Super Easy Fishcake Recipe

 This is more of an idea than a recipe!

It’s mashed potato with chives and tinned mackerel mixed in and some salt and pepper. Then make in to patties and dipped both sides in semolina then fried in olive oil.

Quick and easy if you have left over mashed potato and some tinned fish in the cupboard...

Served with sweet chilli sauce.

Super Easy Cookie Recipe

115g butter
1 large egg
1tsp vanilla essence

Dry ingredients
210g plain flour
100g white sugar
55g brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
75g choc chips
50g dried cranberries
1/2 tsp salt

Pre heat the oven to 175°C
Melt the butter in a pan large enough to hold all the ingredients until it is just melted, not hot.
Mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Add the egg and vanilla to the butter and mix
Add the dry ingredients to the egg/butter mix and stir until it is all just combined. You don’t want to work the gluten in the flour so don’t over mix.
Put baking paper on a tray and form the dough in to 16 (or there abouts) balls. Each ball is about the size of a walnut. Squish each ball a bit as you put it on to the baking trat.
Bake for about 20 mins or until golden brown - they go from not cooked to burnt quite quickly, so be careful. Cook for longer if you want crispier cookies. Also for crisper cookies you can cook a little hotter at 180°C

Fusion Cooking!

Beef chilly in Yorkshire pudding. It's going to be a new trend!

Fried Risotto Cakes

This is a great thing to do with left over risotto.
Form the risotto in to balls and squish them flat in to a circle about 3cm thick.
Coat in flour, then egg, then either breadcrumbs or corn meal (semolina) and fry in shallow oil for about 20 mins a side or until brown on the outside and hot through.

I'm going to be making extra risotto from now on just so we can have these!

Yummy produce

Some of the feta didn't come out as it was meant to. It wasn't pressed and the bits crumbled apart.
However it was very tasty as a topping for a meal made by frying eggs with potato, peas and mint.
The peas were not homegrown. Unfortunately the ones I planted in the autumn died over the winter (they survived to spring then I think a late snow fall finished them off). I have planted some more but only a couple of days ago, so they are not quite ready yet!

Jam tarts

I can't really call this a recipe as it is too easy!
I made jam tarts for a friends birthday. They are made with shop bought puff pastry. I discovered you need to blind back otherwise it comes out a mess like this because the pastry puffs up and sploshes the jam out a bit as they cook. These ones we had to keep at home and eat.

They are plum jam (bought plums but very tasty ones)

I used a cake tin like this as I find it much easier to get the pastry circles in than the muffin tin. It is easier to get them out when they are cooked too.

(Lazy) Marmalade recipe

I have not seen Seville oranges in France, and every year I mean to look out for them in the UK and bring some back. This week I wasn't looking for them (I thought it was around Christmas time so I had missed them), but they had them right at the entrance of Waitrose in a nice box with the recipe on - so I finally have got round to buying them and making proper marmalade.
Last year I made orange jam (which is what I call it when made with normal oranges) using the mincer on the kitchen aid. So I tried this with the Seville oranges as it was pretty easy and I like the texture it made without too big bits of pith in it. It worked well, was a bit more effort than with the seedless oranges I did it with before, Seville oranges always have loads of seeds. I boil them up and then add the water to the oranges to help the set.
The ingredients and method (apart from how you cut up the peel) are the same as if you want to cut the oranges in to pieces.

1kg Seville Oranges
1 lemon
2 kg sugar

Cut the oranges and the lemon in to eighths and pull the seeds out of each piece. Put the seeds in to a small pan and be careful to catch the orange juice that comes out as you do this (not in the seed pan as this is going to get boiled more than you want the juice to)
Put the seeds on to boil with enough water to well cover them
Mince the orange and lemon through whatever size mincer you think best. Mine is probably 0.6cm.
Put the resulting mush in to a pan and add about 500ml of water - you need enough that the mush is slightly liquid so when you boil it it can move around but really as little as possible as you are going to have to boil it off mainly.
Add the water from the seeds (through a sieve or something)
Heat for about 30 mins. You have to watch to make sure it doesn't stick as the mix is a bit dry, it should get more liquid as you heat it.
Add the sugar and bring to the boil
Boil until you reach a set. This is probably 30 mins or more
Put in to jars you sterilised in the dishwasher (or boiled or whatever you prefer)

Goat's cheese puffs

These are super easy to make and really yummy.
You need bought puff pastry (or home made, but who has the time for that??) and some of the goats cheese in the roll with a kind of skin on (it is like bree with a fuzzy skin but much smaller diameter)
Like this

Cut the pastry in to squares so that there is about 2cm round the cheese and slice the cheese and put it on the squares. The cheese needs to have a skin on as above, so that when it melts it doesn't run all over the place.

With a sharp knife cut round the cheese leaving a bit of a gap (0.5 cm approx or a bit more) round the cheese. Don't cut all the way through but cut as deep as you can - it is find if it goes all the way through in the odd place.

Cook as per instructions on the pastry. These were done for 15 mins about 200C. The pastry in the uk seems to be puffier and you get a more distinct rise of the edge with the cheese weighing down the middle more. I suspect this pastry is more synthetic and rises whatever you do to it, but not so much. Anyway either way is v nice. Serve with pickle or cranberry sauce or marmalade or whatever takes your fancy.

Mint Sorbet Recipe

Make mint cordial
Dilute 1 part cordial to 1 part water
Put in ice-cream maker

Easy tomato and bacon pasta sauce

This sauce is super easy to make. We have it when I can't really be bothered to cook (ie after a day of ruining the drive)

1 Onion
100g of lardons (bacon bits or chopped bacon)
2 largish tomatos (or a tin of tomato - but real are nicer)
1 tbl sp olive oil

Cut up the onion and tomato
Fry the onion in the oil for a few minutes
Add the bacon bits and fry for a few minutes more
Add the chopped tomatoes and simmer for about 30 mins.

When it is ready it should be a nice thick saucy consistancy with all the tomato pretty much turned to mush.
Serve over spagetti or any other pasta (once you have drained the pasta return to the pan and add a bit of olive oil and salt before serving)

Lazy Brandy Butter Recipe

I am usually too lazy to make brandy butter as they sell some yummy ones in Tesco and I hate trying to cream butter as it always starts off too hard as I don't plan enough ahead to take it out the fridge, then it fires across the room at high velocity when I try to whisk it and there is a big mess that has to be cleared up. They don't sell it in the supermarket here (heathens) and we haven't found the electric whisk yet, so I have been telling Doug we will have to do without this year. However I eventually cracked under the strain of his disappointment and got a bit inventive to make a recipe I could be bothered to make and that didn't need the electric whisk.

50g butter (rock hard from the fridge or whatever)
50g caster sugar
50g icing sugar
2 tbl sp brandy/whisky/cognac (or more or less to taste)

Melt the butter in a pan (don't get it too hot just melt it) and turn off the heat
Add the caster sugar and whisk (with hand or electric whisk)
Add the icing sugar and whisk a bit more
Add the brandy (or whatever) and whisk a bit more

You probably need about 1 min whisking in total with a hand whisk, when you have finished it should look pale and creamy. You can serve warm or refrigerate.

Homemade Oven Chips

In the supermarket here they don't seem to have oven chips, they have chips for deep frying. I didn't realise and cooked them in the oven, the first time they didn't come out very well because they weren't covered in oil and salt like oven chips are. After that I added some oil and salt - which got me thinking - maybe you could do the same with 'real' potato. Seems to work well, not quite the same as proper chips, but less messy than having a deep fat frier.

Chop potatoes in to chip shapes (you can peel or not as you prefer)
Put in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil
As soon as it it properly boiling drain and sprinkle generously with oil (something like a tablespoon per potato if biggish potatoes) and salt then stir well
Spread on a baking sheet and put in a hot oven (220°C ish) for about 30 mins or until golden brown.

Coconut and Lime Sorbet/Icecream

Huw suggested making this while they were here so we got the ingredients but never got round to it. Not sure if it is sorbet or icecream. Dairy free but has creamy texture.
Don't know what Huw's recipe would have been, but we did the following

1 tin coconut cream
2 limes juiced
3 oz sugar

Mix together and put in to icecream maker until done

We had with chocolate sauce made by melting plain chocolate and adding some hot chocolate powder and milk.

Was very yummy so thanks to Huw for suggesting it!

Plain Flour Cake Recipe (Banana cake)

What happens if you forget to put baking powder in your cake (ie make it with plain not self raising flour)?
I always thought you would get a solid lump nothing like a cake. However I discovered by accident that this is not the case. The cake still rises and is crumbly, just not so much. A nice moist squidgy finish.

8oz plain flour
4oz sugar
4oz oil (eg sunflower)
2 eggs
Splash of milk
Pinch of salt
1 banana
Handful of chocolate drops or chopped chocolate

Mix flour, salt, sugar, eggs and oil in a bowl until smooth. Add the milk and mix again.
Mash the banana, add it with the chocolate drops and mix again.

Bake in bread maker (we can't set the temperature on ours, it decides) or in a cake tin at 170 for about an hour. Remove when it tests done with a skewer.

I put some marmalade on top of this one

Lazy Breadmaker Cake Recipe

This cake recipe just needs everything mixing together, no creaming of butter and sugar or anything. We don't have an oven at the moment so good to be able to make something in the breadmaker.
Maybe not the most stylish cake, but tasty nevertheless.

8 oz self raising flour (or in france 8 oz plain flour and teaspoon of baking powder)
4 oz caster sugar
3.5 oz oil (eg sunflower seed oil)
2 eggs
Splash of milk
teaspoon mixed spice
2 handfuls sultanas, you can add more or less as you wish (more makes a heavier but more moist cake)
Icing sugar and lemon or orange juice for icing

Mix everything except the milk in a bowl until smooth
Add a bit of milk and mix, mixture should be stiffish
Mix in the sultanas

Put in to pan of a breadmaker and run on 'bake only' setting (give it a go or read the instructions of your breadmaker - I find ours cooks it pretty slow so takes about 1 hr 10 mins). You don't need to put the mixer paddle in.

Make the icing by mixing icing sugar with a little bit of lemon and some water or orange juice or whatever fruit juice you feel will go with the cake. You want a reasonably running mixture but not too runny :) sorry precise description - it will taste good whatever you do.

From this basic cake you can make a variety of things eg
Banana cake - put in a mashed banana and less sulatanas
Ginger cake - Replace the caster sugar with dark brown sugar, add some ground ginger instead of mixed spice and add some chopped glaced or chrystalised ginger

Apricot Jam Recipe

We wanted to have something to take with us when visiting some of the people we have met so I set about making some jam. I wasn't sure how good the apricots would be at this time of year so I just made a small batch to start with. It must be one of the simplest james to make.

Equal weight of Apricts and Sugar (eg I made 700g Apricots with 700g sugar)

Remove the stones and cut Apricts in to pieces - you can leave quite bit bits eg half an apricot or chop smaller depending how you want the jam to come out. I like big pieces of apricot in the finished jam but not too big so they are hard to keep on the bread so I usually cut in to quarters

Put in a pan and heat gently until the fruit softens.

Add sugar and bring to the boil and boil for about 15 mins

Test for a set. I do this by pulling the wooden spoon out of the jam, if it flows of in a single stream it is not ready, if it is coming of the spoon at multiple points and in drips rather than a even flow then it is ready... or use your own method...

Put in to sterilised jars (I just put the jars through the dishwasher just before I plan on using them) and top with a wax disc (I often don't bother with these as I generally make small batches that will be eaten quite quick)

Lazy Vanilla Ice-cream

As I mentioned before with sorbet I can't be bothered with zesting and eggs and various other things so I came up with a lazy version which is v tasty.
For ice-cream I also have a lazy version. This one uses fromage blanc which is popular in France but I imagine it would work as well with fromage frais. The taste isn't the same as custard based ice-cream but the fromage blanc gives it a bit of zing.

For 3 people
200g Fromage Blanc (7% fat or more)
100g Cream (any but double preferable)
50g Sugar (and some honey if you fancy)
Vanilla

Mix all together in a bowl and put in ice-cream maker until done.
If you don't have an ice-cream maker then get one!! Or it is apparently possible to make ice-cream without by putting the mix in a bowl in the freezer for a while and then taking out and stirring and repeating until done.

Good with strawberries or other soft fruit.

I didn't get a picture of the finished product as it was scoffed to fast but here is one of the mixture before freezing.

Lazy Lemon Sorbet Recipe

Having just made Limoncello you now have 6 naked lemons. What are you going to do with them?
This is a very simple lemon sorbet recipe - I can never be bothered boiling zest and adding eggs etc. Call me lazy.

200g Sugar
200ml Water
Juice of 6 lemons

Mix the sugar and water in a pan and heat until it boils then turn off heat.
Add the lemon juice
Cool a bit and put in to ice cream maker (if you have one you freeze in the freezer rather than providing it's own chill you will need to cool in the fridge until it is cold otherwise the icecream maker runs out of grunt before the sorbet is frozen)
You can also make without a icecream maker by putting in a bowl in the freezer and taking out periodically and stirring (I have never been diligent enough for this to work as I usually end up with a solid block of fruity flavoured ice rather than icecream)