that keen.
Anyway, it's definitely time to start thinking about Christmas presents, and so we are going to review the latest crop of recipe books aimed at the Christmas shopper, to see what might work for who as a Christmas present.
First up is The Good Table by Valentine Warner. A stylish but slightly downbeat front cover hides a good-looking book. Earthily shot and beautifully written, it's a great read. Each recipe comes with a story - lively travel tales of where he came across the recipe, whether it's a Sri Lankan poacher, English trucker in Spain, or Mexican bank robbers (that last one's a joke, but you get the idea).
It's quite a macho recipe book with lots of tales of huntin' and shootin', fishin' for mackerel or campin' in -43 degrees. Despite that, many of the recipes feel do-able and don't rely on tricksy ingredients or having a spare week to prepare. However, it is a "foodie" book, and there are some recipes where the ingredients are hard to get hold of, or you may not have heard of them. But I don't mind that, I think it's a good way of educating us. If we didn't have chefs extolling the virtues of mackerel and pollock, we'd all still be eating ever-diminishing amounts of cod. He talks about herring milts (roes), which sound lovely ("The Russians may have caviar on blinis, we have milts on hot toast") which has inspired me,
It's quite a meaty book, but the veg recipes are surprisingly good too - endive in cream sauce with breadcrumbs sounds delicious, I'm more suspicious of the raw kale salad... I've already made one of his recipes, the easiest, of course. Cheese on toast. But this is cheese on toast with mustard, anchovy, worcester sauce and mayonnaise. (I know, mayonnaise. Crazy. But it worked).
I spent an hour lovingly going through the book on Friday, salivating. I then spent half an hour going through it thinking, "yes but what shall I cook for Sunday lunch with the kids?" and nothing jumped out. It was all a little bit too fiddly, or too challenging. But then I remembered the concept of 'present'. Oh yes. It's not for me. I must give it to someone else. Damn.
Who to buy it for: So with that in mind I'd say this book is perfect for a man. One who likes to cook at the weekends or when friends come round. He considers himself a bit of a rugged foody, perhaps he's made himself a smoker in the back garden (ok, thought about making himself a smoker in the backgarden), and has foraged a bit. For blackberries. And maybe apples. Ok, it's perfect for my husband. Hope he doesn't read this.

Buying off the internet

2011-11-20T02:57:00.000-08:00

Ding dong. The doorbell goes and there stands the postman, Paris (yes, that's really his name) bearing yet more parcels for me. About every other day I get a delivery of some sort - the most recent have included school name tapes, a replacement oven light, an etching of Central Park sent from New York, and a child's coat - because I hate (and have little free time) to traipse around the high street.
The internet has revolutionised how I shop. I even buy shoes on-line (when you have size 7 feet - even shopping for high heels is depressing) and the only place I actually get excited about visiting in the flesh is Lakeland. That's not a chore - it's a daytrip to the promised land! A glimpse of an organised life that could be within my grasp, if I only I had more tupperware.

So whenever I can, I order on-line. Some times I am disappointed or surprised at what arrives. Like the time I thought I'd ordered two courgettes, but instead two kilos arrived. (We ate a lot of ratatouille that month.) Or the time when a £400 coat arrived from net-a-porter seemingly out of nowhere. When I later checked my emails to unravel the mystery, it turns out I'd ordered it along with a trilby hat and some men's pyjamas at one in the morning, after a rather raucous night out. (Hello, my name's Lucy and I am a drunken shopper.)
But more often than not, I congratulate myself on my purchases and cleverness at having avoided the hoi polloi of the high street. Ordering on-line means the world's your oyster as it allows you to buy cool stuff at a good price that you may not find locally. I regularly get stuff from Ebay and Etsy, but also have started buying food on-line.

The brownies pictured here come from the virtual cake shop - Utterly Scrummy. Michelle, who runs it, has a twitter feed that is so temptingly written, I almost feel like I am in her kitchen baking alongside her and smelling the brownies oozing gently in the oven as they cook. I do make my own some times, but over summer I had lots of people for lunch and only had time to bark at my children, not bake for them. Besides I was dying to try hers. They cost £9.50 for 6 (cheaper than my local deli) and arrived the next day and were every bit as delicious as I had imagined. Sneakily, I even kept one back from the plate and hid it to eat later, alone, once every one had gone. I know, I'm evil/greedy like that. They were worth every penny - not just because of how they tasted - but also because it was smashing to have cake delivered to my door. What's not to love?
Do you ever buy food on-line (and I'm not talking Ocado) and if so what are your favourite shops? I also like Jimmy's Farm for good sausages and the Outsider Tart for yet more cakes and other essentials like Goober's peanut butter and grape jelly, which is my very favourite thing on the planet at the moment. Bar my children. When they're behaving. Lucy
Claire says: "I cannot believe you are on first name terms with your postie! I don't buy online very often, and much of the stuff I have bought I've had to send back. Maybe I need to practise more."

Pineapple and coconut crumble

2011-11-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I was in Kenya for half term. I don't want you to get the wrong idea, normally half term is spent on a campsite in Ramsgate (if we're lucky) or even closer to home, and, um, at home.
However a dear friend has moved to Nairobi and we desperately wanted to see her, where she was living, her life there, and if that meant staying in a spare house in the two acre garden, using her swimming pool and losing our children in the well stocked playroom, well, so be it.
Alongside seeing elephants, crocodiles, lions etc etc, the other major joy of the 10 days was not having to think about what to cook for lunch, their tea, our dinner etc etc. This is because Patrick, the chef, thought about it. Each day the kids would be called to the table on the veranda, overlooking the Ngong hills, to eat homemade chicken nuggets, or spaghetti bolognese. One day pineapple crumble was served up. I was intrigued and learnt it was a regular pudding at my friend's son's school as well at her husband's canteen. Luckily Patrick had also made the crumble for our dinner that night so I got to taste it first hand. Delicious. The cooked pineapple seemed to caramelise in the heat and went brilliantly with the crumble. So when I got home I decided to make it. I got all show-y off-y, using dessicated coconut and tropical muesli in the crumble topping, but that was only because I happened to have those ingredients lying around. It's just as nice without. And although apple crumble will always be a firm favourite, the fact that nothing in this had to be peeled or sliced, just removed from a tin (although of course, the purists amongst you could always use fresh pineapple) means that pineapple crumble maybe eaten around here quite a lot.
Pineapple with a tropical coconut crumble
Serves 4
Start to finish: 10 minutes prep, 45 mins in the oven
70g flour
40g butter
50g tropical muesli (or normal, whatever you have, even just oats)
50g sugar (I used demerara, but you could use any type)
40g dessicated coconut
1 fresh pineapple or 2 large (about 435g each, of which 260g is fruit) tins of pineapple in its own juice
Put the oven on to 180 degrees C. Rub butter into the flour until it resembles bread crumbs. Stir in the sugar, desssicated coconut and muesli.
Arrange the fruit (keep most of the juice back, you don't want it too sloshy) in a 2 pint pie dish and spoon crumble mix over the fruit and lightly press it down. Put in the oven for 45 minutes, or until the crumble is golden.

Porridge, for you!

2011-11-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

I now declare winter open. Some people decide it's winter when they start putting the central heating on, but for me it begins when I have my first steaming bowl of porridge. This year I kept chomping on muesli (how I love muesli, let me count the ways...) until mid-November, probably something to do with the mild weather.
But now the mornings are cold and grey I need something to zing them up a bit. Dorset cereals sent me a couple of sachets of their limited edition Gingerbread porridge which really spiced things up, with jumbo oats, barley flakes for creaminess and tiny fragments of gingerbread. Yum. Then they offered you lot a wicker porridge hamper containing two boxes of apple and raisin porridge, two cranberry and raspberry, two Hearty Porridge and three packs of the limited edition Gingerbread porridge. About £25 worth of oats, plus a set of winter bowls. Yes, I got two sachets of porridge, enough for two breakfasts, and you get enough for about six months. As you can see, I'm not bitter.
Here at Crumbs we don't really do competitions (see why here), instead we reward our lovely readers (and you are lovely, really you are) for reading and commenting on our blog. Your comments make our day (we know, tragic) and to make it worth your while we give away goodies every now and then. This week's haul goes to the lovely Two Hippos who has an inspiring craft blog, take a look!

And we hope this post inspires you to leave comments, like us or comment on Facebook, follow us on twitter (@crumbsfood @clairemaccy) and any other cyber-stalking you care to do. We will reward you richly! And in the run up to Christmas we've got quite a lot of good stuff to give away. Hear from you soon!

Currying favour

2011-11-13T00:05:00.000-08:00

I grew up in SW London. Well, Middlesex really. In a small suburb called Whitton, where nothing of any note ever happened. Apparently Paul Weller went to my junior school, Nelson, for just one term, years before I was born and that is its only claim to fame really. When I wanted to be posher than I really was, I would tell people I lived in nearby Twickenham, but in reality I was just as close to Hounslow, which was far less swanky and home to one of London's largest Asian populations. So maybe that was why years before chicken Korma became the nation's favourite dish, my mum used to try her hand at Indian food.
Whilst friends would go to Pizza Hut for a treat, we'd be in nearby Southall checking out the markets whilst mum told us tales about travelling around India with my dad, and me and my sister would feel slightly dampened and awe-struck by it all. The smell of the spices, the colour of the saris and the general not-like-Whitton-ness of it all. I remember once having a lump of sugar cane in my packed lunch instead of a Penguin, which after an initial suck, proved disappointing - just like sucking a watery sugar cube.
One day she bought a terracotta chicken brick so we could make our own tandoori chicken. It was delicious, slightly spicy and bright orange - the alternative Sunday roast. You have to remember this was the 1980s - a time when children generally just ate fishfingers and potato waffles and certainly weren't weaned on pesto pasta and hummus and breadsticks. I think we only used the brick a few times, before it was relegated to the top of the MFI kitchen cupboards, where it gathered dust for years, before it was eventually chucked.

I've not bought a brick, but I am trying to get my two girls into spicy foods. Our entry level was pappadums. Giant crisps! As large as a plate! Then onion bhajis! Deep fried crisp-like things! Then peshwari Naan. Sweet bread!
But last week I decided to go the whole hog and make a roast curried chicken. It is a Madhur Jaffrey recipe and served with basmati rice with sesame seeds and yellow split lentils (Magic, lucky coins!). We then popped to our local Indian restaurant (Peppers) for the pappadums, chutneys, bhajis and Naan bread, that are, after all, the best thing about Indian food.
Once you've made the marinade, the rest is quite easy - more so than it looks and certainly less stressful than a traditional roast. Please don't be put off by the longer than normal ingredient list - all curries are like that!

Curried roast chicken

Serves: 4

Start to finish: about two hours including cooking, but not marinading.

a chicken (1.5kg) - skin off

3 tbs olive oil

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

For spice paste:

2 tbs lemon juice

250ml natural yoghurt

1 medium onion - chopped

5cm ginger peeled and grated

3 large cloves garlic - crushed

3/4 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp salt

2 tsp garam masala

2 tsp flaked almonds

Combine all the spice paste ingredients in a blender in the order listed. Blend.

Ideally get the butcher to skin the chicken, but if you do it yourself, don't worry about the wings or legs too much. They're a bit fiddly. Indians don't eat as much skin as we do - and if you gash the skin with a sharp knife over the breast and leg (about 3 on each) it allows the spices to penetrate the flesh more. Put the chicken in a bowl. Spread the spice paste all over then cover and refrigerate for anything from 4 to 24 hours.

Put the oil in a large, flameproof casserole and heat over medium high. When hot put in the cumin seeds, until they sizzle (10 or so seconds) and then put in the chicken, breast side up and the remaining spice paste. Simmer. Cover and bake at 200c for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for 40 mins, basting every so often until the chicken is tender.

Yellow basmati rice with sesame seeds

475ml measure of basmati rice

2 tbs olive oil

1 whole, dried, red chilli (optional if you don't want it too spicy)

1 tbs split yellow peas

1tsp brown mustard seeds

1 tbs sesame seeds

1/2 tsp ground turmeric (this gives the rice its lovely yellow colour. I reduced the amount to a 1/4tsp because of the children)

1 tsp salt

Once you've soaked the rice for half an hour, this dish takes about five minutes to prep, and 25 to cook. It goes really well with lamb chops or halloumi cheese.

Put the rice in a sieve and run cold water over it for a couple of minutes - shaking the rice gently as you go. Now pour it into a saucepan and cover with fresh water and leave to soak for about 30 minutes (or as long as you want. You can even do this the night before). Drain and leave in a sieve until you need to use it.
Heat the oil in a saucepan (one that has a tight-fitting lid) and when hot, put in the chilli (I didn't use one as it would make it too spicy for my little ones), yellow split peas, mustard and sesame seeds. As soon as the seeds begin to pop, add the rice, turmeric and salt. Lower the heat and saute for a minute. Add 600ml of water and bring to the boil. Cover and lower the heat and simmer gently for 25 minutes. That's it, then carve/hack the chicken and serve with the rice and take away/shop bought extras.
Claire says: Paul Weller, at our school? I never knew! Or maybe I did but forgot. Anyway. I feel my upbringing was cool-suburban now, rather than really-boring-suburbia which is what I used to think it was.
PPS Mum has just texted to say apparently Phil Collins went there for a little while too. Coolometer has plunged.

Almond, pear and blueberry muffin

2011-11-10T05:21:00.000-08:00

This vision of loveliness ended up in the bin before it got anywhere near my lips. I made 14 of the darlings, we ate six before a bouncy ball and the glass cloche of the cake stand made contact and shards of glass littered the kitchen and the cakes.
Sigh.
It's the second glass cloche to go for a burton, so I think I've learnt my lesson. I'm going to get rid of the kids.
Ho ho ho. Luckily they didn't take long to make, and if I was any sort of mother/cook I'd just knock them up again...It was my way of using some pears, which are absolutely delicious at the moment and I'm trying to put them in everything. I used a Gill Holcombe recipe as a base and then totally changed it, and the resulting muffin was delicious. It made me realise how precious we can be with recipes, especially baking ones. This recipe took everything I threw at it and I don't know if it tasted better than the original, but I'd like to pretend it does. I used around 200g of fruit (blueberries and pear) but you could use 100-200g of whichever fruit is in season (if it's really juicy let some juice drip off or reduce milk quantities) or even dried fruit. I also reduced the sugar quite a lot and don't feel the muffins suffered.
Almond, pear and blueberry muffin
Makes 14 medium sized muffins - use paper cake cases if you don't have muffin cases
Start to finish: 10 mins prep, 15 mins in the oven
195g plain flour
30g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tsp salt
100g melted butter
70g caster sugar
1 large egg
125ml milk
110g blueberries
1 pear cored and chopped into .5cm pieces
A few flaked almonds for the top of each muffin
Preheat oven to 190 degrees centigrade. Melt the butter - 30 seconds in the microwave should do it. Add egg to milk and whisk with a fork. Put flour, ground almonds, baking powder, salt, bicarbonate of soda, sugar and fruit in a large mixing bowl, and make a well in the middle. Add milk with egg and melted butter. Stir together until mixed and spoon into cases. Bake for 10-15 minutes, depending on your oven.
Cooking notes: I have used SR flour when I haven't had enough plain flour, baking powder etc, and the world didn't end. The end result was a bit more 'cakey' and crumbly, not quite so light, but perfectly acceptable if you haven't got the right ingredients.

Cake Doodle - brilliant baking game app

2011-11-08T02:59:00.000-08:00

It turns out my girls love pretend baking nearly as much as they love the real thing. Cake Doodle is an app that allows you to bake your own cake, ice it and then eat it. And there's no washing-up at the end. It's vaguely educational as you are dealing with figures and real recipes. You drag and drop ingredients into a bowl - for example, you pinch to add lemon juice, shake to add baking powder and tilt to add vanilla essence - then bake the cake, before icing and decorating it. Then you get to "eat" the cake (by touching it with your finger) to munching sound effects. It's strangely satisfying and at 69p it's a great way to occupy little hands whilst you're in a cafe trying to eat the real thing.

The world is flat! No, it's round! Is the obesity epidemic a myth?

2011-11-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

This time last week I was speaking at the Battle of the Ideas and as many of you will know, it was my first attempt at solo public speaking and I was nervous. I needn't have been as not only were the rest of the panel lovely, but there were only 27 people in the audience and three, it seemed, had wandered in by mistake on the way to the vending machine.

Nonetheless, everyone was passionate about food and the debate got quite heated.
My argument was that I didn't mind being told not to feed my children rubbish, by the Government or other well-meaning bodies, because the advice wasn't aimed at me and I was happy to be "patronised" if it helped someone else. I remembered the sad case of a little boy who died of salt poisoning after his well-meaning parents fed him instant mash and cereal because they couldn't afford baby food. A clear example of how education could have saved a life.
But one thing I hadn't bargained for was that some of the audience and panel, thought that the obesity epidemic didn't exist. They believed it had been invented by the Government to give ministers an excuse to meddle in our lives. Either that or it was a crusade against fat people. That is obviously a superficial analysis of the argument, but it totally flummoxed me (The earth is flat, no it's round, no it's flat.....) and whilst I don't think you can argue with statistics, it certainly made me think. Our whole relationship with food - particularly what we feed our children - has become very skewed.
I grew up in the late 70s and 80s and fully remember putting both sugar and orange squash on my cereal, instead of milk, and no one batting an eyelid. I also ate my own body weight in Wham! bars and rainbow drops most days and became a vegetarian for a year - but one that only ate potatoes and ketchup. Now, as a grown-up, I eat most things and I've never had a problem with my weight and I am perfectly healthy.
I do angst over my children's diet (and perhaps more pertinently how other people judge me on what I feed my children) far more than my mum did. And I do wonder if a slightly paranoid emphasis on good and bad foods plus weigh-ins at school and healthy-eating lessons, is going to give my children hang ups further down the line. What do you think?

Fun in the sun!

2011-11-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from 12 days in Kenya and it was AMAZING. I won't bang on about it, I promise, but wow! Animals! Who would have thought they could be so incredible? We went to an elephant orphanage, a giraffe sanctuary, a crocodile farm (whoever said dinosaurs are extinct hadn't seen these fellas) as well as the entrance of the National Park in Nairobi, where a monkey tried to steal my two year old's snack. He hadn't reckoned on my little boy's unwillingness to share - "S'mine!" he said as he snatched his biscuit away from the primate.
We were staying with friends who have just moved there. Alongside seeing the animals it was a journey of self-discovery. I discovered that life with servants is much much easier. It may be a moral minefield, but there is little doubt that having someone do all your washing (imagine, all your washing/drying/ironing!) and cook the kids' tea makes it much easier to be a doting mummy.
My 4 year old's insistence on sending his teacher an inappropriate postcard ("Fun in the Sun" with pix of various animals humping) meant that he discovered the joy of sex far sooner than I had anticipated. I listened open-mouthed in the room nextdoor as my husband gave him all the details. He then ran around the room shouting "I'm gonna put my willy inya!" (son not husband).
In terms of food it was a great holiday. I didn't once have to wrack my brains and think "what's for tea/lunch/dinner?" as something had always been prepared by the cook. But I also tried some delicious new dishes and flavour combinations and feel reinvigorated in the kitchen! (check out that exclamation mark - so perky!). Well, I would, if a mix of jetlag and the clocks going back wasn't waking my kids up at 4am each morning. Give me time and I'll be injecting a bit of African zing into your cooking too.
BTW: I have seen Lucy today, two days after her public speaking hell, so she is definitely alive and will post about the Battle of Ideas this week.

Spooky Halloween party ideas

2011-10-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

Growing up in Britain in the late 1970s and 1980s, trick or treating was strictly an American thing. Knocking on someone's door and asking for a treat or you'd smash eggs on their doorstep was a bit, well un-British. Stories would circulate about the child that tried it and was now minus a tongue, after biting in to an apple with a razor blade cunningly disguised inside.
You only have to peek into a supermarket from September-onwards to see it is now big business. You can buy all manner of spooky masks (not seen any George Osborne ones yet, though), jellied-snake sweets and pumpkin bunting. It feels like we've never not done Halloween.
I first noticed it when I lived in North Kensington in my late 20s and a group of surly teenagers knocked on the door demanding sweets. They weren't even in fancy dress and when I asked them what they were supposed to be, they said menacingly "serial killers". Not having any sweets, I gave them all 50ps. They clearly realised they'd stumbled on the house of a right mug and came back later - this time in disguise with rubbish witches hats - for more. It felt like a complicit mugging. On my own doorstep.
Now, I have children of my own I have thoroughly embraced it (although not the menacing, murderer bit) and this year, as last, we're having a trick or treat party.
Of course, we will have a jackolantern and I was going to cook sausage casserole, but have decided that a sit down dinner for 6 adults and 6 children at 5 in the afternoon was too much (especially coming the day after the Battle of Ideas), so instead I'm going to do spooky snacks. Sausages on sticks (Although not strictly spooky, no children's party would be complete without them), Wotsits (orange worms), carrot sticks with guacamole, pea puree or olive tapenade on crostini, Red Leicester and peeled grapes (zombie's eyeballs) on sticks and cheesy biscuits in pumpkin shapes. We'll be drinking hot spiced cider and the children will be drinking the non-boozy version. Pudding will be the Haribo sweets and mini Mars bars they collect on their travels and, if there's room, a slice of my spooky cake.

Helllpppp!!!!!!

2011-10-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

It is a nail-biting time here at Crumbs HQ. Claire has sodded off to Kenya leaving me to represent the blog at the rather-scary-and-fiercely-intellectual-sounding Battle of Ideas. My session is about whether the Government is meddling too much in our children's diets and attitudes towards food.
Claire sold it to me by saying, that the conference was brilliant and we'd meet lots of interesting people/learn about food politics/blah/blah/blah and, only half listening, I agreed. But that was before I realised she was going to be in Africa. Later she cheerfully admitted that if I'd been on holiday - she would never have agreed to speaking there herself. Too knee-knockingly terrifying. A battle! Of ideas! Pass the sherry, said Claire.

I then got an email from a well-respected journalist wishing me luck and warning be that BoI typically gets pretty "bloody". But by then my name was in the programme and my fate was sealed (Btw there is a great anecdote about Diana on her wedding morning, apparently saying to a relative that she didn't want to marry Charles, to be told, 'you have to, your face is on the tea towels').
Anyhow, I digress. I'm hoping that as you're reading this, you like the blog and want it to continue. It will not, if I have to be physically scraped off the floor of the Royal College of Arts with a spatula come Saturday tea time.
So I want your help. Please. Your thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and personal experiences. I have to give a six minute speech on whether we have over-complicated our children's relationship with food using your experiences....

So... do you think children are bombarded with messages about food from an early age? (what's healthy, what's not, portion control, school weigh-ins)
Do you think this can give them hang-ups?
By year 6, 1/3 of children are overweight or obese. Is this your experience? What can be done about it?
How do you teach your children to achieve a balanced diet and healthy attitude towards food?

Do you take offence at being told how to feed your child?

Any help on any of the above will be very gratefully received. There would be a cash-inducement if we had any money, but we don't, so just do it for the LOVE and, of course, the children. xxxx

Spooky Halloween Cake

2011-10-23T02:37:00.000-07:00

There is no need to readjust the colouring on your screen, for this cake is actually green and it is not a trick of the light. That is because it is not a cake at all, but a slime-infested confection which mysteriously landed in W4 possibly from Transylvania. The red stuff in the middle is, naturally, blood. The white sparkly stuff on top is ghost juices. This is, in case you hadn't twigged, my Halloween cake. Well, a test run before next week's trick or treating party. Thankfully it was just a prototype, because I had one of those cooking days.
Just before I was about to start, I realised I'd run out of butter, so popped down the shops to get some. Returned, got creaming and then realised, I'd run out of sugar, so went back to the shops, only to realise my ready-roll white royal icing had gone off two years ago, and not having the energy to go to the shops once more, I made do with glace icing instead. The plan for Halloween itself is for me to be more organised and for the cake to look like a larger version of these on the outside and even greener on the inside.

Start to finish: 1 hour including cooking time (but not cooling time). The cake takes 10 minutes to prepare, the icing/decoration another ten.

Serves: 8 large slices

Four eggs

Equal amounts of butter, self-raising flour, golden-caster sugar

one teaspoon vanilla extract

green food colouring (I prefer the depth of colour you get from the pastes, like Sugarcraft, that are available at most good cook shops)

raspberry jam (enough to sandwich the cakes together and to securing the ready rolled icing on top)

one pack ready-rolled white royal icing

Extra large chocolate buttons for eyes

Grease and line 2 x 20cm cake tins. Turn oven on to 180c.

Weigh four eggs in their shells and put to one side. Weigh exactly the same amount of butter (room temperature), flour and sugar. Cream the butter until it is soft with an electric mixer (or by hand if you prefer), add the sugar and mix until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one until mixed thoroughly and then add a fair bit of green food colouring, depending how slimy you want to go. Add the vanilla essence. Mix thoroughly. Then fold in the flour half at a time (I've followed Lorraine Pascale's lead and never bother sifting flour) until it is smoothly mixed.
Divide the mixture equally between the cake tins and bake for 25-30mins. When a fork comes out clean, the cakes are cooked. Transfer them to a wire rack and when cool completely you can decorate them.
First sandwich them together with a couple of tablespoons of raspberry jam. Then spread a thin layer of jam over the top and sides (this is so the icing will stick). Transfer your sheet of ready rolled icing on to a rolling pin, and drape it over the cake, starting at one side and working your way over the cake, so the centre of the icing matches up with the centre of the cake. But instead of neatly tucking the icing around the cake, you just drape it over, so it hangs like a ghostly sheet.
Then take two large chocolate buttons and stick them in the icing on one side of the cake for the ghost's eyes. If that sounds too much trouble, then omit the jam-on-top stage and use glace icing instead (black would work well, or white as shown here) and decorate with trashy Halloween sweets. Serve and eat.... if you dare.

Ah yes, pilchards on toast...

2011-10-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

The other day I was walking along the aisles of the Co-op in West Norwood, revelling in the glamour of my life. "What shall we have for lunch?" I asked myself before the bright packets of crisps started messing with my mind. There was row upon row of Walkers Crisps in pretty much any permutation of size and flavour you care to think of. Salt and Vinegar, Steak and Onion, Sweet Chilli Chicken, Lemongrass and Roadkill.
I don't mind a crisp now or then, sometimes I even put them in my omelettes, but I was trying to focus on giving my kids something nutritious. "I know!" I thought. "I'll do sardines on toast!"
Ok, it's hardly a Eureka! moment but sometimes it's hard to think of what to have, especially when you are being bamboozled by piped bakery smells and overwhelming packaging. So I went to get a tin of sardines, and do you know what? They didn't have any. Probably, if I'd looked a bit harder I could have found some sardine flavoured crisps.
So I bought some pilchards instead (or Cornish Sardines, as I prefer to call them). They were delicious. I just mashed them in their own tomato sauce, added black pepper and finely chopped parsley, although they would have been great with capers, olives or sundried tomatoes. I spread on toast and topped with slices of mozarella. Two minutes under the grill and lunch was served. The moral of this story (as there's no recipe) is that however overwhelmed you are by the nutritionally challenged rubbish on offer at your local supermarket, there's always pilchards.

Baking Made Easy - Lorraine Pascale

2011-10-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

A friend gave me this the other day. I don't know when it came out, so admit that I may not be the fastest reviewer you have ever come across, but let it be known that I am definitely the most earnest. And, at the moment, for reasons which are unclear, the spottiest.
Anyway. The gorgeous Lorraine comes up with some delicious-sounding recipes. It's not all cakes, there are sausage roll recipes (with bought puff pastry - a woman after my own heart), asian ham, roasted chicken. I always think of baking as bread or cakes, but this book takes baking literally as anything which goes in the oven.
It's a nicely written book, with some great quotes dotted throughout; "As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it." Buddy Hackett, comedian and actor, 1924-2003.
There are some brilliant tips in there too. One recipe calls for homemade thyme and polenta pastry, but Lorraine advises that you can also use shop bought shortcrust pastry, but just roll polenta and thyme into it. Genius.
Other gems are "I never buy unwaxed lemons as they are so expensive, and not always readily avalible. For zest, buy ordinary lemons and wash them well in hot, soapy water. Give them a good rinse, rub them dry and the waxy coating will come off."
And another top tip..."Seeds from actual vanilla pods give you the best taste. These are extremely expensive in the supermarkets, so if you do lots of baking, vanilla pods can be purchased in bulk on the internet. Instead of paying £3 for just two pods, buying in bulk can work out as little as 12p per pod". That's the kind of practical advice I love.
The only thing which I think is a bit odd is that there are hardly any pictures. There's obviously a fair few pictures of the glorious Lorraine, and despite my spots, I'm not a bitter person so I don't mind that. But I think if you are going to dedicate four glossy pages to a 3-tier Red Velvet Cake, it might be a good idea to show the punters what it should look like. Instead we have 3 pages of type and one pic of Lorraine stirring something. Maybe it's just me, but I really like to see what I'm going to make, or at least what I'm aiming for!
Despite that, there is loads in there that I want to make, classics and classics with a twist, which will keep me out of trouble for a while. Claire

Gwynie's Spaghetti limone parmeggiano

2011-10-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

It's very easy to take the piss out of Gwyneth Paltrow, and we may have succumbed once or twice, but this recipe of hers is actually very nice.
It's in her Notes from My Kitchen Table, which has much to make the normal person laugh; "Oh how my heart leaps when I see my children munching down kale with brown rice" - and I really don't think she is joking.
Anyway, there are some very good recipes in there, and this is one of them. With only four ingredients to speak of; pasta, lemon, basil and cheese it's the kind of thing you can knock up last minute when the whole lunch thing catches you by surprise (which amazingly it still does, even after four years of having to do it).
It's also a good one for a grown up supper, hence the yummy Knackered Mother wine suggestion below.
Spaghetti limone parmeggiano, oh, ok then, cheesey lemon pasta
Serves: 4
Start to finish: 10 mins
350g spaghetti
1 lemon
100g Parmesan
2.5 tbsp virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
3-5 tbsp pasta water
handful fresh basil leaves (from four leafy stems)
Boil the spaghetti. While it's cooking grate the zest from one lemon into a large bowl. Squeeze the juice from the lemon into the same bowl. Add the Parmesan, salt and pepper (lots, this is an Italian dish), and stir in the olive oil to make a wet paste. When the pasta is cooked add 2-3 tbsp of the cooking water to the wet paste, stir in the pasta and maybe a little more cooking water to get the sauce to stick to each strand. Tear the basil leaves. Serve with a sprinkle of salt, a grind of pepper and a bit more Parmesan.
Tired and tested: Knackered Mother recommends: "For such a magnificent sounding dish, the flavours are beautifully simple. We need a wine that is going to balance with the salty cheese and fresh lemon and basil flavours. A Chardonnay with a bit of weight (think hot country; Chile or Australia) will work well as long as it doesn't have too much oak. Alternatively, try it with an Italian white such as Gavi, made from the apricot and lemon scented Cortese grape."

Eazy on the onions

2011-10-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, it's wrong. Onions. In a tin. How lazy can a girl/boy be? But these are chopped onions fried in olive oil, which give just about anything a delicious slow-cooked taste, without the hob's extractor fan having to work overtime.
Yesterday I used them in an anything goes tart. Delicious. A tin of them, some bacon, mushroom, chives, and a sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry. It was a paean to the culinary shortcut.
Lucy gave them to me for Christmas and I'm a convert. I'm not the only one, people on the Ocado website get quite emotional about them, and recommend using them in Bologneses, French onion soup, quiche
And at 66p for a 390g tin (from Tesco or Ocado), they don't cost much more than plain old onions, and unlike their ready chopped frozen and fresh cousins, they don't take up space in your fridge/freezer. Plus the ingredients are just onions and olive oil, nothing complicated.

Cherry tomato tart tatin

2011-10-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

My husband might disagree, but I'd say I'm pretty easy to please. Milky coffee in the morning, pastries at the weekend, a glass of red at night. Ok, easy to please and indulgent. There are loads of other little things, un-food related, which can also make me really, really happy. The green man coming on when I approach a crossing, my washing drying quickly on the line, a parking space outside my house, these all bring an inordinate amount of joy to my heart. Now reading that back to myself I realise those last points are all about impatience...
So, with my personality thus explained, you'll understand why reading through this Alice Hart recipe in The Times the other day made me happy. With just five ingredients, it's already a winner in my book. 10 minutes prep? I can stretch to that. And any recipe that has as it's first instruction "Put the whole cherry tomatoes in the frying pan" can count me as a fan. What? No blanching, deseeding or even chopping? That's my kind of recipe. Plus the fact that the finished article looked impressive and tasted lovely. I served it to a friend for dinner - he was dubious, 'tomato tart tatin?', but it won him over. Unsurprisingly it is quite sweet, so I served with a bitter leaves salad and a little goat's cheese on top.
The only difficulty I had with the recipe was that I felt the instructions were a little scant, I need more reassurance when I cook. So here I embellish them a bit, so hopefully you won't have quite as many panicky moments as I did.
Cherry tomato tart tatin
Serves: 2 adults
Start to finish: 10 mins prep, 15-20 mins cooking
Ingredients
2 tbs olive oil
90g golden caster sugar
250g whole cherry tomatoes
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
Ready rolled puff pastry
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/gas 5. Unroll your ready made puff pastry and place a 15-20cm ovenproof frying pan face-down on top. Using a butter knife cut a circle out of the pastry 1.5cm outside the frying pan. Place the same frying pan over a low heat on the hob and add the olive oil, golden caster sugar and whole cherry tomatoes. I would recommend measuring everything. I didn't measure the oil, and then the whole solution started to look a bit too oily and I worried I'd overdone it, and then the tart would be d.i.s.g.u.s.t.i.n.g.
Fry until the sugar caramelises to a deep golden colour. Then add the balsamic vinegar and remove from the heat, season.
Then get the the circle of puff pastry and, while keeping the tomatoes in the frying pan, place it over the tomatoes. Tuck in the edges, over and around the tomatoes and put in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the pastry looks golden and cooked. Carefully turn out on to a plate while still warm. Claire
Lucy says: "It looks too good to eat. second thoughts it's not a hat is it?"
Tired and tested, a Knackered Mother's guide to wine; "This dish needs a tarty partner, wine-wise. The acidity in the tomatoes and the vinegar are best matched with acidity in the wine so a Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region in New Zealand would work well, as would a dry-as-a-bone Sancerre from the Loire Valley, France (made from the same grape, Sauvignon Blanc)."

Ferran Adria's crisp omelette

2011-10-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

I was flicking through the Saturday papers last weekend and saw a piece plugging Ferran Adria's new recipe book aimed at families, The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria. Ho ho, I thought. What's the chef from the world's most experimental restaurant, El Bulli, famed for his use of blow torches and dry ice, going to know about cooking family meals?
Then I read through the recipes and had to concede that maybe the Michelin-starred chef knew a thing or two about cooking, even the low-key, churn it out variety that most mothers do day in, day out.
So, I decided to give it a try. I made his spaghetti bolognese last night, which used simple ingredients and relied on a long cooking time to get such a delicious rich flavour. I've put the recipe below.
But where's the whizz-bang in that? So I decided to also make the crisp omelette. I don't know about you, but I've never hankered after a crisp omelette. And even as I was making it I was wondering exactly why I was bothering - except to blog about it. But with only three things in the ingredients list it had a certain allure. And actually it was very nice. I'm not entirely sure what the crisps added to the omelette party - they just became a slightly chewy filling, but the instructions on how to make the spanish tortilla-style omelette were so good that I made my first ever perfect tortilla, all gooey on the inside and set on the outside. Now I've got that sussed I could put anything inside the tortilla, and for a fun weekend brunch with the kids a packet of crisps is not a bad option.
Crisp omelette
Serves: 2 adults
Start to finish: 10 mins
6 eggs
70g (2 small packs) of salted crisps
4tsp olive oil
Crack the eggs into a large bowl and whisk them with a balloon whisk for a while, until they are frothy. Add the crisps, taking care not to break them. Then leave them to soak in the egg for 1 minute.
Place a 25cm (I used 20cm and it was fine) non-stick frying pan over a medium heat, then add 2 tsp olive oil.
Pour the mixture into the pan and stir gently with a rubber spatula. Use the spatula to loosen the omelette from the edge of the pan.
After 40 seconds, when the base of the omelette has set, cover the omelette with a plate. Hold on the pan with one hand, then carefully turn over, so that the omelette slides onto the plate.
Remove the pan and return to the heat. Add another 2tsp oil
Slide the omelette from the plate and back into the pan. Cook for another 20 seconds and serve.
Spaghetti Bolognese recipe - I'll have to write this in later tomorrow, sorry! 2 year old is meant to be napping but instead is downstairs watching more Peppa Pig than is good for him! Claire
Lucy says: "I love this idea. I tried another recipe from his book today, the chocolate on toast with sea salt and olive oil. It took 2 mins and was delicious."

Not waving but ironing

2011-10-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

As a working mother I'd like to bust a few myths. I feel NO guilt. I skip to work in the morning (after I've stuffed my children's pockets full of crisps and trans fatty biscuits and dropped them off at inadequate childcare). I rarely feel overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do each day, which range from editorial meetings to trying to scrape off the slick of Weetabix which I seem to wear permanently on my right shoulder. I love trying to make a tube of empty toothpaste last the best part of a week because I don't know when I'll next get to the shops, or wondering whether my children will rebel at having to eat chickpeas for lunch and tea because the online delivery isn't arriving until they've gone to bed.
What else? I love cleaning the house in what used to be my "leisure time", ironing is like a hobby to me and spending a Saturday night trying to stop the bannister from feeling so sticky is FUN! So when I do manage to find some time to read a paper or some news permeates this bubble and it is of the:
Children with working mothers 6 times more likely to be fat or Children whose mothers work are 'less healthy' variety, I just shrug my shoulders and think "fair 'nuff" and get on with pumping up the tyres on my children's balance bike while planning what processed food I'm going to give them for tea.
Because, as we all know, mothers who work choose to work. We do it because it's fun. Not because we have to. Not because there's a mortgage to pay and food to put on the table. Nope, we do it for a laugh. Or at least that's what you'd think from all the blame that's laid at our feet.
So yesterday I had a refreshing surprise at a conference where the academics have taken a second look at much of the research which has told us that children of working mums have less healthy diets. By looking at the data again they found that "maternal employment was not related to foods children consumed." In fact they felt that maternal education could be a better indicator than maternal employment. They felt that the original research was limited in how it was interpreted and they wanted to redress the balance by looking at the data in a different way. I won't go in to details here (but do contact me if you want them), but the key fact here is that it isn't our fault!
The study also looked into other aspects of family eating, and found that although most families wanted to eat their evening meals together, this was impossible for most as fathers were often still at work at the time when a child should eat. A charity called Working Families had researched the area and found that families eat together, on average, twice a week - presumably at the weekend. They have also done another study which showed that fathers who work flexibly are pychologically and physically healthier than those who can't. Their research also showed that flexible working alleviated pressure at home and enabled parents to share responsibilities. This can only be a good thing when another stat was that mothers are the main food provider in 93 percent of families. So when you see another article blaming working mothers for everything from obesity to social alienation, you'll know it's not really our fault, it's just how you look at the data. If you look at it differently then you can see that really it's all the fault of working men! And rather than just give them a kicking for it, maybe there is an answer, and it isn't "give up your job", it's to allow them to work flexibly. What do you think?
BTW, I borrowed the title of this post from the magnificent Not Waving But Ironing blog. Claire
Lucy says: "My husband gets home most nights by the time the girls are eating, but as our meal is the highlight of our evening, we rarely want to eat at five. Except at the weekend when we always have Saturday lunch, Sunday brunch and Sunday dinner with them. I love it. Definitely the best bit of my week is enjoying us all hustling in the kitchen together. When they're older, we'll try and do it more often."

Bread for beginners

2011-10-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

Despite being a blogger and supposedly interested in all this social networking malarkey, it wasn't until just over a year ago when we started the blog, that I joined Facebook and Twitter. I had always seen them as timewasters rather than useful - I really was a social networking innocent. Friends had advised me that I also needed a bog roll, oh, blog roll, a list of other blogs that I liked, to put on our blog.
It was tricky, there were so many good ones out there. But one day I alighted on one in particular and I loved it. Beautifully written, crisp photos, and fantastic recipes. I made a cherry flapjack from it for the teachers at my son's nursery and when I returned to pick him up they ran towards me, tearful with gratitude. I don't often get that level of happiness for the food I produce, so when it happens I remember.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I put the blog on our roll around then, but soon after I read that the author, a mother, was due to have her second baby. I laughed hollowly to myself and thought "that's the last we'll see of her for a year". But lo! Within a month or two she was baking cupcakes and cheesey biscuits with renewed vigour, and blogging all the while. Who was this phenomenon? I knew her as Normal Mum as her blog was called Recipes from a Normal Mum. You may know her as Great British Bake Off white hope - Holly Bell. GBBO must be the big hit of this season's telly, and Our Hol, as I now call her, is in the grand finale this Tuesday.
Now, I may have been a very late arrival when it came to Facebook and Twitter, but I was definitely an early adopter when it came to Ms Holly Bell. So who would I turn to on my first attempt at making bread? Yup, the mistress baker herself. I followed this simple recipe and it turned out as you can see above. I was very pleased. I'll be tweeting about it later, and probably putting it on Facebook...
Claire

Something for the weekend - posh pasta

2011-09-29T02:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes cheap is good. Sometimes expensive is better. Like with pasta. Now, I've nothing against your common or garden pasta and regularly buy kilo packs for next to nothing from the supermarket. If you've got a good sauce or if it's for the kids then it works perfectly as a cheap carb-heavy supper. But there's pasta and then there's pasta. This picture is of Tartufissima - an artisan pasta (am I only one who bridles at the word artisan? It is the new "boutique" or "gastro" - but sadly I can't think of an alternative) from Italy containing black truffle. It is from M&S (part of a new swanky pants range) and costs around a tenner. But it's justifiable as that plus some butter and lots of Parmesan cheese is all you need for restaurant quality pasta, made at home. A top notch meal in minutes.
My husband was sceptical about the cost until he tried it. It is a fabulous Friday night store cupboard staple, for when you fancy something special, but have no time. It's cheaper than a takeaway and costs less than the ingredients for a proper meal. A pack is supposed to serve four, but I would say three. That's about £3.33 per head for something that tastes straight from Tuscany.

Of course, there are other posh (and expensive) pastas, not just the one pictured here. Il Pozzo Del Re is another good quality brand. They differ from non-posh pasta mostly in texture. It is rougher, which makes it easier for sauce to cling to it.
My one smells beautiful - all earthy and salty and nutty. Like you want to lick it. I often think with food blogging that it's a crying shame that we can't smell the food as well as see it. Can you imagine how cool that would be? If there is a clever app maker specialising in the olfactory, then I'm in.
Black Truffle Pasta

One pack of pasta
Parmesan cheese
Salted butter
Serves: four
Start to finish: 10 minutes
You know the drill. Put the pasta in boiling salted water. Cook for 3-4 minutes (yes, really, how quick is that? But obviously check the packet.) until al dente. Meanwhile finely grate the best Parmesan you can afford. Get a slab of butter ready (the best you can afford again. With a dish this simple, quality is key), toss the pasta in the butter, sprinkle liberally with cheese and serve in heated bowls.
Claire says: "Call me frugal (ok, tight) but I just couldn't spend that much on pasta. Oysters, truffle oil, good quality chocolate, yes. Pasta? If I win the lottery."

Cupboard Love

2011-09-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

Take a look at my shelves. Do you like them? I'm inordinately proud. They stand where once loomed an enormous American-style fridge. I took a friend's advice and disposed of it, and suddenly my kitchen opened up and my work surface space doubled. It was like magic.
Finally I have somewhere to put my oversized casserole dishes, display my impressive array of nuts and oats (you are impressed, aren't you?) and indulge my taste for ridiculous utensil pots. You see a copper blamange mold (bottom right), I see somewhere to store plastic kids' cutlery.
Anyway, now I've got all my good-looking pots and dried goods out on display, I have some fairly empty cupboards. They are just holding a few prosaic tins of tomatoes, soya sauce, flour, baking soda etc, and I've got room for more. But what? I'm definitely going to get me some Eazy onions, I've also stocked up on sardines, anchovies and jars of tuna. But what else? Have you got anything in your cupboards you swear by? Go on, let me into your secret storecupoard staples...
Claire

Banana Milkshake

2011-09-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

We went to Legoland yesterday thinking we were being really clever and would have the place to ourselves. The logic was that everyone else would be tricked into thinking that because it was September it would be cold and miserable outside, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Sadly it turns out that everyone is either cleverer - or just as stupid - as us and it was the busiest like ev-ah. We queued an hour - no exaggeration - for the new Atlantis Submarine ride. It lasted three minutes and even though my girls loved seeing sting rays and sharks swimming past their noses, at 20 minutes waiting, per minute of action, it would have been quicker to fly to Australia to see the real thing.

Anyhow, I always take a packed lunch to theme parks/days out as the food is normally expensive and pretty rank, so optimistically alongside our sandwiches we packed some bananas too. But they ended up making the journey back down the M4 with us, as bruised and battered by their experience as we were. I found them a day later in the lunchbox under the buggy.

There is something about stifled, over ripe bananas that takes me back to school packed lunches: salt and vinegar Ringos, curly cheese sarnies, an orange Viscount and an overpowering smell of overripe sweaty banana that was enough to make you never want to eat fruit again.

Not having the energy to make banana bread, the girls and I whizzed them in the blender. A milkshake (in our house anyway) is different from a smoothie because you use ice cream as well as milk, but never juice or yoghurt. It is a tea time treat, not a breakfast one. A straw and cocktail umbrella adds a certain je ne sais Del Boy, but is entirely optional.

Serves one or two

From start to finish 5 minutes

One banana

scoop of vanilla ice cream (experiment with flavours, although on instinct I'd steer clear of mint choc chip)

small glass of milk (enough to create a milkshake consistency)

6 ice cubes

straw

cocktail umbrella

Whizz everything in a blender until smooth. Then drink it. That's it.
Claire says: "Ooh, I like your photo! And the umbrella! That's the thing with having sons rather than daughters, there's no time (or need) to decorate, as it is down their gullet before you get a chance."

Macaroons - why bother?

2011-09-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

This isn't one of those posts where I start off saying one thing, then answer my own question and end up persuading you that making macaroons is actually very important. Nope. I am simply asking why you'd bother to make them? Notoriously difficult and fiddly, don't we all have better things to do with our time? If you really like them, why not buy them? That's my advice to the sane among you.
Now, I'm not insane, but I was literally forced - at palette-knife point - to make some. Against my will and better judgement. The initial results were appalling and, after stuffing my face with the bits I could chisel off the grease proof paper, made me feel quite sick. I then had to make some guided by an expert, and those are the ones you see here (which I have to add, did taste pretty lovely).
So here, for the masochists among you, is a recipe for macaroons. And in true crumbs spirit, it is relatively easy (relatively easy), but really, I'd recommend sitting down with a good book and a cup of tea instead.
Macaroons
Ingredients for about 15 macaroons
Start to finish: bloody ages
180g icing sugar
140g ground almonds
3 large free-range egg whites
75g caster sugar
For the filling
150g butter, softened
75g icing sugar
Flavouring or food colouring
1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
2. Whizz the icing sugar and ground almonds in a food processor to get a very fine mixture, then sift into a bowl. If you have nuggins of nuts in the sieve at the end you can decide whether you want them in the mixture for something a little more rustic and textured, or dispose of them for something a bit finer.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to soft peaks. The salt breaks down the whites which helps them become really stiff. To check they are whipped enough turn the bowl upside down, and none should fall out. Then, gradually whisk in the caster sugar until the mixture is thick and glossy.
It's here you can stir in any flavourings you want to use, or colours. If you want lots of different colours divide the mixture in to different bowls and colour each bowl.
4. Fold half the almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue, using a metal spoon. Try not to over-stir, as you don't want to lose all that air you've just whipped in to the mixture. Then fold in the remaining half, using your spoon to cut and fold the mixture until it is shiny and has a thick, ribbon‐like consistency as it falls from the spatula.
5. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large 1cm plain nozzle. The best way to spoon the mixture into a piping bag, if you haven't done it before, is to open the bag up and fold the top bit down, and then place the spoon with the mixture as far down into the bag as possible, use the thumb of the hand which is holding the bag to scrape the mixture off the spoon.
6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. A good tip is to draw 3cm circles on the underside of the paper so your macaroons are all a similar size and pair up well. Draw round an egg cup or a bottle lid, and make sure the pen goes on the underside so you don't get it on the macaroons.
7. Pipe small rounds of the macaroon mixture, about 3cm across, onto the baking sheets. The best way to pipe is hold the bag half way up, thumb on one side, fingers on the other, and squeeze gently. The bag should be held directly above the circle, at a 90 degree angle for best results. (Although this piping bit sounds really uptight, it's actually really good fun, and I'm going to be doing a lot more piping in the future!)
8. Then you need to give the baking sheets a sharp tap on the work surface to ensure a good ‘foot’, this means the macaroons rise a little bit and become a bit more macaroon-shaped. Then leave to stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes to form a slight skin (although this took a bit longer for ours). This is important – you should be able to touch them lightly without any mixture sticking to your finger. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.
6. Meanwhile, make the fillings. In a bowl beat the butter until light and fluffy, then beat in the icing sugar. Add flavourings now if you want them. Use to sandwich pairs of similarly sized macaroons together (or not, I didn't get round to doing this part).
Ta da! Macaroons for masochists! Enjoy!

The importance of after-school snacks

2011-09-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

Fail to bring your child a snack at home time at your peril. After all, learning, playing and skipping about with your pint-sized pals is hungry work, so come 330 the little blighters are starving. The first thing my daughter asks me on school pick-up, is not 'Hi, mum, how are you?' but 'What's to eat?' before grabbing a flapjack/biscuit/bunch of grapes and ramming it down her gorgeous little gullet.
Ahhhh. It actually takes me back to my own youth. I remember my sister and I coming home from school and quite easily eating half a loaf of bread, toasted, between us without drawing breath.
Being nosy, I like to see what food other people give their children and the playground is the perfect place to do so. Half the reason I helped supervise the reception school trip to a farm last year, was just so I could compare packed lunches and make random, wildly inaccurate judgements about other people's parenting skills. (FYI one girl had a smoked salmon and cream cheese wrap. Another tuna and cucumber on wholemeal. Crusts off. It is that type of school. Not a turkey twizzler in sight.)

Generally children wants carbs after school. My 5yo likes Organix bars, yoghurt raisins or - curiously - plain water biscuits. After she's had an initial carb-load, she has either an apple (peeled and sliced - I am a slave to her faddiness) or some grapes. Aren't grapes brilliant? The ultimate fast food. If we have time I sometimes makes flapjacks. They are cheap and easy, although if you've never made them before you'll be shocked at the amount of golden syrup used, but you can offset the guilt by adding some grated apple or raisins.

After-school flapjacks

Serves: 8

Start to finish: 30 minutes

200g butter

330 porridge oats

6 tbspoons Golden Syrup

handful of raisins, one grated apple (skin and all)

Butter a shallow baking tin (25x25 or 30x2o is good) and turn the oven to 180c. Melt the butter and golden syrup in a large saucepan over a low heat. Once melted, stir in the oats until evenly coated. Add fruit if using. Squidge down the mixture into the baking tin and pop in the oven for 25 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool before chopping in to wedges.

Chocolate and beetroot cake

2011-09-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

There are few things in life better than a two year old's birthday. Mainly because they can't really speak, so can't ask for anything, so you can do what you damn well please.
I took the opportunity to make a lot of cake. And, to be honest, if B could speak, he would probably ask for a lot of cake.
I made a crunchy lemon drizzle, fairy cakes decorated with lavender and blackberries, their icing perfumed with rose water. I made raspberry friands and I made Pimms. Well, a girl's got to drink.
But the show stopper was the beetroot and chocolate birthday cake I made from Fiona Cairns' Bake and Decorate book. With so many sugary confections, I really felt that I needed to make at least one hearty cake, and the beetroot cake certainly falls in to that category - in a good way.
It was amazing to make, there's something incredible about the colour of beetroot, even when mixed with chocolate. And it was hugely popular, pretty much devoured immediately, as you can see from the picture, well before the friands and fairy cakes.
Chocolate and beetroot cake
Serves 10
Start to finish: ooh, an hour in the oven and 5 minutes icing.
180ml sunflower oil, plus more for the tin
190g self raising flour
60g cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250g golden caster sugar (I used normal)
250g cooked (not pickled!) beetroot
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
For the icing
200g icing sugar
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Lightly oil a 23cm diameter round tin, using a kitchen towel. Line the base with baking parchment.
In a large bowl sift together the flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda, then stir in the sugar. In a food processor, puree the beetroot, then scrape it into a sieve set over a bowl and push out the juices with the back of a spoon. Set them aside for the icing. Tip the beetroot pulp back into the food processor, then, with the motor running, add the eggs and vanila, then slowly pour in the oil. Mix until blended.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the beetroot mixture and, with a large spoon, gently fold together. Pour into the tin and bake for 45-50 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. This took my oven significantly longer to achieve, about an hour. She suggests that if the cake starts to brown too much before it is fully cooked, cut a round piece of foil the diameter of the cake, make a large hole in the centre and open it up. Place it over the cake to let out steam and protect the edges of the top surface.
Remove the cake from the oven, leave it for 5-10 minutes in the tin, then turn it out on to a wire rack until completely cold.
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Stir in a few drops of the reserved beetroot juice. The icing should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If not, add water, drop by drop, until you achieve the correct consistency. Turn the cake over, so the base becomes a flat top, and spread the icing evenly over, letting it drizzle down the sides. Claire
Lucy says: "Loved the cake. Icing was one beetroot too far"

Comfort food - roast chicken

2011-09-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

My little boy starts school tomorrow.
I'm terrified. I know there are worse things to fear than a good standard of free education for your child, and I feel very ungrateful and middle class about it all (don't I have better things to worry about? Well, luckily for me, no). But my little boy is a July baby, he is only just four years old. He still has a pot belly and has only just figured out how to jump. He's a toddler and he's going to school.
I'm sure there must be some benefit to sending our children to school so young - most other countries don't start til they're six - but I haven't come across them, and no teacher I've met has attempted to defend it.
But start he must. And the worst thing I can do is make a fuss about it. So I've got a big grin ready for tomorrow morning, and my waterproof mascara.
Tonight we kicked off what I hope to be our Sunday night ritual. I think rituals and routines are nice for kids. They know exactly what to expect and are comforted by that. First they had a bath and hair wash (ok, I didn't say it was a nice ritual, or one they would enjoy!) and then we plumped up all the cushions and plonked them both down in their pyjamas to watch a marathon set of Peppa Pig while me and Mr McDonald put finishing touches to the roast chicken.
Then we all sat down and tucked in. There's something immensely comforting about roast chicken, you can never get bored of it - different stuffings (we did couscous, pine nuts and sage), different cuts - breast or leg, different accompaniments - traditional veg or a salad, keep it fresh. But at the same time it is reassuringly familiar. I hope to do this every Sunday, I like the idea of creating cosy family memories for the children. It's true, we may get a little bored of chicken, but despite being a lean machine Mr McDonald has just been diagnosed with high cholesterol so we have to stick to white meat most of the time. But it gives me a chance to perfect my roast potatoes, which frankly, suck. Never crispy, always a bit sludgy. If anyone's got any tips I'd be most grateful! Or roast chicken serving suggestions, to liven things up! Claire

That back to school feeling

2011-09-08T05:27:00.000-07:00

Traditionally people make new year's resolutions on the 1st January, but for me September is when I get that back to school feeling and am full of good intentions about how my life is going to be different. Before I had children, all my "could do better" promises revolved around work or eating less and saving more. These days it is all about household management and how to grease the wheels, so life runs more smoothly.
Quite late in the day, I've come to the conclusion that it is all about organisation, if you think ahead you will rarely be caught short. Well, that's the theory. It's simple things like having an on-going shopping list, buying in bulk and rearranging my kitchen cupboards, that have made me breathe a sweet sigh of contentment.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I really should get out more. But when the focus of your life is the home, it helps if everything works properly. It'd be great, with your help, if we could start a discussion about the little things that make life run a bit more smoothly. Whether it is a great cooking tip, advice on how to stack a dishwasher or a way to get your 3yo to eat green beans - any Eureka moment that has made a difference to your life - we'd love to hear it. So go on, please share the love. Lucy

Claire says: "I know that writing an ongoing shopping list would stop the 5 trips I make to the local shop each day. But I still can't manage to translate the vague thoughts that pop into my head such as 'we need butter' to something as concrete as a shopping list. I wish I could. Damn it! I'm going to try harder!"

For you: the least competitive competition ever!

2011-09-06T03:13:00.000-07:00

Do you ever do competitions? Nope, us neither. But we are often asked whether we would like to host one here for our readers, and sometimes the prizes are pretty nice. So, we had an idea. Why don't we do some really uncompetitive competitions. We promise we won't ask you to "like" us on Facebook or tweet about us to all your friends (although of course you could if you wanted to!). Nope. Instead whenever we get offered some goodies to redistribute we'll take a look at our comments on the blog, Facebook and Twitter and give the prize to whoever has made us laugh, got involved, or just left a comment. How easy is that? So if ever you leave a comment it's like you are accidentally entering a competition, and I think accidental competitions must be the best, or at least the easiest, kind.

So, on that note, this is the first of our accidental competitions and the box of goodies is provided by those nice people at Knorr. It's a box full of Foreman & Field deliciousness, as well as quite a lot of stock! Nestling between the New Knorr Herb Infusion and Knorr Fish stock pot is Foreman & Field London Cure smoked salmon, hot smoked trout, some baby leeks, carrots, peas and lamb. Yum.

And the winner is....Edward Plunkett-Checkemian! He's entertained us several times in the last month with his shopping preferences and cake advice. His response on winning is "unbridled joy" so we feel quite pleased. Now, don't get upset that you are not the winner or that you don't have a double-barrelled name - it's not obligatory for winners to have one. We hope to have an accidental competition around once a month. Some months the prize will go to the funniest comment on the blog, another it might go to the person who has given us the best advice using Facebook, and having won one month doesn't mean you won't win again - we're fickle like that. So, you know all those comments you make in your head, but don't write down on the blog? Go on....let us know what you're thinking.
The only slight proviso is that unfortunately most of these prizes won't be available to those outside the Uk. Sorry, but the chances are you get more sunshine than us, so it all works out fair in the end. Claire x
Lucy says: "as your sister and fellow crumbs founder, am i allowed to enter too?"

Claire says: "Umm *scratches head* nope."

Going to school on an egg #2

2011-09-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Last year I wrote about my 3yo's love affair with poached eggs and how I was cooking them for her every morning before nursery, so she wouldn't get hungry and therefore ratty by lunch time. All the research shows that children are happier and perform better academically if they have proper food in their tummies. And I don't mean Cocopops. Anyway, my 5yo has always refused to eat eggs on their own FULL STOP, but one of my summer holiday triumphs was getting her to love boiled eggs. And I mean really love them. Obviously there's a catch. She won't eat the yolk, so I have to hard-boil the eggs and then pop them out, like little balls of sunshine, which I guiltily throw in the compost bin (any recipe ideas gratefully received!).
Delia was pilloried for giving a recipe on how to boil an egg, but it is a science. They should be at room temperature (btw eggs don't need to be refrigerated) and then covered in a pan with water. Bring it to the boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and then slam the timer on - five minutes for soft boiled and seven for hard. Precision is everything. They went down so well, that I bulk boiled some for a picnic a couple of days later - the girls thought peeling them was as much fun as eating them, although I am still picking shell fragments out of the shag-pile rug.

My husband is an egg-lover too (Confession - I'm not) and this month's Waitrose magazine has a recipe for soft-boiled ones served with anchovy-butter soldiers, which sounds right up his street. But as he leaves for work at 7am, the chances of me even making him a coffee let alone cordon bloody bleu brunch dishes are, frankly, minimal at that time of the morning. Sorry darling. Lucy
Claire: "I LOVE the yolks and find the white a flavourless bore to be chomped through before you reach the real treasure. Maybe you could pop them in some tupperware and bring them round here. We could be like Jack Spratt and his wife."

Herby sardines on toast

2011-09-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

This is a recipe I never thought would see the light of day. But with a last blast of summer sunshine predicted, here it is.
It's a meal with a powerful pack of flavours, with lemon, coriander and sardines, plus anchovies, onion and garlic. If you don't like any of those, or don't have them to hand, just omit them, there's enough going on for them not to be missed. Other than the herbs, I generally have all the other ingredients in my cupboard/fridge, so it's quite a good one for Friday night. Quick to knock up, really healthy, but delicious enough to warrant at least one (very) large glass of white (see Knackered Mother's recommendation below).
For some insane reason I've included in the proportion size enough for two children. If your children will eat sardines, well done. For the rest of us, this makes a delicious if rather large supper (it's because the tin sizes are that bit too big), but I'm relaxed (lazy) enough to have it for lunch again the next day.
Herby bean with sardines, on toast

Serves: 2 adults and 2 children – 2 slices of toast for each adult, 1 for each child
Start to finish: 10 minutes
1 x 400g tin haricot beans
1 tin of sardines in oil
Bunch of coriander
Bunch of parsley
Juice of half a lemon
Zest of a whole lemon
Several big gulps of virgin olive oil
4 anchovies (optional)
Black pepper to taste
Quarter of a large red onion, finely chopped
Quarter of a garlic clove, finely chopped
The rest of the garlic clove to rub on..
6 thick slices of crusty bread
Rinse haricot beans thoroughly and put in a bowl. Chop herbs and add to beans. Add finely chopped onion and garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil and give it a stir. Add drained sardines and anchovies, give another light stir. Leave the mixture at room temperature (or cover and put in fridge to serve later) while you slice the bread, toast it lightly and rub with a cut garlic clove. Then place big spoonfuls of mixture on each slice of toast. Yum.
Claire
Knackered Mother's Wine Club: Tired and tested - an expert's view of what to drink at the end of a long day: "This dish has got so many gorgeous flavours going on, it really needs an expressive white wine with crisp acidity and very little or preferably no oak. Perfect partners include an Albarino from Spain or a Sancerre from France, made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape."

Nice book alert - Flossie Crums and the Royal Spotty Dotty Cake

2011-08-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

This is a lovely, lovely children's cookery book, which has delicious cake recipes in it that grown-ups (aka me) will love too. The protagonist is Flossie Crums (7 and 3/4) the royal baker for a fairy kingdom. Alongside the story are four fool-proof and delicious cake recipes too. Even me and my 3-year-old managed (if you don't mind the odd smattering of egg shell that is) but more importantly each recipe only produced a minimal amount of washing up. A selling point if ever I saw one. Come to think of it, why has no one ever written a cookbook with only one piece of washing up as a USP? A gap in the market surely. (Patent Office? Hello, I have an idea...) Like I said what's not to like.
We baked some Strawberry Iced Marshmallow Daisy cakes (pimped up fairy cakes with glitter and sprinkles) and, my favourite, Mrs Blynkington-Smythe's crunchy lemon and honey drizzle cake. Measurements come in grammes and - very handily - measuring cups. If you haven't any of the latter, then buy some. They're perfect for the slapdash baker. They save on washing up and it feels like a slightly less anally-retentive way to bake than being a slave to your digital scales. Man.
Lucy

Serves: one premenstrual mother, or eight slices for the untired and emotionally stable.

Start to finish: 45 minutes max

Cake

100 g or 1/2 cup softened butter

175g or 3/4 cup caster sugar

175g or 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

grated lemon rind

4 tbsp milk

2 medium eggs

Icing

juice of one lemon

100g or 1/2 cup caster sugar

1 tsp runny honey

Preheat the oven to 180c, grease a 25cm loaf tin. Put all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix for 2 minutes with a wooden spoon. Spoon it into the tin and roughly level out, before popping in the oven for 35 minutes. Whilst the cake cooks, make the icing by mixing all three ingredients in a small bowl. When the cake comes out of the oven pour it very slowly over the cake and leave it, in the tin, until it is completely cool. Carefully lift it out of the tin and then eat. By yourself, or with your kids, depending on your mood.

Gone fishing

2011-08-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

We've gone on holiday. We're hoping for some sunshine. Or at least that it doesn't rain. Either way, we'll have fun. We'll be back with oodles of enthusiasm and lots of new recipes in September. Until then... happy summer.

Blackberry picking

2011-08-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Round our way the blackberries are perfect for picking at the moment, and so a few days ago a group of us went to the woods behind my house for a foraging frenzy. We bought buckets, bowls, even (a bit optimistically, in my view) a wheelbarrow to carry them.
It was fun, with kids climbing trees, seeing how far they could throw the blackberries, and generally causing mayhem, while we adults could do what we do best, chat.
If I'm painting a picture of a rural idyll where children gambol freely amongst the lush forest fruits, I should point out that these woods are between two London estates, a stone's throw from Brixton and Tulse Hill. Usually there is at least one three piece suite decorating the outskirts of the woods, and in its depths there is a burnt out car. But that's the great thing about brambles, they grow anywhere, so it's a good opportunity to go nosing around alleyways and other places you wouldn't normally go to. One word of warning though, dog owners have probably colonised these areas before you, so make sure you only pick blackberries above knee height...
What did we do with our hoard of blackberries? One neighbour made jam, another made a delicious blackberry and Greek yoghurt compote, another got all fancy pants and made a clafoutis (substituting the apples in this recipe with blackberries), and another neighbour made my own personal favourite, blackberry brandy (three quarters fill bottles with blackberries, add 3oz of sugar per 1lb of fruit, pour in cheap brandy, leave for three months. Drink). That should ensure a merry November at least.

Two week menu plan

2011-08-15T02:40:00.000-07:00

At the risk of sounding smug, you see all these children smiling, with empty plates? These children have just eaten...wait for it...spinach! Yup, the green stuff. Surely a modicum of smugness is deserved?
They are kids from our street, and there are some fussy eaters in there, but they polished off the lot. Maybe the secret to our success was that the spinach was mixed up with a healthy amount of cream cheese, a grating of nutmeg and wrapped up in a pancake. I only used about one frozen lump of spinach in a pot of cream cheese, so it was enough for them to get a bit of the flavour (and hopefully some nutrients) but it didn't overwhelm their tastebuds.
I use the cream cheese/spinach combo all the time, on crumpets, in pittas or jacket pots, even stirred into pasta. Give it a go, they might like it. You definitely will.
Anyway, back to the two week menu plan...
This is the one from a couple of weeks back.
And here is the other one from before that.
You may have seen them both before. If so, they haven't changed! If not, they are two week-long menu plans for fast lunches and quick teas. We've kept the ingredients lists short and the recipes are really quick to make. Some ideas are just suggestions or reminders - jacket potatoes, pancakes, but others maybe recipes which are new to you. Hopefully they are helpful. Claire

Something for the weekend: blackberry frozen yoghurt

2011-08-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

Once a year there is an advantage to having a garden full of Japanese knotweed, bindweed and brambles. OK, maybe not the Japanese knotweed or the bindweed, but at this time of year the brambles sprout not just lacerating thorns, but juicy blackberries.
Despite having a garden full of berries, and some woods behind us that are a tangle of the things, for several years I've missed the season because in my head (or my childhood?) it was all about blackberry and apples in September. But whenever I went up to the back of the garden I'd just see dried up little things and realise I'd missed the season.
Not this year. This year I feel a bit more in tune with what's going on around me. I've already had some apples from a neighbour, and our plum tree is laden for the first time ever. Also my children are now nearly 2 and 4, so I am no longer up to my eyes in nappies.
But with all this foraged yumminess around me I'm trying to think of interesting things to make. And that means NO crumble. Not that I don't love it, but there comes a time when you've got to broaden your repertoire. Also, I don't feel like a hot crumble in the middle of August. So, I came across this fantastic recipe on this fantastic blog and thought I'd have a go. It's an American blog so they use condensed milk, something I wouldn't do normally as it is so sweet. But I made it last night and it was DELICIOUS and SO quick that rather than faff about coming up with an alternative I just thought I'd stick it in. I suggest you do too. Yum.
Blackberry Frozen Yoghurt
Serves: 4
Start to finish: 5 mins prep, 30 mins in the ice cream maker or freezing as a lolly
3 cups of fresh blackberries
400g tin condensed milk
400g Greek yoghurt
Put the blackberries in a blender with the condensed milk and puree. Then stir in the Greek yoghurt (I did this in the blender container to save on washing up). Pour into your ice-cream maker and do as you normally would. If you don't have an ice cream maker, get one! They're cheap and amazing. But for now pop the mixture in some ice lolly moulds.

More reasons to shop at Morrisons

2011-08-09T05:35:00.000-07:00

When I was at Liverpool university, Morrisons was a peculiarly northern shop, the like of which I'd not seen down south. Back home it was all Sainsburys, Waitrose and Tesco, but up there it was a whole new world. Asda! Costco! And my favourite Kwik Save. In the student heartland of the Smithdown Road you could buy bottles of Lambrini there for 99p. Oh those were the days.
I shared a house with two southerners and two northeners and whenever chat turned to whether there was life below/above the Watford Gap, my piece de resistance would be to shout at the top of my voice the current Morrisons slogan which was MORE REASONS TO SHOP AT MORRISONS! At this point all the southeners would roll on the floor laughing at these northerners and their funny ways. You may think that sounds pitiful, but it still brings a smile to my mouth now.
Of course, Morrisons are now everywhere and on Sunday I bucked with tradition and abandoned Waitrose - thought of my friend Louise from Leeds - and went there instead. Normally I spend about £150 two or three times a month on a big supermarket shop - topped up with little shops here and there. But despite not holding back at Morrisons, the same shop only cost £100! A quick mental calculation means savings of £1200 a year.

Particular bargains seemed to be free range chicken breasts, although Waitrose own-brand butter was 11p cheaper than Morrisons (don't ask me why I know how much Waitrose butter is. I just do).
Psychologically, amidst so many bargains, it was easy to get carried away. But interestingly instead of trading up like I some times do at Waitrose (hmmm, Goats cheese from a Swiss Alpine Meadow? £5? Why certainly.) I traded down. I bought a pack of Feta cheese for £1 and was so pleased with myself that I couldn't wait to get home and try it, did and then wished I'd spent the extra 50p. On top of our normal shop, we also came home with a packet of leopard-skin cake cases (not real leopard skin obviously) and a 2 litre bottle of fizzy Vimto. Fizzy Vimto! Imagine that! In Waitrose at most we'd have bought elderflower cordial.

I've dabbled with lots of different ways to shop since I became a mum. At one point I signed up to Macro the wholesalers in London's Park Royal. The plan was to bulk buy tins and toiletries there every three months. Although the savings on booze were TREMENDOUS (and almost turned us into alcoholics), after a while I noticed that you only really made savings on branded stuff like Heinz baked beans and supermarket own-label was much cheaper. It was also quite soul-destroying firstly driving to a retail estate and then wandering around a cavernous warehouse with a pallet trolley before queuing for five hours and having your bags searched on exit to check you'd not nicked an industrial-sized box of Lillets.
The late Alan Coren once said he loved Sainsburys as it kept the riff-raff out of Waitrose, and although I wouldn't go that far, I have come to the conclusion like with anything variety is the spice of life. Even when it comes to shopping. I know, I know. I really should get out more. Lucy

Baked apple slices with cinnamon creme fraiche

2011-08-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is earlier than last year, it feels earlier than last year, but our neighbour's tree is laden with apples. I pop round there with plastic carrier bags (I think I need to upgrade to a wicker basket, for full foraging brownie points) and fill them with rosy apples.
They are placed for maximum impact in a fruit bowl on the kitchen table, until, day 2, I still haven't done anything with them. Crumble, yes there's always crumble. But I want something quicker (of course) and different. Fortunately I've found just the thing in Angel Adoree's Vintage Tea Party Book. This is a little like tarte tatin without the pastry. You can't really see from the photo(in fact I didn't know until after I'd taken the picture and started to serve) that under those apples is a layer of caramel-y, syrupy sugar. Yum. It's great for apples you've picked yourself as the slicing means you can double check for any intruders, and the sugar means that if your apples are slightly sour it's well disguised. This is super quick, you don't need to peel the apples - labour-saving and the skin is where a lot of the apple's nutrients lie, and delicious. The kids devoured it.
Serves: 4
Start to finish: 10 mins prep, 20-25 in the oven
4 eating apples (skin on, cored and each apple sliced into about 8)
4 tbsp brown sugar (I used muscovado)
juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
300ml creme fraiche
Put oven on 180 degree C. Place apples in a shallow oven proof dish, I used a pie dish. Sprinkle over the sugar and lemon, I then gave the apple slices a bit of a toss to coat them properly. Put in oven for 20-25 mins. Whilst they are cooking whisk the cinnamon into the creme fraiche. Serve with the hot apples.
Claire

Deep fried courgette flowers

2011-08-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

A neighbour passed some courgette flowers over the fence last night. Turns out she's had lots more success than me at growing her own vegetables and has peppers, tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers coming out of her ears. I've always meant to make deep-fried courgette flowers but a combination of laziness and fear has prevented me from doing it. But one glass of wine to the wind emboldened me last night and as I had pancake batter in the fridge (I often do - it's a brilliant emergency stand-by) I decided to make some. First of all I gently washed each flower to rid them of the odd greenfly, then I mixed a bit of Dolcelatte, Philadelphia and Mozzarella that were all lurking in the fridge (I couldn't give you exact quantities, but just estimate how much you'll need to stuff each flower. I don't think it matters much what combination you have - lots of recipes say ricotta, but mozzarella is a good melter and adding any kind of cream cheese binds your cheesy mixture and makes it easier to stuff), squirted in a bit of lemon juice and ground in some pepper. I then - using my fingers - stuffed each flower and carefully curled the petals over the mixture to make a kind of ball. I dipped each one in the pancake batter and fried them in about an inch of olive oil that was gently popping in a saucepan. I turned them once - again gently - during cooking and then took them out with a slotted spoon and rested them on kitchen roll to drain. They were delicious and now I know how easy they are, I'll definitely try them again. The only problem is unless you grow your own, I'm not sure how easy courgette flowers are to buy - even in Waitrose.

Kit - ice lolly maker

2011-08-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

I consider myself a bit of a whizz when it comes to making ice lollies, as you can see here, so when someone suggested I try a Zoku lolly maker I got quite excited. It takes around 10 minutes for the whole lolly to freeze, and that means it's possible to do layered lollies in minutes rather than hours.
What I didn't realise is that you have to keep quite a hefty machine, similar to an ice cream maker, in your freezer. Also, I feel that maybe my natural affinity to making ice lollies is because they are so damn easy, and that this machine, with its instruction booklet, complicates that. Anyway, I made them (with yoghurt, a mistake as it doesn't go into the allotted slot smoothly enough) and they were far too big for my little 2 and 4 year olds. And then I realised that actually, what we had here wasn't an appliance failure, but my kids were just the wrong age for it.
Then, by coincidence, a day later, I met up with two friends and one of them started to sing the praises of her lolly maker. A Zoku. Here's what she said:
"Last summer I gave my 8 year old daughter a Zoku machine (I really wanted it for myself, but felt less guilty splashing £35 on a lolly maker, loosely disguising it as a birthday present ). £35 seemed like a lot of money to spend on a frozen water machine, but the website looked so inviting and promised to make magical ice lollies in a matter of minutes (no waiting 24 hours for the thing to freeze, by which time the British weather has changed and the mood for ice lollies has past.)
Not only was the Zoku machine the "hit" of last summer (friends flocked to our house having heard of Lottie's wonder machine) but this year it is STILL causing a stir and we even bought one for my brother to take back to Cape town.
It entertains the kids for hours. Firstly, long discussions take place to decide what flavour lolly needs to be created (you can make plain lollies, diagonally striped lollies with floating fruit, even lollies with an outer shell and a hidden flavour inside).
Once the discussions have finished the serious business of lolly-making can begin. It's a bit fiddly, but not very messy and the squeals of excitement are funny to observe. My 8 year old and her friends crowd round the machine to fill up layer upon layer of stripy fruit juice (it's very healthy and you know exactly what goes into the final product.) If you want a hidden centre and and outer shell, you have to use straws to suck up the extra juice, you'll need to read the instructions, but it's worth the effort.
The Zoku machine makes 3 great lollies (they can all be different) in just 10 minutes. Although the initial 'set up cost' was not cheap Lottie reckons it's the best birthday present she's ever had (poor deprived child) and the frozen margherita version I make is pretty damn special too! Can't wait to see what she'll make of her bread machine this year... only kidding!" Helen Nathan, creator of Flossie Crums world of magical baking.
Bread machine? Why not try her on a washing machine? This birthday present idea could run and run.
The Zoku machine is on sale here for £34.95 including post and packaging.

Another week-long meal plan

2011-07-31T06:59:00.000-07:00

Alongside this totally gratuitous picture of my youngest son tucking into watermelon - I just thought he looked really cute - is another week's menu plan for the summer holidays. I've tried to keep it simple in terms of shopping lists and actual cooking time etc. Hope it's useful. Last week's menu plan is here, if you want to look at it again.

Monday
Pancakes
Start to finish: 5 mins
Ingredients: flour, milk, egg plus fillings - cream cheese, frozen spinach and nutmeg is nice.
Better than Ginsters pastie
Start to finish: 5 mins prep, 20 mins in the oven
Ingredients: readymade puff pastry, onion, cheese, ham, egg

Tuesday
Tzatziki salmon pasta
Start to finish: 10 mins
Ingredients: smoked salmon, pasta and, um, tzatziki
Pitta pizza
Start to finish: 10 mins
Ingredients: pitta, tomato puree, a vegetable - whatever you can get away with, mushroom/courgette, mozarella, parmesan, a herb

Wednesday
Mackerel pate
Start to finish: a minute
Ingredients: smoked mackerel fillet, cottage cheese, creme fraiche, lemon
Chicken kebabs
Start to finish: 5 mins prep, 10 mins grilling.
Ingredients: chicken, red pepper, mango, pitta bread, baby corn, cucumber

Thursday
Super easy tart
Start to finish: 5 mins prep, 15-20 mins in the oven
Ingredients: ready made puff pastry, tomato puree, cheese, vegetables - whatever you have in the fridge
Slack mummy soup (or any soup - fry an onion, add veg, boil to buggery in vegetable stock for 10 mins, et voila, in my book that's a nutritious lunch)
Start to finish: 5/10 mins
Ingredients: whatever veg you have in the fridge, vegetable stock cube

Friday
Broccoli pasta
Start to finish: 10 minutes
Ingredients: broccoli, pasta, olive oil, garlic, chilli flakes (optional)
Cheesey marmite scones
Start to finish: 10 mins prep, 12 mins in the oven
Ingredients: self raising flour, wholemeal flour, baking powder, butter, cheddar, egg, Marmite, plain yoghurt, milk. Serve with cream cheese and tomatoes...
Claire

Cucumber salad

2011-07-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

Well sadly my great grow your own experiment was a disaster. The cucumber plants both shrivelled and died after about a week - almost as if they'd been poisoned - and after yielding one marrow, the courgette plants died too, after both stems rotted inexplicably. Maybe I just gave them too much love - aka water. Or maybe it was karma, for killing all snails within a 30cm radius. All hope hangs now on the tomatoes. But even they looked a bit wilty this morning, so are clearly feeling the pressure to perform.

Pre-cucumber-geddon I'd planned to blog about what an underappreciated vegetable they are and how beautiful they taste when fresh from the garden. But alas the one pictured here, came from Tesco in the obligatory protective condom-like-thingy. But with a bit of jazzing up, you'd never have known it had started life in Letchworth and travelled on a lorry to Chiswick via who knows where. I ate it in a salad with an oriental dressing and a sprinkling of sesame seeds, the recipe is below, but I also like to eat them in sandwiches (white bread, crusts off, salted butter, cucumber sliced thin, seeds and skin removed) just to reinforce my Englishness. A friend swears by chilled cucumber soup (she peels them and purees with yoghurt and curry paste and serves cold).
Serves: 4 as side dish, 2 as a light lunch
Prep time: about 5 minutes
2 medium sized cucumbers (peeled and deseeded - simply cut in half, length-wise and scoop out seeds with a spoon)

1 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame seeds

Slice the already halved cucumber into crescents about the thickness of a pound coin. Put in a salad bowl. In another small bowl or jug, mix the sesame oil with the rice vinegar and salt. Pour over the cucumber. Serve and then sprinkle with sesame seeds.

My week in food - pinata, picnics and pie

2011-07-26T01:46:00.000-07:00

Monday: Monday night is soup night in our house. Yup. That exciting. The idea is that it provides a night off after the weekend's excesses. It's also an opportunity to use up debris in the fridge, and it may even diminish my baby belly (the baby's two). It is also hard to think up an excuse to make it ok to drink wine with soup. A crisp white is perfect with salad, or a light red with a summery pasta. It's trickier with soup. Especially lentil soup. So that's what we have, and it's delicious.
Tuesday: I've become a bit obsessed with this fruit loaf. I've made it three times in a week, each time getting more slapdash. This time I didn't cut up the dried fruit, I just threw in a cup of whole dried apricots and the results were sublime, the best yet. A malty loaf studded with dark gooey apricots. Yum.
Wednesday: A friend asked me to dinner. She asked another nine friends, expecting most of us to say no. We didn't. So she was faced with a dinner party for 10 straight from work. She handled it brilliantly. We were all delegated to bring something, I bought baguettes, someone else bought raspberries. We all bought wine. She made a couple of delicious salads and served them with three rotisseried chickens from Waitrose. Delicious and fun. It reminded me that dinner with friends isn't about fancy food, it's just about getting people together. And then I remembered that I didn't need reminding of that, because if ever there was a more slapdash host less likely to have food on the table when the guests arrive, it's me.
Thursday: On my way back from last night's dinner I realised that today was my son's last day at nursery, ever. I'm sure a better mum would have realised long before me. I didn't have any presents for the teachers up my sleeve but I did have some oats, chocolate and cherries so I made this fantastic hazelnut, chocolate and cherry flapjack from Recipes from a Normal Mum's blog. Really quick and utterly decadent.
Friday: It's the first day of my kids' summer hols and it's raining. I decide to be virtuous and make a proper lunch of macaroni cheese baked with loads of broccoli. It's delicious, I have seconds, but my two sons, normally voracious eaters won't touch it. I take a deep breath, don't make a fuss, and give them some fruit for pud. I've got some mozarella in the fridge so I'm feeling pretty smug about the fact I can turn it into a yummy pasta bake the next day which they'll wolf down.
Saturday: I make the yummy pasta bake, which Mr McDonald and I wolf down. My two sons don't touch it.
Sunday: It's the fourth birthday of my eldest son, Rufus. The sun is shining, a pinata is hanging from a tree, and the picnic in Brockwell park is definitely on. I've made apricot and sage sausage rolls, hard boiled eggs and the chocolate birthday cake, but when it comes to the other food I've "chosen my tart well" as the French say. A homity pie and a quiche from the local baker are delicious, a box of English cherries, ripe peaches, raspberries and strawberries come from our local greengrocer. A mountain of custard tarts come from the local Portugese caff and the elderflower cordial comes from Tesco. Well, you can't have it all.