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.