Baked beans on toast - Greek style.

It seems this blog is becoming a bit of a brunch and dinner kind of recipe site. I am becoming a bit obsessed by brunch and mainly feeding my little sister when she arises.
I tried to impress her yesterday by making Greek style baked beans.

I made the baked beans by frying drained butter beans in garlic, olive oil and chopped vine tomatoes. I added half a tin of chopped tomatoes for the extra juice, 1/2tsp of cinnamon and some dried oregano. I cheat a little when I make tomato sauce, I always add a 1/4 cup of vegetable stock - then cook the sauce down so it is thick.
Jessica wanted some of the eggs from one of my other brunch dishes, feta scrambled eggs. So I cooked some beaten eggs in butter then added some feta cheese to the pan and scrambled it all up.
Wholemeal toast is a great base for this dish, pile on the eggs then the beans then a little more feta cheese and a sprinkling of oregano!

Enjoy!

Do you think I have a bit of an addiction to treacle?

I made a Greek version of the Italian dish aubergine Melanzane. I used oregano instead of basil and feta instead of mozarella. I cooked the slices of aubergine in a touch of cinammon and some cracked black pepper.
I oven roasted some carrots with their stalks on in olive oil, black treackle and salt and pepper. By using treacle in the roasting dish you get a crispy thick coating on the carrots but the flesh of the carrot is slightly soft and very sweet.

Enjoy!

#foodporn literature

I wanted to do the last post just to enjoy the pictures and not interupt the with words.
I made an oriental style salad with raw pak choi, sliced peppers, ginger soy sauce and chillie fried mushrooms. I then made mini skewers of beetroot chunks and red onion that had been fried in black treacle, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. The other skewer was sliced courgette and hot and spicy red peppers.
This was such a tasty meal, finish with a slice of lemon and its done!

Enjoy!

#foodporn

A colourful starter!

I am going to call this "Houpenade" it is a mixture of houmous and olive tapenade. I made it by blending olives (pimentos included), 2 cloves or raw garlic, 2 roasted cloves of garlic, 1 tin of drained chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice and grated lemon grind. Salt and pepper, oregano and wilted butter spinach finishes this spectacular dip.

I oven roasted some butternut squash circles, sliced some avocados and a chunk of chevre!

Salted tomatoes and scrambled eggs for brunch.

I prepared the tomatoes the night before for this brunch. I placed cherry, plum and vine tomatoes in a colander with rock salt and left them over night to draw all of the juices out. Then I made scrambled eggs with feta cheese and cracked black pepper. Once the eggs are nearly done add the cheese then, so the cheese still has texture. Cook the tomatoes in a frying pan with a little black treacle, olive oil and oregano.
Make a pile of fresh spinach leaves and put the eggs and then the tomatoes on top. Drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle some cracked black pepper.

Enjoy!

Toffee Apple Upside Down Cake

I made a variety of Apple based puddings for Bonfire weekend, this was one of the desserts. I took the toffee apples and the toffee apple cookies to the party and left this in the kitchen for Sunday brunch. However I didnt have time to have this yesterday and enjoyed it this morning with a pot of Columbian coffee. Jessica my little sister, said this reminded me of the coffee you get when you visit a family in Greece. When we were younger we stayed in villas in Greece and the little old lady in black would come out and offer us thick, bitter black coffee and this style of cake.

Enjoy!

Breakfast of champions.

This is based on a mexican recipe for a superb vegetarian breakdast. This would be perfect for a Sunday brunch, ideal as a hangover cure.
I used a large tortilla wrap popped in the oven for a few minutes, then cook a tomato sauce with peppers, fresh chillies, sliced onion and a tin of chopped tomatoes. Cook this sauce down so the sauce thickens, add a pinch of sugar and a drop of balsamic vinegar.
Then once the sauce is ready drop an egg into the pan and poach the egg until cooked.

You can roll the tortilla if you like and all of the delicious runny egg yolk melts into the sauce, you could add a strong cheddar to this wrap or some soured cream if you find the chillies a little to hot.
This is definitely something a bit more interesting for your breakfast guests something that will set them up for the day.

Enjoy!!

Home made pasta - 3 ways - literature....

On Sunday night after the lantern festival I went for tea in my dad's house, he cooked fresh pasta ravioli with a mushroom filling. He made me very jealous when he produced his ravioli cutter from Lakeland's which made perfectly shaped and securely sealed ravioli parcels.
By the way if he ever asks where is pasta rolling machine is I haven't seen it...

I have never made pasta and I love a challenge.
I made the dough on the kitchen surface by mixing plain flour, I didn't have the 00 flour, but I think I will definitely have to get some of this for next time as the tagliatelli style worked but the parcels were a bit too thick. I then added 3 full large free range eggs and 1 egg yolk. I mixed this with my hands and added 1 tbsp of olive oil, sea salt and cracked black pepper. I think it is pretty easy to see if you need to add more liquid as the consistency can seem lumpy and difficult to get into a dough.
I got the mixture in a doughball shape and needed like I was a mamma back in Sicily. Sleeves rolled up and hair tucked into grips. I needed for about 10 minutes until the dough felt smooth.
Then in the fridge for 30 minutes to get shiny!

Then I got my "mamma" on and rolled as if my life depended on it, I wanted the dough to be thin but not so delicate to get holes in once I stuffed it.

I decided to do tagliatelli, I did the old coat hanger trick and left it to dry for a few minutes. Then I did square ravioli parcels stuffed with red onion, balsamic vinegar, a tsp of dark treacle (could have used a touch more) and goats cheese all cooked in a frying pan and left to cool. The last pasta was the tortellini style which was stuffed with oyster and chesnut mushrooms and chopped rocket again cooked first and left to cool before I stuffed the parcels.

I wanted to serve my mum, jess and me all at the same time so this was a little frantic. I had three saucepans with boiling water, rocksalt and a touch of olive oil ready for the pasta. On the last ring I had cooked some broad beans in olive oil, butter, garlic, mountain oregano and feta cheese and at the last minute a squeeze of lemon juice.
I cooked the pasta for a few minutes, the tagliatelli was the quickest so I drained and popped into the frying pan for a few seconds with the broad bean mixture.
The parcels took slightly longer.
Garnish the ravioli with a chunk of goats cheese and black pepper, then the tortellini with lancashire cheddar cheese grated on top.
We each had a taste of the plates and enjoyed with a cool glass of chardonnay!

Enjoy!!

Home made Pasta - 3 ways.

#drivingsnack!

I have been doing a #(hashtag) drivingsnack on the twitter page and these were Monday's driving snack. I drove to London, got a flat tyre, got rescued in Soho by the Green Flag guy sent from heaven above. Driving solo around Soho is a test on anyone's nerves, never mind having a flat tyre and it being rush hour!
Anyway... Frosties, who remembers them?

Halloween treats.

Yesterday I made these cupcakes, this is my second attempt at red velvet cakes. This time the cake was incredibly soft, it was more risen but it was still chocolate in colour. Damn.
Anyway, the cake was very much like a fudge cake, stick to the roof of your mouth cake, I added crushed fresh raspberries to the mixture and these tasted great once the cake was cooked. The icing was red food colouring, icing sugar, red food colouring and a drop of butter.
Topped with jelly teeth and a black lace cupcake cover this is one tasty treat!!!

Posh egg and soldiers!

2 large free range eggs with wholemeal toast and butter.
Served in sherry glasses on vintage china!
Enjoy!

Now this is interesting.

Please help...
I made rye bread on Saturday I used 3 parts rye flour to one part self raising flour. I used dried yeast and an assortment of seeds including poppy, sesame and mixed, I also crushed some pecans and popped these in the mixture. Once I made my dough I then halved it an put some grated beetroot into it and carried on with the process.

Well when the bread had cooled and I placed it on the bread board on SATURDAY this is what it looked like:

As you can see all of the beetroot has stayed in the middle and the crust, the tastiest part kept crumbling off as I sliced it.

Anyway this is was it looked like today, MONDAY. Something magical has happened here and I don't know what - has the beetroot and its juices been absorbed?
Can anyone explain this?

The second day of soup - An almighty italian style broth.

Using the left over roasted pumpkin, some beetroot and sweet potato I made an almighty broth.

I fried some red onion in olive oil and butter

And some rosemary from the garden.

I made some hearty Italian seasoning, using fennel seeds, peppercorns, greek mountain oregano (bought on Saturday from Lark Lane farmers market) and chillies.

Add to a pan with lots of vegetable stock

Finish with some dried oregano and grated parmesan.

Enjoy!!!

Pumpking Soup!

This is a king of a soup with beetroot rye bread to accompany.

I absolutely loved cooking this late lunch for Jessica and my mum, the effort that goes into baking bread, grating beetroot, roasting pumpkin and then enjoying with your loved ones is something I cherish.
Enjoy with a chilled glass of Chilean white wine.

Pumpkin bites.

Wedges of raw pumpkin ready to go into the over with chopped chillies, olive oil, balsamic glaze and black peppercorns.

I roasted the pumpkin wedges for 2 hours on a very low heat.

The topped them with houmous and feta cheese to make sumptuous pumpkin bites, perfect for any Halloween/Bonfire night party.

Enjoy!

Fresh Autumn vegetables.