Arancini Di Riso

Here's a great use for any kind of left over rice!
As long as it's not plain rice and is left over from either a risotto or some kind of flavoured rice (mine was left-over chicken, chorizo and prawn rice. Highly flavoured and ideal for turning into aranci (Italian for 'oranges' and you can see why in the finished dish) The more subtly flavoured the rice, the more subtle the arancini.
If you want to add flavour to the arancini, for instance if your rice is a little on the plain side, you can stuff the arancini with left-over ragu sauce, if you have some in the freezer, or with little cubes of mozzarella, or indeed, both.

Left-over rice

First of all form the cold rice into large walnut sized balls:

If you are going to stuff the arancini, then make sure the filling is properly enclosed.
It's not as fiddly a job as it looks really, as the cold rice will hold itself together really well.

Coat the arancini, first in egg, which has been thinned down with a little water so it's not too thick and 'eggy' for want of a better word, then in breadcrumbs, the staler the better, shop-bought will do.
Deep fry on a medium heat, so that they have a chance to cook through and ensure the cold rice is piping hot, before they become wonderfully golden.

How can anything coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried not taste great, right?

Before I go, I want to wish you all a wonderful Sunday and show you Nigella's old-fashioned cheesecake from her latest book 'Kitchen'.

I love baked cheesecake, but don't feel that I can recommend this one, it was neither sweet enough, lemony enough, or tasty enough. Mediocre is the only word I can think of to describe it.
A shame, but there you go. Not everything is worth making again, right?

A Birthday, a Charm, a Satay and a pie.

A long time ago in the flower power 60's, a child was born....who would change the World....

Well, maybe not the World! Just a little corner of Birmingham.

Today is my birthday.

I don't know why my family would choose a cupcake charm for my bracelet?
Do you?

Ha ha.

Anyway, changing the subject...
I asked for some help deciding what to make with some chicken thighs on my facebook group:

'Yes, I do take photos of my food. I admit it.'

There were some nice suggestions, but one really caught my eye. Chicken Satay.
I've never made chicken Satay before, but Billie who is a member there gave me a really nice recipe for it.
As per usual, I decided to play around with the recipe, googled.
Natch.
And came up with my own recipe for it.
It was soooooo nice!  Am I allowed to feel a teeny tiny bit of pride for creating it?

Would you like the recipe dear reader?

Chicken in Satay Sauce (Serves 3)

600g skinless, boneless chicken strips (I used thigh, because that is what I had at home, but I'm sure breast would be lovely too)
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 tbsp brown sugar
3 heaped tbsp smooth peanut butter
3 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
6 tbsp coconut milk
half a pint of chicken stock (plain water would also be fine)
crushed chilli flakes (optional)
small handful of crushed peanuts
2 spring onions, finely sliced .

1. Marinate the chicken in the soy, garlic and sugar for at least an hour if you can.
2. Fry off the chicken, until beautifully golden and caramelised. Reserve the marinade.

3. In the reserved marinade also mix in the peanut butter, sweet chilli sauce, lime juice, coconut milk and stock, mix well.
4. Pour over the chicken and simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Taste, and if you like things spicy, add more heat in the form of  the crushed chillies flakes.
6. Serve over rice, garnish with the crushed peanuts and spring onions.

Keeping with the nutty theme I also made Carine Goren's 'Go Nuts pie'

Oh.
My.
Word.

A pastry shell filled with toffee and loooooads of salted peanuts and cashews.
A new take on the salty/sweet combo.

Heavenly!

Going Nuts Pie
Adapted from Carine Goren's amazing book 'Sweet Secrets'

Pastry:
1 3/4 cups flour
pinch salt
3/4 cup icing (powdered) sugar
3/4 cup butter, cold and cubed
1 egg, beaten.

Filling:
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup double (heavy) cream
1 1/2 cups salted peanuts, toasted
1 1/2 cups salted cashews, toasted.

9 inch square pie pan or 14x4 inch rectangular pie pan.

Make the pastry and bake:
1. Process the flour, salt, icing sugar and butter into coarse crumbs (I used my Kitchen Aid fitted with the beater)
2. Flatten the dough out, wrap with plastic and place in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
3. Roll  into a rectangle on a floured sheet of parchment paper and transfer to the pie pan by flipping it over into the pan and then removing the paper.
4. Press the dough into the pan, going up the sides too, prick with a fork and freeze for 15 minutes.
5. Heat oven to 180 deg. C.
Bake the pie for 15 minutes until golden brown (mine needed 20 minutes)
Cool, while you make the filling.

Make the filling, assemble and bake:
6. Reduce the oven to 160 deg. C.
7. In a saucepan heat the butter, sugar and honey, stirring until the sugar melts. Add the cream and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and add the nuts.
8. Pour nut mixture into pie shell and bake for 10-15 minutes until filling is bubbling.
9. carefully remove pie from pan while filling is still hot, otherwise as it cools it will stick the pie to the pan. (I made mine in a pyrex dish, left it in there and it IS difficult, but not impossible to remove, so do as Corine says :-)))
10. Keep refrigerated and serve at room temperature.

Do try and get your hands on a copy of 'Sweet Secrets'.  It's a fabulous book!

Dom, send the blog fairy out!

Well, where do I start?
This is supposed to be my first entry into Belleau Kitchen's monthly bloggers challenge....

But I don't know if it counts...

July's challenge is to select a random recipe from your favourite cookbook.

This is where the problem begins....
I chose my favourite cookbook - Carine Goren's 'Sweet Secrets'.....
(Or second favourite if you count 'Feast' by Nigella Lawson)

But then I CHOSE a recipe, not randomly, but completely intentionally.

Against the rules.

Dom, send the blog fairy out!!

Is there a Bloggers court? Send me there too....I think we need a jury.....


Will this quick and easy chocolate cake appease the blog fairy?

Or this? (made previously)

Dreamy, creamy vanilla cupcakes

Dreamy, creamy vanilla cupcakes

Or this? (Made previously)

Better than store-bought Cinnamon rolls

Better than store bought Cinnamon rolls

Next month I promise I'll behave.

Quick n Easy Chocolate cake
Adapted from 'Sweet Secrets' by Corine Goren.

Cake:
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 cup chocolate drink mix (eg Nesquick)
3/4 cup sour cream
1 cup flour
1 tsp BP

Topping:
1/2 cup double cream
120g plain chocolate (I used a mix of milk and plain)

8 inch baking pan or 1 loaf pan.

Make the cake:
Preheat oven to 170deg. C.

This is where the difficult bit begins.....

Mix the cake ingredients in a mixer.

Erm, that's it.

Pour into an oiled pan and cook for 40 minutes.

40??? Mine took 70.....
I really don't know why...could be I used a wrong sized tin (Too square)....it took ages for the middle to cook....by which time the edges had turned, shall we say, a tad too crispy?

While the cake is cooking melt the cream and chocolate together (I did it in the microwave)
Pour the topping over the hot cake, yum.....

Cool slightly and serve.

Marks out of ten?    7.

Would I make it again?    Yes! Try again.

Would I do anything differently?   I think I'd bake it in a narrower, longer loaf tin, mine is quite short and square-ish, so it takes longer for the middle to cook....

There is a law which states....

...There can be no 'Anna's family' recipe journal without a recipe for keftedhes (Greek meatballs)
If I am hoping that my kids will at some point come to this blog searching for a recipe that Mom makes, then this will probably be the recipe they come searching for.

So who am I to argue?

Keftedhes are great and one of our most loved family recipes. When the children where growing up I loved making them especially, because they're a great finger food and along with a simple salad, a great family-friendly meal.
I can still see the kids in my mind's eye toddling along, holding keftedhes in their hands and pleased looks on their faces...

No family get-together is complete without a huge dish of these. Here's my recipe (which I usually make double of) I usually make them with pork mince, but have also been known to use turkey mince...I don't see why you couldn't try making them with chicken mince either.
Personally I wouldn't make them with beef or lamb mince, they're both too strong tasting here I feel.

Keftedhes  (makes about 25)

500g pork mince
1 lg onion, peeled and then either very finely chopped or almost pureed in a little whizzing machine!
1 egg
3 slices of white bread, made into breadcrumbs
2 small potatoes, peeled and then grated on the fine 'shred' side of the grater
small bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp salt, ground black pepper
1 tsp ground cinnamon
half a tsp ground cloves
1 tsp dried mint.

Put the pork mince in a bowl, then add the onion, egg, bread and the grated potato.
The grated potato must be squeezed out before adding to the bowl as there will be lots of watery liquid which is not needed, if the potato is too wet, the finished meatball mixture will be too wet.
Add the salt, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, mint and parsley.
Mix, with your hands, really well, so that it comes together well.
Shape into large walnut sized balls, or into torpedo shapes (ie an elongated ball) which is the shape I prefer.
Fry in a copious amount of vegetable oil, so that the keftedhes are hidden by oil while they are frying, depending on the size of your saucepan, you should be able to fry between 8-12 at a time.
Don't have your oil too hot as they need to cook inside before becoming golden brown.

Serve and enjoy!

Apricot, white chocolate & macadamia cookies

These cookies constitute my first ever entry into the 'We should Cocoa' monthly chocolate challenge. So I'm really excited to be entering!

'We should Cocoa' was set up by two food bloggers - Choclette of  'Chocolate log blog' and Chele from 'Chocolate Teapot'
They take turns to select an ingredient, which along with chocolate, should be used in the entry.

July's added ingredient is APRICOT. Fresh or dried.

I decided to make apricot, white chocolate and macadamia cookies based on Nigella Lawson's 'Cranberry and white chocolate cookies' from her book 'Feast'.**
Snowy from 'Cookbooks Galore' has entered a very similar cookie, so thanks for the inspiration!

**I love that book.
I adore it.
Not to be morbid, but I want it buried with me.

I'm not joking.

I think this was a wholly successful experiment!

Here's my version:

Apricot, white chocolate and macadamia cookies (Makes 25-30)

140g plain flour
half a tsp. Baking powder
half a tsp. salt
75g rolled oats
125g soft butter
75g dark brown sugar
100g caster sugar
1 egg
half a tsp. vanilla extract
75g dried apricots, chopped
50g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
140g white chocolate chips.

Preheat the oven to 180deg.C (160deg.C Fan oven)

1. Put the flour, oats, baking powder and salt into a bowl.

2. In another bowl beat the soft butter and both sugars together, add the egg and vanilla and mix.

3. mix both bowls together, then fold in the apricots, nuts and chocolate chips. Put the bowl in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

4. Roll tablespoons of dough onto greased baking sheets, flatten down very slightly with a fork.

5. Cook for about 15 minutes, by which time the cookies will be pale golden. Let them harden for about five minutes before removing from the tray.

Lemon curd cheesecake with summer fruits & white chocolate

Ever since I read Nigella Lawson's recipe for her 'No-fuss fruit tart' I've loved the idea of adding lemon curd to cream cheese to create a cheesecake filling.

I love short-cuts, I really do.

I've been playing around with the idea, I can't help it....and this is what I've come up with:

Lemon curd cheesecake with summer fruits and white chocolate


15 digestive biscuits
50g butter

600g cream cheese
200g lemon curd
zest of 1 lemon
juice of half a lemon
none-half a cup of sugar (try before adding)

various summer fruits for topping, along with a handful of white chocolate chips.

1. Whizz the digestives up in the processor and add the butter which has been melted. Use to line the base and sides of a pie dish.

2. Mix the cream cheese, lemon curd, zest, juice and sugar (if needed) in a mixer. I started off mixing it by hand, but it went really lumpy!
Pour into the pie dish.

3. Put in the fridge for an hour or so to firm up the filling a little, then cover with your Summer fruit. I had a little helper to stone the cherries for me:

Sprinkle chocolate chips over..... (grated white chocolate would be even better here I think)
Put in the fridge to chill.

Mmmmmmmm. It's lemony and light and fruity....just don't expect it to cut cleanly...it's more of a spoon job as it were...

'Throw it all in the slow cooker' soup!

Do you use a slow cooker?
I'm asking you because it seems to me that slow cookers are a bit like the 'marmite' of the  small kitchen appliance world....one either loves them or hates them.

There doesn't seem to be an in-between.

I love mine.

I'm aware of it's limitations, but I try and work with them as much as I can and give it a gentle, helping nudge along the way.
Treat it (the ingredients) properly during their pereparation and your slow cooker will reward you with hearty, warming meals, notably flavourful soups and stews.

I was reading the 'Claytons blog' and Coby was, this time, making a 'freestyle' soup.
Coby has a basic soup 'recipe' which she varies depending on what she has in the house and of course, what she feels like eating that particular day!
If you read my comment to her, you'll see that 'freestyling' a recipe actually scares me. I worry that what I will end up with will be neither delicious nor pleasing to the beholder.

Coby's soup post is here.

But, I decided to be brave and give it a whirl in my slow cooker. This is what I ended up with..

A really gorgeous, nutritious, colourful, filling soup, which we really enjoyed!

The first thing I did was to soak a handful of dried Porcini mushrooms in a little marsala, put to one side.

Anything you can do to add more flavour, DO.
Think savoury.
Think frying off the vegetables and chicken to give them an appealing appearance and more flavour and to aid hugely in the cooking process!
Think TASTE.

I began by sweating off in a little olive oil, some chopped onions (2), garlic (2 cloves, grated), carrot(1), celery (2-3 stalks) and yellow pepper(half).
When they had softened, I poured them straight into the slow cooker. In the same pan I fried off some chicken thighs (4 skinless and boneless) , which I'd cut into small pieces,when the chicken was golden, but before it was ready to come off the heat, I added a couple of slices of chopped up bacon and fried them together for a few minutes. This also went into the slow cooker.

I'd already put (at a guess) about a litre of stock in the slow cooker, made by adding a couple of teaspoons of Bouillon powder to some boiling water.
After throwing in the veggies, chicken and bacon, also add the mushrooms and the marsala, 1 tin of butter beans (or what ever pulse you like) and 1 tin of chopped tomatoes.
Strain the marsala through a tea-strainer though, as little gritty pieces tend to collect in the bottom of the bowl and you don't want those of course.
Add a little salt (Bear in mind the stock already contains salt) pepper and about a teaspoon of dried, mixed herbs or whatever you have at home.

I put mine on 'high' for about 5 hours...

Let your slow cooker work it's magic. And you will be repaid with empty bowls.

Now doesn't that gladden the heart?

Thanks Coby for the inspiration!

The Hankering Palate

Even the title of this blog lets you know that you're in for a wonderful treat by delving into it's pages.
Sarah-Nicole is an articulate, creative and gutsy Puerto Rican New Yorker who has a huge passion for food and the written word.

I enjoy reading Sarah's blog immensely and as such felt really touched and honoured when she asked me to contribute a little piece towards it.

The Hankering Palate.

 In her own words:


"you are very much like me: You are English and Cypriot with a love for American trashy food and I am Puerto Rican (a US Commonwealth, but it has its own culture and ideals) and American with a love for English foods". 

The world has become a much smaller place don't you think?

 we can make friends and come to know people we have never met in the flesh and become part of their worlds.

Thank you Sarah-Nicole for a great series! I enjoyed reading it so much.

Do check it out!