Tuna, onion and potato rosti brunch.

The ultimate easy student brunch, as it is very very rare that I do not have a can of tuna in the cupboard and some onions and potatoes in the fridge.  Discovered this recipe the other day and made enough rosti for two meals - ate half and enjoyed it so much I couldn't resist eating the rest as well... I was stuffed, but happy nonetheless as I love this meal!

 1 large (or 2 smaller) baking potatoes

 1 tin of tuna

 1 large onion

 (optional) 1 egg to serve, although it's delicious without as well!

1)  Boil the potatoes, in their skins, for 10 minutes.

2)  Drain, and when cool enough to handle, peel.

3)  Slice onion finely and fry until golden.

4)  Grate potatoes and then combine with fried onions and tuna and mix well.

5)  Heat a tablespoon of oil in the frying pan, before pressing the mixture into it to cook for 5-10 minutes.

6)  Remove frying pan from the heat temporarily, place a plate on the top and flip the frying pan over so the rosti slides out onto the plate, before sliding it back into the frying pan so the other side is facing down to cook for a further 5 minutes.

7)  In a small seperate frying pan, fry your egg to your liking, then slice the rosti and dish up onto your plate, serve your fried egg on top and season, and enjoy!

xoxo la dolce eater.

Come Dine With Me - part three.

And, drumroll, the next installment of our CDWM fun... and it's MY night to report back to you on!  I went for a Greek theme for the first two courses of my dinner, and to start:

Roasted peppers with halloumi, toasted pine nuts and a chilli, lemon and garlic dressing.

I have to be honest, these were absolutely gorgeous.  The dressing was such a lovely combination of flavours and I could have happily doubled up the portion sizes and eaten this as a main course!  I won't bore you with the recipe as I do have to credit BBC GoodFood for the majority of the creativity behind this meal, so here we are:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4510/peppers-with-halloumi-chilli-and-pine-nuts

 

For my main... Greek lamb with orzo, homemade gluten-free flatbreads, homemade tatziki and a greek salad.

 

This greek lamb dish was also to die for, slowly cooked for around three hours with cinnamon, tomato and oregano, before chucking in some orzo to cook briefly before serving;

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5846/greek-lamb-with-orzo

I kindof improvised the flatbreads as I went, as one of my guests is gluten intolerant, and I struggled to find a recipe that was what I was after - unfortunately they didn't come out as nicely as I'd hoped so better luck next time with those.  The Greek salad was a simple mix of tomatoes, olives, red onion, cucumber, avocado, oregano and extra virgin olive oil.

None of the tatziki recipes I found were exactly what I wanted either, so I combined a few different ones to make a tatziki nicer than any other that I've tried before! A combination of cucumber, yoghurt, lemon, garlic, olive oil and mint - could have eaten it out of the bowl with a spoon...

And for dessert; Chocolate, nut and amaretto cake served with a raspberry compote.

Credit to (my favourite) Gino D'Campo for the cake recipe;

http://www.itv.com/food/recipes/italian-chocolate-and-nut-cake

And the raspberry compote was just a blend of frozen raspberries and caster sugar, stewed in a saucepan until broken down, and served with a drizzle of chocolate sauce on the plate.

Voila!  One more CDWM night to go before finding out the winner, and we've so far had Jamaican, Spanish and Greek, now just awaiting the French themed dinner - who do you think should win?

xoxo la dolce eater.

Mother's Day - St Clements cupcakes

I know I'm writing this blog post a little late to be celebrating Mother's Day, but it's been a busy few weeks and this is the first chance I've had to get round to it!  So I was a bit short on pennies this year so decided to bake some cupcakes for when my mum came to visit, and knowing her love for anything citrus, I created... St Clements cupcakes!

 For the cupcakes:

110g butter

110g caster sugar

110g self-raising flour

2 large eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1 orange, grated zest

1 tsp orange extract

A splash of orange food colouring

Lemon curd (enough for a tsp worth per cupcake)

For the icing:

125g butter

250g icing sugar

1/2 lemon, grated zest

1/2 orange, grated zest

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

A splash of yellow food colouring

1)  Preheat oven to 170°C (gas mark 3, fan oven 150°C).

2)  Place butter, sugar, flour, eggs and baking powder into a large bowl and mix until smooth.

3)  Add orange zest, extract and colouring and continue to mix.

4)  Take half of the mix, and half-fill each cupcake case.

5)  Take a teaspoon and place a dollop of lemon curd in the middle of each cupcake.

6)  Divide the rest of the cake mix on top of the lemon curd of each cake to seal it in the middle.

7)  Bake for 20 minutes.

8)  Beat together the butter and icing sugar until fluffy, before adding the lemon zest, lemon extract and yellow food colouring (only adding a drop of colouring at a time until you reach the colour you're after).

9)  Either pipe the icing onto your cupcakes or, as I did as I have currently lost my favourite icing nozzle, simply smooth on with a palette knife.

10)  Decorate as you wish, I grated orange zest onto the top of mine for decoration and popped some decorative orange and lemon jellies on top!

Enjoy.

xoxo la dolce eater.

Come Dine With Me - part two.

For our second night of CDWM, our neighbour Rachel treated us to a lovely evening of food... Unfortunately, it was so lovely that I was far too keen to get on with eating my food and didn't have much time for photo-taking, so don't have much to show of the evening as the majority of the photos that I did manage to take were either out of focus or just useless. 

Only part of our Spanish tapas-themed starter (but, without a doubt the best part): bacon-wrapped halloumi bites, so good! 

And her heavenly chocolate truffle torte, which came with a side addition of a vanilla and praline macaroon.

Two nights down, two to go, and I'm up next, eek! Next CDWM update will either be a celebration of my night being a success or a massive sulky blog if everything goes wrong, keep your fingers crossed for me...

xoxo la dolce eater.

Keylime Pie - just like mama used to make.

I'm currently at home visiting my family for a few days, and whilst food shopping with my mum she announced that my dad had requested her to make a keylime pie using an old recipe she used to bake for him back in the olden days.  After being told in Asda by a useless member of staff that "we don't sell milk in a can", I finally tracked down someone who could point me to the condensed milk and we were on our way...

This recipe has been scrawled onto a piece of note-paper and has been kicking about since before I was born, so due to it being over two decades old we have no idea where it actually originated, but it is delicious nonetheless - so get baking!

8oz/225g crushed digestive biscuits

4oz/100g melted butter

3 eggs

2 tbsp caster sugar

397g can condensed milk

4 fl oz/120ml freshly squeezed lime juice (this averaged at around 2 or 3 limes for us, depending on their size)

1 tbsp lemon juice

rind of 1 lime

300ml double cream

(optional) chocolate for decoration - we grated/curled a few squares of a bar of plain chocolate, but a crumbled Flake or other chocolate bar would have the same effect.

1)  Mix together the crushed digestive biscuits and melted butter, and press into a round 9in/23cm tin - chill for one hour.

2)  Preheat your oven to 160 (140 for fan ovens, or gas mark 3).  Seperate your three eggs into two bowls, and mix the egg yolks with the caster sugar until creamy, before adding the condensed milk, lemon juice, lime juice and rind.  Whisk until the mixture is smooth and thick.

3)  Whisk your egg whites in your second bowl until stiff, before folding into the mixture in your first bowl.  Spoon your mixture onto the top of your digestive base and place on the middle shelf of your oven for 15-20 minutes.

4)  Once removed from the oven, leave to cool and then refrigerate for 3 hours to set (we got impatient to eat our pie and cut into it after only an hour in the fridge, and although still delicious it did not have quite the consistency it should have!)

5)  Whip the double cream until stiff, and spoon into a piping bag to pipe onto the pie (or, alternatively, just slap the cream on top and use a fork or spoon to mould into place.)

6)  Decorate with grated chocolate (and/or grated lime rind if there's any left) and enjoy.

I think this recipe might have benefited from some green food colouring to liven up the middle layer, so if anyone tries this recipe and has some to hand I'd love to know how it turns out.

xoxo la dolce eater.

Come Dine With Me - part one.

So, my boyfriend and I were having dinner with two other friends recently and Come Dine With Me was on the TV in the background, and I (half-jokingly) threw out the suggestion that the four of us should do our own Come Dine With Me, so here goes nothing..!  Adam, my boyfriend, had the unfortunate job of going first, and although I never got round to taking any photos of his meal on the night, I did take a photo of the preparation dinner we made the week before so he could try out his menu.

I bought Adam a new Levi Roots cookbook recently and this held the inspiration for his Caribbean themed dinner - he made these 'Wake-up fishcakes' for his starter, and then these sweet potato fries with jerk chicken and minted garlic and chilli mushy peas for his main.

These fishcakes are such a must to try, they are absolutely gorgeous and a new favourite in our flat: http://www.lovefood.com/guide/recipes/12982/levi-roots-wakeup-fishcakes. The sweet potato shoestring fries are so easy to make and so satisfying; thinly sliced strips of sweet potato fried in olive oil infused with a clove of garlic and a scotch bonnet chilli, and the peas are just cooked as per normal before being slightly mashed with chopped chilli, garlic and mint.

One night down, three to go! Watch this space for more CDWM updates...

xoxo la dolce eater.

Lazy I-need-to-go-food-shopping brunch...

11am, starving, what can I have for brunch? Oh, good, we have eggs, that's fine I can have... oh, we have no bread.  That's okay, I have one garlic and coriander pitta bread in the freezer... will that taste weird? Is there anything in the salad tray that needs using up?

This is the kind of thought process that leads me to the majority of my meals, and the one that led me to this brunch creation today...

 

Lazy I-need-to-go-food-shopping brunch

One pitta bread (mine was garlic and coriander, but any kind will suffice)

Handful of rocket

Half of a red pepper

75g sliced mushrooms

Two soft-boiled eggs

I think this is a very self-explanatory breakfast, but nonetheless:

(skip this first step if using fresh pitta breads and not cheating with a frozen one like me!)

(1)  Pop pitta bread in the microwave for 30 seconds to defrost

(2)  Bring a saucepan of water to the boil

(3)  Finely slice peppers and mushrooms and fry with a splash of sunflower oil

(4)  Add two eggs to the pan of boiling water for 5-6 minutes, slightly longer if you want them hard-boiled instead

(5)  Put the pitta bread in the toaster for a minute or two to warm and crisp up

(6)  Pile up your toasted pitta, rocket, sliced peppers and mushrooms, slice your eggs in half and balance on top with a sprinkling of salt and pepper

(7)  Tuck in.

 

xoxo la dolce eater.

What day is it today?

Pancake day of course!  My first pancake day since discovering cooking, and also my first pancake day of actually having a decent camera to hand (as well as, you may notice, the first post of this blog with a decent camera to hand - it can only get better from here on in terms of picture quality!) 

My intentions of pancake day were to have more than one round of pancakes over the course of the day, to include a savoury option, but alas the savoury pancakes never occured and I am instead destined to only have these ones to brag about. But they were most definitely worth the bragging - fluffy American pancakes with freshly whipped cream, chopped strawberries, dark chocolate chips and a milk chocolate sauce. Greediness at it's finest!  I also made a second batch for the boyfriend with banana and maple syrup, but unfortunately his patience does not last as long as mine and the plate had dissapeared to be demolished before the camera lens had even been removed...

Happy Shrove Tuesday everyone.

xoxo la dolce eater.

Valentines Day

Valentines Day is never too fancy an occasion for us, and this year consisted of a stroll around town resulting in taking shelter in a cosy little coffee shop in the North Laines; mochas, hot chocolates, chocolate treats from M&S and some first-class people watching of the unusual sorts around that end of Brighton.

These were in fact made previously to Valentines Day, although I figured were worth mentioning in the same post as, had I had the time to do any baking in preparation for the day, these are what I would have gone for...

Behold, my white chocolate and raspberry brownies!  Truth be told I don't remember where this recipe originated from, but if I happen to stumble across it again I'll be sure to post it up here.

xoxo la dolce eater.

Chocolate and hazelnut brownies

http://cooklikeyourgrandmother.com/2009/07/how-to-make-perfect-brownies/

This recipe truly does produce the nicest brownies I've ever tasted - I adapted it slightly and added hazelnuts and hazelnut syrup to mine for some little bites of chocolate-y heaven.  Needless to say, the batch lasted all of about an hour in our flat...

xoxo la dolce eater.