News from us! with my Mum’s stuffed chicken recipe as a bonus!

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argentina, Chicken, cordoba, New year, paris, stuffed chicken

Hello everybody!

We are back! It’s been a while I know but we have been a bit busy… working, travelling, studying… Unfortunately something had to be sacrificed and it was the blog. However, things are settling down now so we hope to be regular blogstars once again. But, as we all know, blogging is not always easy…

The whole process starts with thinking what to cook. We always try to make classic  recipes with our own twist, or recipes from our own cultures (Welsh/Argentina). As we both work full-time sometimes it’s a bit difficult to find the time to go shopping, cook, take pictures while you are cooking, and finalise the process with an interesting text and some creative touched-up pictures.

Anyway, today I wanted to post something and tell you what we have been up to.

November and December were hectic. Tim’s working hours were increasing as Christmas was on the way and in December I went to Argentina to visit my family and friends for a month!

I had a lovely time! It is an amazing part of the year to go home not only because  it’s Christmas and New years time but also because it’s summer! and knowing how much of a summer we have here in the UK every year – almost none, it’s always good to spend a month at 30ºC average temperature.

I have to confess that I am a planner, I can’t help enjoying it, I guess it gives me the power of having things under control? not sure, so when I bought my tickets to Argentina back in April 2012 I started to plan the holidays I was going to have with my family down there in January, they got sick of me, so I didn’t plan anymore and I reluctantly left things up to them to arrange… but it worked! We rented a house in Cordoba (almost last-minute) and we had an amazing time enjoying the family, lakes, rivers and the mountains. (more of my Argentina trip to come).

That was an exception though because before going to Argentina I booked trains and a hotel to go to Paris in February – told you I can’t help it! so when I got back in January, within two weeks we were off to Paris! It was Tim’s first time in the City of light (I had no idea it was called that… Tim) and the second time for me. Another amazing trip -a bit wet and cold but we enjoyed it a lot! (Paris post to come).

Ok, for now I will leave you with this Photo-Recipe: a Delicious Stuffed Chicken my mum made for our New years day at the house in the mountains. Enjoy!

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Onion tart

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balsamic vinegar, Goat cheese, onion tart, recipe, red onion, restaurant, rocket, starter, vegetarian

So, a little red onion tart we served as a starter to some guests a week or two ago. They went down a treat as they have a pleasantly sweet taste when cooked.

Goats cheese… I’d never really had any until Freesia started salivating in a farm shop whilst on holiday in the Lake District with my parents. After ascertaining it was not the sales assistant serving behind the counter that had grabbed the attention of Freesia it emerged that a selection of goat’s cheese was available. Safe to say we bought some to from Low sizergh barn to bring back to Blogville.

Wikipedia says that goat’s cheese is often preferred to its cow-nterpart even though it is said to be more similar to human milk. I am merely informing you of this as a point of interest, not offering an alternative if your local supermarket suddenly has a run on the goatie stuff.

Right, so yeah… probably best I don’t try to sell this recipe on its potential health benefits as the pastry itself could cause a coronary in a cheetah that’s been training for a Marathon… But it is a lot more tasty than it sounds!

Dressing up a tart

Tags

balsamic vinegar, food, mozzarella, pastry, rocket, rosemary basil, tart, tomato, vegetarian

OK, so those of you who like to study our pictures don’t look too close as you’re in danger of discovering our continuity errors. Always seeking to find a positive in everything I do I would hasten to add that this is such as simple, tasty recipe that even if you venture from the prescription you will not go far wrong… However, you might argue that this negates the need for a recipe at all… Well, stop over-thinking it 😛 Here it is:

Ingredients

• A selection of tomatoes
• Puff pastry, (shop bought is fine)
• Sprinkling of salt and sugar
• Mozzarella
• Cracked black pepper
• Roughly chopped garlic
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Rocket
• Basil
• Rosemary

Poppy seeds lemon muffins

Tags

costa cafe, lemon, lemon curd, lemon muffin, muffin, muffin batter, poppy seeds

We used to have coffee and something to eat at Costa cafe some times with Tim’s parents……. Once I tried the lemon and poppyseed muffin I was a bit obsessed with baking my own as I loved it!

The secret is that it has lemon curd or some lemony cream inside, so when you bite into it, (with a huge mouthful) you can see a layer of cream, and that was the part I wanted to get right. Well, did I get it right? OK, have a look down below – I am just gonna say that the cream was there but a bit melted so I have to keep trying! So if you know how to put some cream inside a muffin before baking them…. let me know!

Philo pastry pudding

Tags

book, chocolate, crystal palce, Custard, fillo pastry, food, fruits, London, low fat custard, phillo, phyllo pastry

“We’ve been a little busy this week as we shall be up-ing sticks soon and heading south of the river to a place named Crystal Palace! The area is renown for its ‘crystal palace’ that existed for only the briefest of timescales. If the history of London was compared to the life of a human, its birth being the arrival of the Romans in AD43, its spotty adolescence being that of the plague followed by the arson-esque rebellion of its 1666 Great Fire the existence of Crystal Palace lasted about the same time as London’s first relationship.

Oh, yes the palace was beautiful, she was the talk of the town (an exhibitionist some might say) … But typical London wasn’t happy and she was reduced to tears.. well tiers of less than one storey high after catching ablaze in 1936.

Anyway, so we’re uploading a recipe from a few months ago! This was the dessert dish for the cod meal that we cooked at my parents house. However, it’s not a seasonal recipe and I think it’s quite spring/summery as we look towards the warmer part of the year.

And it seems that there are a billion ways to spell Filo… So I am going to show no favour to any of them and sprinkle them throughout the recipe indiscriminately.

Thanks!

Tim”

A beautiful pudding you can make so easy!

Oat and dried fruit biscuits

Tags

biscuits, cookies, cranberry, dried fruit, garden, Oat, rain, recipe, scone

“Oh crumbs! It’s biscuit time!

I have been reliably informed by some websites that a biscuit in America is more like what we would call a scone.

So apologies  for any confusion! The french translation of the word biscuit means to “cook twice” and I sure hope Freesia cooks these again. 🙂

Tim”

It was snowing all night in London. A couple of weeks ago it was raining a lot, but we are brave so, waterproof shoes on and we started to do some gardening.

That included replanting our herbs into bigger terracota pots and using our black pots to plant spherical carrots and of course some Freesia bulbs for the spring.

When we had finished it was still raining and cold so I decided to try this lovely biscuits from Down-Home South Jersey blog and have some with a hot coffee. So here we go!

Valentine’s dessert idea: Lemon meringue tart!

Tags

books, food, lemon pie, lemon tart, love, merangue, pastry, recipe, valentine's day

“Here’s a lovely meringue recipe for you lovely, loving people. I’ve decided to refer to this dessert as the boo-meringue… As you keep returning for more.

I apologise for the quality of jokes, be assured the quality of Freesia’s food is still great 🙂

Tim”

For the pastry

Ingredients

• 100g of butter
• 1 yolk
• 3 tbp sugar
• 1 tbp of vinegar
• 2 tbp water
• zest of 1 lemon

Praparation

Mix in a bowl the butter, the yolk, sugar, water, vinegar and lemon zest until you get a paste (picture number 2). Add the flour and kneal the dough on the table until you get it as in pictures number 3 and rest it for 15 minutes.

Dried tomatoes and rosemary palmiers

Tags

clothes, dired tomatoes, egg, photo, puff pastry, rosemary

“Palmiers: I hadn’t heard of them until about six months ago and now I can’t forget about them… This is probably because their alternative name is elephant ears and if there’s one thing I know about elephants it’s that… er.. nevermind…

In some elephant-shaped circles they’re known as French Hearts which is another nice way of thinking of these little pastry bites. Although not in the slightest bit healthy, remember Freesia’s mantra of ‘everything in moderation’… Just make sure that if you do try something naughty that it is TOTALLY worth it… (that’s my mantra).. Or you’ll end up with the body shape of an elephant to match those elephant’s ears 🙂

Best wishes to all and now over to the wonderful Freesia!

Tim”

What an easy and good idea for finger food! That was what I thought when I saw the recipe on the BBC recipes website. And as I had made my own Oven dried tomatoes, then there is no excuse not to try this.

Ingredients

• Oven dried tomatoes (see the recipe by clicking on the link)
• low fat puff pastry
• 1 beaten egg
• rosemary

Praparation

Roll the puff pastry until you get 5mm thickness. Chop the dried tomatoes and rosemary leaves and put them on top.

Valentine’s day dinner idea: Surprise spinach quiche!

Tags

books, photo, puff pastry, quark cheese, Quiche, spinach, valentine's day, velentine

“OK, so eating a quiche may sound about as healthy as a deep-fried lard burger washed down with a sausage flavoured milkshake but by using a low(er) fat pastry you can feel a little less guilty. In Freesia’s part of the world you can’t call it a quiche until you put a little pastry roof on top- I would say this was optional. The filling is pretty healthy, so roll the pastry nice and thin and enjoy this valentine’s treat!

The fact that Freesia is selling this recipe as a Valentine’s idea. I’m glad she considers this meal to be a considerate gift between loved ones – certainly takes the pressure off my present buying for the 14th February :)”

Too much chocolate this Christmas? Try my Grandma’s biscuits!

Tags

biscuits, cake, Christmas, dessert, grandma, lemon, snow, sweet, vanilla, winter

It was snowing early this morning, it’s almost Christmas…. so I felt like baking something. I remembered my Grandma’s biscuits with that lemon and vanilla flavour and thought it would be nice to wait for Tim this afternoon with a coffee and some warm biscuits 😉

Ingradients

With these ingredients you will make 800g of biscuits, enough to enjoy for a couple of days 🙂

• 2 cups of flour
• 2 eggs
• 125g sugar
• 150g reduced fat spread
• 30ml skimmed milk
• vanilla extract
• lemon zest

Preparation