Friday Pie-Day

Back in the day of free-flowing cash (or something like that), a few of my workmates and I used to go to Lloyds most Fridays for lunch as an end of week 'treat'. I use the word 'treat' loosely because it's Lloyds after all. At least two of us would always get a pie and thus, Friday Pie-Day was born. Sadly, since we've all tightened our purse strings, we haven't done this for ages now.

I had a day off work today so I thought I'd revive the tradition by attempting to bake my own pie. It's one of those magic-eye pies where you have to try and 'see' the hidden image...can you see what it is?



Ok, well actually, it's just my poor attempt to put the words 'Hungry Jenny' on top of the pie! I don't have a proper pie dish either and used my housemate's rectangular cake tin. So yes, it is a rather questionable-looking pie. It looks like a loaded brick.

But I think I've found a new Mission - to make the perfect Hungry Jenny pie. My amateur attempt above had pre-made shortcrust pastry so this will mean making the pastry from scratch too.

I'm still quite pleased with my first attempt though. It was yummy, but the pastry was a bit dry and I didn't have enough of it to encase the whole pie (as a REAL pie should be!).

But I'm now determined to become a pro at pie-making. Yes, and then dominate the world with Hungry Jenny pies...

Why didn't I think of this before?
Continue reading this post..

Accepted for the 80s

It seems a strange idea for The Slug and Lettuce but they're having an 80s night tomorrow and you can get 2 for 1 drinks including wine using this voucher.

This, as well as their usual cheap cocktail deal from 5pm til 8pm? Well, we're just being spoiled aren't we?

That's right, I don't just talk about food all the time! Continue reading this post..

Hungry Jenny Faux Pas: When Chinese Cooking is NOT So Easy!

Amongst my collection of recipe books is China Modern, by Ching-He Huang of Chinese Cooking Made Easy fame. I used a recipe from it last year to make chocolate sesame seed balls, an alternative take on the more traditional red bean paste sesame seed balls that you get. They're a nice treat to have and since I was making a Chinese New Year meal for my friends, I thought this would make a good dessert...

Now I should mention that the very first time I made them, I managed to buy the wrong flour, so the balls came out extremely hard, like actual golf balls. Hm, not very tasty.

The second time round, they came out completely fine except I made them into ginormous balls, so they took ages to cook - they are meant to be deep fried, but I sort of shallow fry them so have to keep turning them over.

Anyway, I printed off a recipe I found online which happened to be Ching's on the UKTV food website (the channel that Ching's Kitchen was aired on). I assumed this was the same as the one in her book.

First, you're meant to sieve rice flour into a bowl and make a well in the middle. You then add in a mixture of boiling water and brown sugar and knead the lot together to make dough.

As soon as I poured in my sugar mixture, I looked deep into the well and saw it was not what I had wished for. How can so much flour be soaked up by this tiny amount of water? The answer is, it can't. I kneaded away, well, let it crumble about my fingers as I realised too late that the ratio of flour to sugar-water was just completely wrong.

To compensate, I added more water and of course, got carried away to the stage where the dough turned into a sticky mess. Not the stuff of sesame seed balls really. Luckily, I had a tiny bit of rice flour left which seemed to help, er, well not alot to be honest. I was at least now able to pull the dough into ball shapes now.

Prep time was meant to be 25 minutes but I'm pretty sure it was at least an hour! It was light outside when I started and dark when they were ready to be fried. Oh dear. They looked promising when they were done:

My guests seemed to enjoy them but I won't be offended if you thought they weren't that nice! I kept trying them as I was cooking them and thinking, hm, that one tastes a bit too hard - yet I wasn't completely sure whether it was cooked through. Don't worry, they were all done by the time I served up, I promise! But they were definitely more chewy than they were supposed to be. They are meant to be quite soft inside.

I was pretty tired by the end of the evening, having cooked two other courses as well (I've uploaded a recipe for the starter of the spring rolls, and will blog about the main dish soon). So it was no surprise that I'd absentmindedly stuck the remaining chocolate balls in the fridge to take into work the next day. Under normal circumstances, it probably would have been fine. But for already-firm balls, being kept overnight in a fridge just turned them into solid rocks.

I guess my workmates can count themselves lucky that I was unable to enforce these delightful treats on them like I planned to...

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!
Continue reading this post..

A Good Start(er) For Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year starts tomorrow and I've decided to cook a nice Chinese celebratory meal this evening for my friends. Nothing too fancy, but something traditionally Chinese at least of course.

I did a trial run of my starter yesterday, since I've never made it before - and I'm very glad I did! Spring rolls are extremely simple to make - if you can find the right pastry to use. 'Real' spring rolls are made with proper rice paper wrappers but you can only really get them from Asian supermarkets.

I used filo pastry instead, but the only ones I could find were massive sheets in Tescos. They were folded over each other in the bag, so ripped really easily when I tried to separate them out and cut them to shape.

It took a bit of faffing around trying to tear them into spring-roll-ready wrappers, but I got there in the end...

Filo Spring Rolls

Print-friendly recipe

For 4:

8 filo pastry sheets (if you find the small round ones) - to make 2 average-sized rolls per person
OR 24 small rectangle sheets if you have to cut from massive sheets like I did! This will make 3 mini rolls per person

Bag of mixed stir-fry vegetables
Some fresh coriander, chopped
Some grated ginger
Some soy sauce
Some vegetable oil
Some sesame seeds

1) Heat the oven to 220 degrees C. Brush half of your filo sheets with a bit of oil and cover with the rest of the sheets.
2) Stir fry the vegetables, ginger and coriander for a few minutes, adding a splash of soy sauce.
3) Spoon a bit of the spring roll filling onto the edge of each sheet, fold over the edges and roll over to close it up (like you're wrapping up fish and chips!).
4) Place the spring rolls onto a baking tray, seam-side down. Brush a little more oil on the top of each roll and sprinkle on the sesame seeds.
5) Bake until they look golden and crisp!

Continue reading this post..

Toby Carvery gets even cheaper!

Wow, I can't believe it. My favourite carvery of all time has jumped on the voucher wagon and is offering a carvery meal for under a fiver :-) You must go immediately - not only do you get a delicious carvery meal, but an ice-cream sundae has been thrown into the offer too!

I am already amazed by how cheap Toby Carvery is anyway, since that first unforgettable time at the Warrington branch. Never have I fallen in love with an eating establishment so deeply.

It's only valid until Valentine's Day so quick, get the voucher now!

www.tobycarvery.co.uk Continue reading this post..

Bit of a Turkey Ball

I'm very proud of my balls - the last time I tried to put together my own meat-type shape for a meal, I didn't quite grasp the concept and used chunky chicken pieces, resulting in a very broken, unimpressive-looking burger. Needless to say, this jolted my confidence a bit but I have now bounced back with my turkey balls (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun!)...

Turkey Balls

Print-friendly recipe

For 2:

150g turkey mince
50g breadcrumbs
25ml milk
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
5 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp tomato puree
Couple of small carrots, sliced
3 mushrooms, sliced
Half a red onion, diced

Fresh pasta to serve

1) Stir the breadcrumbs with the milk in a bowl. Add the mince, some oregano and parsley. Give it a good mix!
2) Shape into little balls.
3) Get your pasta on the boil in slightly salted water. If you want to save on washing up like I always do, boil the carrots too at the same time.
4) Add oil to a hot wok or large saucepan and cook the balls - don't forget to turn them around every now and again to make sure they're cooked all over - I used chopsticks to do this!
5) Gradually add the veg (including the boiled carrots) and tomato puree with a little water. Tip in more oregano and parsley.
6) Allow to simmer until all is cooked and the sauce is nice and hot.
7) Drain the pasta and dish up!

More turkey recipes here! Continue reading this post..

So much cooking, not enough photos

In all my efforts to cook more and eat, erm, more, I've noticed that I've not got alot to show for it in terms of photos! Sometimes I forget, sometimes I'm too hungry to fiddle about with a camera, but mainly I just can't seem to get the presentation of the food right for a photo!

Well, they're not that bad really, I just can't face the shame of uploading bad food. Bad when I can't get the camera settings right, but worse when I can't get my food from the cooking stage to the plate in a decent manner. I made a Spanish omelette the other day which was going extremely well until I tried to flip it over with two wooden spoons.

Now, it probably would have been quite amusing to show you photographic examples of this but I'm not going to! Oh go on then, just one:

This was my first attempt to make something from Jamie Oliver's book. I'm sure a few of you will overlook the charred bits on this chicken and think it looks alright - but you can't see what the other side of the chicken looked like! Oh dear. It was actually very tasty - crunchy garlic chicken. The whole concept of dipping the chicken into flour and egg, then rolling around in the breadcrumb mixture was quite alien to me. I got in a right flap when I came to actually cook the things when I realised the chicken was too thick. Yes, the horror of burning on the outside and staying pink in the middle! (Don't worry, I managed to cook them through in the end)

But anyway, I do want to get more recipes up here (goodness knows why you'd want to follow my cooking!) as there's always something that doesn't quite go to plan that results in a Hungry Jenny twist. With delicious outcomes of course - I did finish that garlic chicken, thanks! Continue reading this post..

Comfort Eats

You know you've got emotional issues when you pop out to the corner shop for the sole purpose of getting a chocolate bar. Maybe you can justify it by saying you're going to get milk but your sad mind knows better.

One Valentine's Day when I was younger, I went out and bought a massive Dairy Milk bar for myself - yes, it was during that adolescent time when you feel like the whole world is ending. You eat it, you feel even more sorry for yourself when you reach the end and feel worse, buy some more (and then that's the point when you start to get fat). When will we ever learn?

You can try and find other comfort eats of course. I had some lovely warming congee this morning. It's not quite the quick-fix you might be after since it takes a couple of hours to cook but anyway, the intention's there. At least you're not filling your stomach with junk that'll just make you feel lousy.

The only thing with this though is that it doesn't actually fill you up for very long. Not me personally anyway! It's like how you feel after a MacDonald's - you crave the quick-fix but you feel empty half an hour later.

I'm like this with normal porridge as well actually - I eat a massive bowl, then I'm starving hungry an hour later. More so than when I've had a normal breakfast of cereal for example. What's wrong with me?!

Mashed potato and baked beans is my other one. Usually with mashed carrot and anything else I have in the fridge that I can dump into it (that's why there's no picture here of it). Wonderfully hot steamy mush seems to be my comfort food. Sounds yummy doesn't it? Continue reading this post..

Taste before you judge

I was watching a repeat of Come Dine With Me yesterday and one of the contestants was really grating on me.

Julia, aka Coco the Clown (she runs her own fancy dress company), was perhaps not aware of the concept of this programme. Since you take it in turns to cook for each other, you're bound to come across food you've never eaten before. So you'd think that the people who take part are quite open-minded about food.

Not only did Julia decide that she disliked the food before trying it, the way she tasted it so hesitantly suggested she wasn't even willing to give it a chance! It was like watching a spoilt 8 year old being forced to eat brussel sprouts. Except that the food she was given was not exactly unfriendly-looking as a brussel sprout may be to some.

You could see the other contestants getting annoyed with her as they tucked in, whilst Julia scratched off a tiny forkful and examined it first with a face full of caution. Eventually, she'd press the fork into her mouth, and pull it out slowly, her eyes screwed as if she'd just placed a bomb in there. Then, c h e w, c h e w...will she...is she going to...yes, she's spitting it out.

For goodness sakes woman, you've only eaten a crumb of it!

I don't know about you but one of my food peeves is Those Who Judge Before They Eat. And worse still, Those Adamant That They Dislike A Food That They've Never Tasted.

Of course, there is nothing wrong (I suppose) with not wanting to try something that you perhaps don't like the smell or sound of. But it's difficult to understand why some people refuse to try something based on these factors alone. How can you judge food without tasting it first? You could be denying your taste buds some seriously nice grub!

Also, when you're in company (and especially if they have cooked for you), it would surely be common courtesy to at least try it first.. And if you don't like it, don't kick up a fuss, just say it's not for you and eat what you can.

It's also like this with people who toss lashings of salt or whatever onto their food before taking their first bite. Wouldn't you feel a little bit insulted if somebody did that in front of the meal you've slaved over for them? You could take it to assume that they don't trust you've seasoned it properly! I'm sure it's not and that it's just out of habit in a lot of cases. That's no excuse to keep doing it though!

When I went to Hong Kong a couple of years ago, I was eating out with my family and there was a dish with curious-looking dark brown cube shapes. "What's that?" I asked my mum. She put some into my bowl and told me to taste it first. Nom, nom, nom, gulp. It was sort of soft and creamy yet...wobbly like tofu. Would I eat it again? Probably, because it had quite a mild taste.

If I knew beforehand that it was pig's blood, I might have had a completely different opinion. Would you have tried it if you knew what it was? Continue reading this post..

Could someone use this for me please?

Now I'm not one to waste food and this includes instances where I know good food is sitting out there waiting to be eaten. In this case, it's a fortnight's worth of pies.

No, this is nothing to do with a dream I had once where there was a train chocked full with delicious pies. Everyone on the platform was amazed and we were allowed to take some home too - ah, that was a good dream...

Anyway! So the place that encapsulates what a pie is all about is offering cheap pies for the next fortnight but unfortunately it's out of my reach :-( I'm talking about the place with the squarest pies in the land, where pie is made by those who fully understand and appreciate the natural beauty of this creation for pie-specific appetites like mine.

Yes, I'm talking about Square Pie. Now there is plenty of pie in the world to go around but nothing beats a Square Pie. Not only do they use fresh ingredients within their pies, they go out of their way to get the pastry right, the way it's meant to be. None of this flakiness, where you cut into it and it crumbles into nothing, none of the dryness you get from super-thin pastry where it splits in your mouth and just sits there, but especially, you do not get the disappointment of cutting into a pie to find the pastry does not surround the whole pie. This is REAL pie!

And it comes in a Square box :-)

You can only get a Square Pie in London, which is why I urge any of you who happen to be in Canary Wharf, Selfridges, Spitalfields, Westfield, Euston or Twickenham on your travels to try it. I'm rarely at these places so unfortunately cannot gorge on these lovely pies as often as I'd like. From tomorrow (Monday 12th) to Sunday 25th Jan, they're doing pie deals for a fiver so go and use this voucher now as an excuse to experience what will be one of the greatest pie moments in your life!
Continue reading this post..

A Mehi-co Lunch

So when I went veggie, I wanted to try new recipes to make for my packed lunches at work. The first one I made was admittedly a bit of a disaster (one of the ingredients is a boiled egg and I confess, I still find it a tricky thing to master...).

My eggs came out gloopy, the avocado had black bits (I didn't realise it bruised so easily), and I put far too much lime juice in - I wasn't really impressed. But I've since made it a couple more times, with a few adjustments. It really is delicious!

Mostly Mexican Salad

Print-friendly recipe

Serves 2-3:

2 eggs, hard boiled
1 avocado cut into chunks
400g can of kidney beans
200g can of sweetcorn
Large handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
Half a cucumber, cut into chunks
Half a red onion, chopped
Bunch of fresh coriander
Bit of cumin
Juice of 1 lime (optional)

1) Mix the lime juice with the cumin and set aside.
2) In a large bowl, mix the avocado, kidney beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, cucumber and coriander.
3) Add the lime mixture and mix again.
4) Peel and slice the eggs carefully into quarters
5) Serve up, placing the eggs on top

Eat!

More vegetarian recipes here! Continue reading this post..

2 for 1 Zizzi voucher!

POST UPDATED March 2011

If you've come to this post, you'll obviously realised that the voucher I mention below has now expired - but just follow this link instead for up to date voucher deals from Zizzi and hopefully you'll be able to find the Zizzi meal you're after!

There are alot of these vouchers going around at the moment but they are usually restricted for weekday use.

Well I've come across a 2 for 1 voucher for Zizzi which can be used every day at any time until 31st January - get one main meal, get one free!

Another bonus is that there's no limit to how many vouchers you can take per group so that's lots of money saved and lots of satisfied bellies filled! You can only get one voucher per email address though (so use your work email address to get another one if you fancy another trip to Zizzi...) Continue reading this post..

Make your own Teriyaki dish!

I'm experimenting with new recipes for when it's my turn to do Come Dine With Me with my friends. I came across a recipe on the BBC Good Food website for a Teriyaki beef in lettuce starter and decided to try and make the sauce myself instead of buying a bottle. If you're going to try cooking a new dish, you might as well try it from scratch.

Teriyaki sauce is kind of a sweet soy sauce that's normally used as a marinade or dipping sauce. It's made up of soy sauce, sake (Japanese rice wine), mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine) and sugar.

Since I have never bought sake or mirin before, it took me longer to find these ingredients at the supermarket than to make the sauce! Don't you just hate wandering around a supermarket trying to find something without a clue where it is? I came across a bottle of Teriyaki marinade and was almost tempted to get that instead but stopped myself!

It's very satisfying being able to make stuff yourself, so why not give it a go?

For the Teriyaki marinade:
Equal parts soy sauce and sake
Half part mirin
Quarter part sugar
Bit of grated ginger

1) Mix all ingredients over a gentle heat!

Then for the beef in lettuce:
Thin strips of sirloin steak
Little Gem lettuce leaves (three per person)
Diced cucumber
Bit of spring onion and/or red onion
Little squeeze of lime juice
Some coriander leaves
(Sorry for not putting exact measurements, I tend to guess to be honest - for this, just prepare enough ingredients to fill the number of lettuce leaf 'portions' you want)

1) Marinade the beef strips in your Teriyaki sauce for about 15 minutes.
2) Mix up the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl.
3) Grill or fry the beef til it's nice and crispy.
4) Spoon the cucumber mixture into each lettuce leaf and lay the beef on top.

Then the tricky part - eating it! You're supposed to roll it up and eat it but I resorted to a knife and fork when this happened:

Not the best table etiquette eh? Don't let this put you off! If you want to avoid this, use the inner leaves of the lettuce rather than the floppy outer ones, and don't get carried away when adding in the lime! Perhaps this is where using actual measures rather than guessing will benefit, whoops.

Hm, well at least you can trust me on the sauce, right?

(I found the sake in Tesco's amongst the sherry and mirin in the world cuisine aisle by the way.) Continue reading this post..

New Year, New Food

As it's the start of the year, it's a good chance to start a new experiment. When I was at a presentation training course last month, we had to focus on three things about a main topic. I was on my meat ban at the time and thought it'd be a good way to talk about being more open-minded when it comes to food.

When I was unable to eat meat, my eyes were opened to other foods that I had never even considered before. There are even things I like now that I hated when I grew up (courgettes!). Maybe we just can't help but eat what we've been brought up on or are used to and simply don't have the exposure to other foods in order to try them. Unless you're a real foodie of course! Or you have a negative experience of one type of food and it puts you off similar foods or even dishes (that would be nuts for me).

What if that food is something really good for you that your body is lacking? Or what if you can't stop eating something you know that's not great for you because you're used to having it all the time? What if you're just bored with what you eat?

Then try this:

1) Ban one type of food for a month
2) Cook something new at least twice a week
3) Choose something different at your next restaurant visit

The last two options were borne out of something I realised during my meat ban - I used to cook the same things all the time and never even considered vegetarian options at all when eating out, going for my usual or 'safe' option instead. And what's wrong with that? Well I guess there's not a massive problem with that (unless your safe option is a tub of lard) but don't alot of us live for food these days? Look at how many food-related TV programmes there are and new recipe books flying off the shelves all the time! You might as well embrace it.

If not just for health reasons, try at least one of the options for the hell of it - I swear to you, you'll enjoy your food so much more! Continue reading this post..

Hungry Jenny in 2009

Happy New Year!

Well, I've been writing and posting photos on here for nearly a year now (but eating and taking photos for a lot longer than that, naturally!) and it's a good time to take stock of where Hungry Jenny is. I know that the majority of people who read this know me but I think it'd be really good to try and get more people to read it! So when you think about it, why would a complete stranger want to read my ramblings if they don't know me? After comments from some readers, I do wonder if I should do more 'reviews', recipes, consider other 'food bans' to do or perhaps think of other food-related photos that I can snap which are not just simply the dish on its own. I'm afraid I'm unable to stop my random rants though (here's a sample rant), because sometimes it just needs to come out.

So I've put up a little poll at the top of the site to get your feedback but would welcome your comments too...don't hold back! Continue reading this post..