15 Minute Pork Steak

Convenience meal? No. Freezer food? No no no! Alot of people use the excuse of not cooking because they think it takes too long in the kitchen. Well I tend to faff around unintentionally in the kitchen just making breakfast sometimes, so it came as a complete surprise to finish cooking this pork delight in 15 minutes:

Want one...?

I should point out here that the pork steaks need to be marinated first for at least half an hour to let the flavour sink in. So before you point out that this is not in fact a 15 minute pork steak, er, please don't! The point is that you can cook this in 15 minutes. If you just marinate the pork in the morning, then it will be ready to cook when you want your dinner later on ok!

You should also really cut the fat off the steak too. As you can see, you risk burning it a little otherwise. But me being the lard-pot, I think the fat is the best part and am always reluctant to cut it off (sorry mum).

15 Minute Pork Steak

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For 2:

2 or 4 pork steaks (depending on how hungry you are!)
4 tbsp honey
2 tbsp soy sauce
Handful of spinach
Handful of beansprouts
1 celery stick, chopped
1 spring onion, chopped
Some lime slices and extra lime juice

1) Mix the honey and soy sauce in large bowl and sit the steaks in to marinate for half an hour.
2) Stick them under the grill for 15 minutes, turning once or twice. You can stick the lime slices on top halfway through for a bit of extra juiciness.
3) Meanwhile, toss the veg together, squeeze a bit more lime juice over the salad and arrange on the plate.
4) Pork steak should be done by now, so serve immediately and marvel at the speediness of your meal!

More pork recipes here! Continue reading this post..

Friday Pie Day Faux Pas: Fish Mush Mountains

Er, right ok, let me explain...

I hate measuring things and can never bother to be exact. But with all this pastry-making business most Fridays, I do make sure I measure the flour and butter properly - it does decrease the risk of me producing questionable dough (a fraction anyway).

But of course, that leaves the filling. I was spooning out the mixture onto these little fish parcels and slowly coming to the realisation that I had way too much for the little pastry I seemingly had.

How so? I wondered. I made the effort after all to measure the filling out properly (sort of), and the pastry too. Then I thought back to the size of my pastry cutters, which turned out to be a lot smaller than the recipe stated. For some reason, I got it in my head that it didn't really matter what size cutters I used.

Well, it turns out that it really does. As you might be able to tell from above, I ended up with minute pastry shapes, with little room for the filling. Oh, so THAT'S why the pastry bottom should be bigger, I realised, to fit larger dollops of filling on!

Fear not, I boomed, I shall simply add more filling in a tower-like manner, rather than spreading outwards. Er, yeah, that totally didn't work either. When I came to put the pastry tops on (if you couldn't tell, the pies in the pic above are only half-made!), I concluded that you can't top a pie tower with a rounded pastry shape.

Cue escapage of filling as I pressed down pastry tops in a vain attempt to stick them to pastry bottoms.

Sigh.

They still tasted alright, I swear!

(Haddock and potato filling by the way, for anyone not put off by the earlier pic and still want to know!)

Better luck next week, eh?

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures.

Fancy a laugh at my other Hungry-Jenny-Faux-Pas?
Continue reading this post..

One of the most confusing desserts ever

There I was, enjoying a lazy 3-course lunch in South London with my good friend Lisa, when this arrived:

Right, ok, so what's confusing about it...?

Well let me start at the beginning. Lisa and I were deciding what desserts to get from the set menu at Bucci, a small Italian restaurant in Balham. The choices were tiramisu (ok, know what that is, don't fancy it), panna cotta (know what that is too, not keen) and then...Baked Alaska.

Eh?

We asked the waitress to describe it, "Well, on the inside is ice cream."

Ok.

To be honest, I am really rubbish at understanding accents and the waitress had quite a strong Italian one. She had said something else but it just fell on my confused ears, and the ice cream bit was all I picked up. When she left, I turned to Lisa for an interpretation, but instead was met by another confused face.

"What did she say it was?" We asked each other. Oh dear.

I was determined to try this intriguing dessert though and called the waitress back again.

"Um, I know we asked already what it was, but what is the Baked Alaska exactly again?"

"Yes, ice cream is on the inside."

Lisa pushed further, "And on the outside?"

"It has meringue on the outside."

Hm, well I don't like meringue that much but after all the effort to understand what the devil this was, I still wanted to give it a go, so went ahead and ordered it.

Right, so now we're back to where we started, with the arrival of the Baked Alaska, with perhaps a better understanding of what confused us. It didn't stop there though.

First of all, the meringue was extremely gooey. Isn't it supposed to be quite firm? I wondered. Oh well, let's just dig in. My spoon slid through the goo...and hit a wall of...something.

"Argh, I can't get into my pudding!" I laughed. The spoon simply wouldn't go through properly and kept hitting something solid. As I dug my spoon in a little harder, I immediately had visions of it suddenly giving way with bits of Baked Alaska flying towards me.

But fear not, for I slowly slid the spoon right the way to the bottom...

Triumph. "I'm in!"

And there, confusion lay...

If this was meant to be ice cream inside, it was looking very questionable. But as I gingerly tried a spoonful, I realised that it was cake - it was quite chewy though and tasted of coffee. The coloured parts you can see, the pink and green bits, is the ice-cream, which was...chewy as well. Hm, that's not right, I thought. The ice cream did get colder the further I went into the pudding though.

Every bite I took was something a little different and a bit more confusing. Ooh, there's a raisin. Oh, and a hard bit of something else that I can't quite make out. By the end though, the stodge of the sponge was proving too much, and the goo of the meringue was getting sickly sweet. I finished it all of course, but did I even enjoy it? You know what, I really don't know because I'm still confused thinking about it!
Continue reading this post..

Sardine Paste

I have to apologise in advance for the next few posts because I've just come back from a holiday in Portugal and have been craving seafood and all things fish-like ever since. So be prepared for some fish related recipes and stories over the next week or so ;-)

Including sardine paste!

Now for those of you who hate sardines (or sandwich paste of any kind for that matter), just hold your horses before you click away in digust...
This is just something you simply MUST try! If you don't, then I will forever chase you until you do.

Still no? Ok, never mind.

Well, anyway, rather than cram a suitcase full of fish paste to bring back home, I figured I could just try and make it. (Or, failing that, pop down to Lidl, the supermarket with many a European food product, where you're bound to find some form of sardine paste, I'm sure).

Luckily though, I found that it is really easy to make. The only thing I can't help you with here is measurements. I only plan to make a little bit at a time, rather than store a jar to use everyday for a week - I mean, I do love the sardine but it does make your breath honk a bit after a while. You have to stop and think of others around you, you know ;-)

It's pretty easy to make a judgement call when it comes to putting this together - well, really, I'm just saying that because this 'recipe' is rather vague.

All you need is:

Tin of sardines (the ones in water)
Lemon juice
Cream cheese (though I just used a bit of natural yoghurt instead)
Parsley
Chopped onion

Mush all of these together and proceed with a bit of spreadage on the nearest fresh bread roll you can find.

Print-friendly recipe

Continue reading this post..

How to be irresistible in bed

Make like a sausage and lie seductively under a silk blanket of fried egg...

And wait for the drooling to begin...

(Ssh, they're sleeping right now...)
Continue reading this post..

Friday Pie-Day: The Beehive Puff

Look at the size of that puff!

Impressive yes, but tasty? Hm, I've had better. Well actually, it's just a personal preference that I've never really got on with flaky puff pastry. It doesn't really have much flavour and just crumbles everywhere when you cut into it. I don't understand how you're supposed to eat it as part of the pie - I mean, look, the whole top comes off!

"Hey, there's beef in there!"

Getting this kind of height for puff pastry must surely be a tough feat to achieve. I thought it was just about folding it over a certain way as you roll it out. But oh no, there's more to it apparently. Before you even start to roll it out, you're meant to add a slab of butter in the middle of the dough too! Then as you roll it, fold it and spin it, and repeat this process at least a few times, you create those hundreds of layers which result in a whopper of a puff like the one above!

Er, I think I'll stick to rough puff pastry for now, thanks - just folding and rolling it is tricky enough for me as it is!

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures.
Continue reading this post..

I'm in no hurry to get married but...

I'd like to register for one of these please...

I stumbled across it via this Super Mario set on Flickr - it's been around a while so you may well have seen it before but I just can't get over how amazing it is!

It would seem such a shame to cut it all up though to eat it - I'd want to keep the whole thing as a souvenir somehow. I bet it must have cost a fortune too. I wonder how long it takes to make something as colossal as this? Hm, maybe I should order one now!
Continue reading this post..

Traffic Light Prawn Salad

How do you persuade someone to try a healthier dish?

Give it a funny name!

Ok, so this one sounds a bit lame but you're more likely to click onto a recipe called Traffic Light Prawn Salad, rather than just Prawn Salad, right? That's my thinking anyway. This particular dish isn't exactly rocket science as it was a simple case of me throwing random stuff together again. (Ah, so that's her secret.)

What I love about this one though is the colours - whenever I cook anything, I like to have at least a few different colours in there. All natural of course. Even if I'm just cooking for myself, I enjoy putting something together that will be pretty to look at (before I demolish it to pieces with my hunger).

Traffic Light Prawn Salad

Print-friendly recipe

For 2:

100g quinoa
500ml water

Red...
handful of cherry toms, halved

Amber...
half a orange pepper, chopped
half a yellow pepper, chopped
juice of 1 lemon

Green...!
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 spring onion, chopped

And the er, Prawns...
300g peeled prawns

1) Rinse the quinoa, then add the 500ml of water.
2) Bring to the boil, then simmer with a lid on for about 15 minutes.
3) Meanwhile, toss the prawns in a hot pan til cooked.
4) Turn off the heat and mix in Red, Amber and Green veg. You can toss them in whilst cooking the prawns instead to make it a hot dish if you like, but it's lovely and crunchy if you keep 'em raw.
5) Drain the quinoa and mix everything together, including the lemon juice.
6) Pile high and eat!

You might also be interested in my other salad recipes. Continue reading this post..

Friday Pie-Day: Lemon Tart

Are tarts pies? Well it's got pastry so I'd class it as a pie. I've never made anything like this before and to be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of tarts but after making this, I might try them more!

I had loads of lemons leftover from when my housemate and I moved house recently - not that our old house was full of lemons or anything but we tried some home remedies on a pair of rust-stained curtains (which didn't work by the way!). I also had a load of eggs to use up too and wondered if there was a pie out there waiting to be made with this...

...well of course there was..!

I've got to warn you now though that it takes about a year to make. That's what it felt like to me anyway! That's the only issue I have with pie-making at the moment. There are just too many things to remember to do before you even get the pie in the oven. Miss one thing and it completely throws off your timing.

Leave the butter out for a while so it's not too hard, pastry has to be chilled after you make it, left out for a while before you roll it, sometimes chilled AGAIN after rolling, the filling might need to be cooled before adding to the pie, or you might have to time it just right to transfer the filling straight into the waiting pastry case...

Phew!

I won't tell you how long this lemon tart took me but I did make it all from scratch and have never made it before - so it's inevitable that you'd expect it to take an hour or so extra than the 'norm'!

The 'norm':
Chill pastry for 30 minutes.
Roll pastry, line tin, back in fridge for 30 minutes.
Make filling, leave to stand for 5 minutes.
Add filling, oven-bake for 30 minutes.
Cool for 15 minutes.

My time:
Multiple the above a couple of times.

Lemon Tart

Print-friendly recipe

For 6 (probably):

The pastry
150g plain flour
50g icing sugar
75g salted butter, cut into small cubes
2 egg yolks
You'll also need some baking beads.

The filling
Juice of 4 lemons
Zest of 4 lemons
4 egg yolks
1 egg
150g sugar
150ml double cream

A bit of colourful fresh fruit to decorate

1) To make the pastry, sieve the flour into a bowl and add the butter. Get in there with your fingers and rub in the butter into the flour until it goes crumb-like.

2) Add the icing sugar and egg yolks. Knead, adding extra flour or water as necessary to make it into a good dough. Wrap in clingfilm and leave to chill for 30 minutes.

3) Butter and flour a 9" flan tin. Roll out your pastry into a circle and carefully drape it into the tin, pushing it down against the sides. Prick the pastry with a fork and stick it back in the fridge again for 30 minutes.

4) Heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Put your flan tin on another baking tray or a baking sheet (in case there is spillage later on!), cover with foil and fill with baking beads. Bake 'blind' for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 5 minutes.

5) Meanwhile, for the filling: beat together the yolks, egg and sugar. Stir in the lemon juice, zest and cream. Stand for 5 minutes (the filling, you can sit down for a minute if you like).

6) Turn the oven down to 160 degrees C. Transfer the filling carefullly into the tin. Bake for about half an hour, checking it every now and again - you might need to turn it around if it's not cooking evenly. It's done when you can lightly press the middle and it bounces back up like a happy ball. (Just don't be too aggressive otherwise you'll accidentally leave a fingermark...I didn't make that mistake at all!)

7) Leave to cool, decorate with some fresh fruit and serve with whipped cream.

The result? I was really pleasantly surprised! I was getting worried because it was in the oven for over half an hour and was still looking bubbly. But eventually it went all bouncy and tasted light and creamy - the lemon wasn't overpowering or too zangy. I thought it was going to taste like curdled eggs or something.

Hurrah, success for once!

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures. Continue reading this post..

Seven Cs Curry (and a couple of Ps)

Cauliflower
Carrot
Chickpeas
Courgettes
Coconut milk
Coriander
Chilli

Pepper
Potatoes

Hm?

Seven Cs Curry

Print-friendly recipe

For 2:

1 small carrot, chopped
1 small red pepper, chopped
Half a courgette, chopped
Handful of new potatoes, sliced
Half a small cauliflower, chopped florets
200ml coconut milk
1 tbsp korma paste
Handful of fresh coriander
Grated ginger
Garlic clove
Small red chilli, chopped
Cornflour
Vegetable oil

1) Simmer the cauliflower and potatoes to soften them.
2) In a hot pan, add the oil and fry the onion, ginger, garlic and chilli. Stir in the korma paste.
3) Mix in all the veg, chickpeas and potatoes. Fry it all up for a few minutes.
4) Pour in the coconut milk and bring to the boil. Half cover with a lid and leave to simmer for about half an hour. Add a bit of cornflour if it needs to be thickened up more.
5) Meanwhile, put on some steamed rice. When the curry is almost done, stir in the coriander and serve!

Continue reading this post..

NOM-NOM-NOM

Haha, I came across this post complaining about certain phrases used in the food world and one of them is NOM-NOM-NOM. I must apologise now because I'm partial to saying it every now and again, particularly when I see something most ravenous to eat. I don't even know where the phrase comes from but here's where I first heard of it...


This is from the game Team Fortress 2. There is apparently also a way to get a load of them altogether where they stand around eating sandwiches and talk to each other! Type in 'Heavy Picnic' in YouTube.

I'm sorry, but this kind of thing makes me laugh - I won't stop using it either!
Continue reading this post..

A Series of Sinful Events: Lust

I'm usually happy when any sort of meal is placed infront of me but when I see something like this, my eyes light up, my heart gets a-pounding and I instinctively lick my lips...

There is no doubt that images of handsome-looking food are guaranteed to get your heart racing and make your stomach rumble with desire. Whether that be a tantalising bit of steak, the ooze of chocolate sauce over brownies and ice-cream, or a well-dressed salad (sorry, I couldn't resist it!), there are some dishes out there that just make you want to reach out, touch it, and lick the screen...

Ok, I've personally never lusted after a dish THAT bad to resort to licking the screen but you get the picture (or not, if you prefer). As you might have guessed, it's the meat-based dishes that I tend to fall for quite badly. Go to a site like Tastespotting if you need a fix of food porn - you'll be overwhelmed with the shocking amount of beautiful food photography out there. Online menus like the Frankie and Benny's one, which have images of every single dish are dangerous yet addictive to click onto - if you know you're going there, you end up spending a ridiculous amount of time browsing, salivating, and reading the menu over and over.

Even the descriptions tease you: light melted mozzarella, finest strip sirloin steak, grilled seabass nesting on a crushed potato cake, richest, creamiest vanilla cheesecake, warm cinnamon waffles...(cor, that'd be one hefty dinner wouldn't it!)

I was at Tiger Tiger for lunch the other day with 5 other very hungry friends. We kept getting majorly distracted by all of the dishes that were being brought out for other diners. I don't know if it was because we were starving, or that this place presented their food well, or that the waft of the food was constantly swept right under our noses, but it was all we could do to stop ourselves from lunging after the waiters to nab the food from them!

Food porn.

Don't you just love it?

Read the rest of the Series of Sinful Events
Continue reading this post..

Friday Pie Day Faux Pas: Roast Veggie Puff

This is a really easy recipe to make and so comforting and light to eat.

I was quite surprised that I managed to do this actually considering the disaster I had trying to make puff pastry last week...

Last Friday, it took me all of two hours to get the pastry right (for what turned out to be sausage dumps!). It was a sticky mess, I stuck it in the fridge in the hope that it would firm up and was hopelessly incorrect, and had some angry moments slapping the dough onto the table, shouting at it to just "work with me here!"

This week, I managed to learn from my mistakes and got the consistency just right. Alas, me being prone to a Hungry-Jenny-Faux-Pas, I did make a bit of a blunder and accidentally made twice the amount of filling for the puff...

You see, this recipe is great to try if you have loads of veg to use up but I obviously got carried away and chopped up pretty much the entire contents of my fridge. Cauliflower, courgette, peppers, chickpeas, onions, sweet potato, coriander, as well as houmous made with lemon juice, more chickpeas, chopped tomatoes, paprika and spring onions. Whew!

I then proceeded to scoop the filling onto the pastry and then realised I should have put the pastry onto the baking tray first.

With the help of two fish slices, I got the puff onto the tray in one piece and complete disaster was avoided.

And look! It came out looking the right colour!



I was planning to put the recipe up but as you might have guessed, my ingredient measurements were all over the place, so I'll need to work on that and do it another time!

Pie out.

Read my other Friday Pie-Day adventures.
Continue reading this post..

Food Lessons to be Learnt

Since I started this blog, I've been a lot busier in the kitchen, trying out recipes, discovering the tastiness of different ingredients fused together and slowly becoming more confident with my cooking. It can be a little embarassing though when I get a bit dense and make the silliest of mistakes.

Some people assume that because I write a food blog, I must be a total gourmet foodie who has swan all over the place, eaten the obscurest of foods, and have the intimate knowledge of everything food-like. Others think I must be a proper food critic with the ability to say all the posh words when it comes to describing foods.

Well, if you do think that, you're very wrong I'm afraid...

I've had my fair share of food-related mishaps, and am not ashamed to admit a certain lack of common sense sometimes (in general, as well as during cooking). In my pre-oven-cooking days, when I used to just toss everything into a wok to make a meal, I'd have to ask someone the correct way to switch on the oven, on the rare occasions that I did use it.

Only recently have I grasped the concept of how to correct a dough mixture to get it to the right consistency. Note that I say how to correct, rather than how to make. Yes, I'm still a few steps behind in being able to create the perfect dough. I realise now that putting a sticky ball of dough in the fridge will NOT make it any firmer, and that it will be just as sticky and unusable later on. Now that was a wasted hour!

There are just some things though, that I really want to master, some of which could be considered rather trivial. Alot of these arise from a single failed attempt that has resulted in me not trying it again since.

1) Fried egg - seriously. Forget it, everytime I try, it looks like bird poo.
2) Risotto - the first time I made it, I completely misread the recipe and poured all the stock into the pan, instead of adding it gradually to the rice. It was gross, especially since I'd measured the stock wrong as well.
3) Sauteed potatoes - I always end up boiling them for at least half an hour first. That's not right.
4) Sausages - for someone who runs away with any opportunity to say SAUSAGES, you'd think I'd be a dab hand at making them. Well I'm not - the spittage caused in the frying pan scares me too much to try.
5) Portion size and measurements - I always make too much in general, or accidentally make too much of a particular part of the dish. I'd love to be able to guesstimate ingredients where the ratio is really important as well, namely whilst baking.

I'm sure there's at least a few things here that some of you might consider 'easy as pie' (is that the expression? I find pie quite a challenge actually!), but seriously, this short list is just a fraction of the cooking wonderments that puzzle me!

But, through continuous trial and error cooking, and endless scouring on the internet on other food blogs and sites for answers and inspiration, I shall become more learn-ed, and gradually wipe out future Hungry-Jenny-Faux-Pas situations forever...(or at least limit them to one a week or something)

What cooking mistakes have you made and what food-related stuff do you want to be able to master?

Fancy a laugh at my other Hungry-Jenny-Faux-Pas?
Continue reading this post..

Bombarded in Bognor

I thought I was starting to get the hang of taking good food photos and then an Incident occurs that throws me back a few steps, resulting in pictures like this:

I was at Sarah's hen night (work colleague) in Sen, a tapas place in Bognor Regis. It's a pretty small restaurant with loads of pictures and knick-knacks across the walls. There were about 25 of us at least and a long table had been set up, which winded round into U-shape to fit us all in.

You can imagine that it was pretty crammed anyway with so many of us - and that was before the food started to arrive!

Sarah had pre-ordered a set tapas course which was £15 a head. And my goodness, did you get alot for your money...

The first few dishes arrived and I whipped my camera out to get my shots before the people around me started to dig in. As you can probably tell, it was quite dark in the restaurant but the flash was overcompensating a little.

Panic began to set in though as more and more dishes arrived, squeezed in the smallest of spaces on the table. Quick swapsies of dishes from helpful neighbours allowed me to quickly snap a photo of most - but there was just no time for me to fiddle with the camera to sort out the settings properly so all of them came out way too bright and stark. Yikes!

And this wasn't all of them! By the time it came to the last few dishes, I resigned to putting my camera away as the hecticness of people scrambling for food to make space for the endless supply of new dishes proved too much to take.

I couldn't tell you the actual names of any of them. I could hardly keep up with the photo-taking, let alone the name-taking! On the plus side though, the food itself was fantastic! Continue reading this post..

Pizza toppings + tortilla =

Tostada!

Mm, how's this for a light lunch? A plate-sized open sarnie from The Slug and Lettuce. You can always count on them for a good lunch.

What a great use of tortillas - more satisfying than a wrap, less lardy than a pizza. Was still incredibly full afterwards though, as it was the size of a plate after all. And you don't suffer the awkwardness of trying to saw it into pieces to eat, like you would a normal pizza with a blunt restaurant knife. Nice soft base to slice into, but fabulously crispy around the edges.

I want to try and make these one day!
Continue reading this post..

Thai Turkeycakes

I've wanted to try making my own Thai fishcakes for a while. I never get round to buying fish, so I just used some turkey mince instead. And it worked a treat!

Thai Turkeycakes

Print-friendly recipe

Serves 2 (makes 2 cakes or 4 small ones):

250g lean minced turkey (or chopped white fish)
celery stick, finely chopped
fresh coriander, finely chopped
zest of half a lime
small egg white
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 deseeded chopped red chilli (optional)
veggie oil

1) Mix flour, soy sauce, ginger, egg white and lime zest (and chilli) in a bowl.
2) Add in the mince, celery and coriander.
3) Shape the mixture into 2 (or 4 little) cakes.
4) Heat oil in a hot pan and fry the cakes on each side until cooked through.
5) Serve with steamed rice and a wedge of lime.

No chillies for me of course :-) Continue reading this post..