Potato Scones (gluten free)

 

Rob made little smiley faces in some of them!

 

500g of mashed potato

100g gluten free flour

a chunk of butter

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

oil for frying

 

Mix the mashed potato with the butter while its still warm. Add the flour and baking powder. Mix it with your hands until it forms a dough. Break off small pieces and roll into a ball. Flatten these and place them in hot oil. Fry for a few minutes, turning often until they are golden brown. Eat!

 

This recipe comes from my cousin Rachel (thankyou) and her scones were actually quite a bit bigger. I havent tried them bigger yet, but when I made a tiny test scone they looked so tasty and nom that I wanted to continue.

 

We had them with vegan cauliflower cheese. It was a big stodgy autumn meal.

Another Carrot Cake

I didnt take any piccys of the cake I made for my Dad's birthday, but here is the cake I made for my friend Emily's visit today.

 

It is a carrot, orange, walnut and cinnamon cake. With an orange zest butter-cream and pecan's and walnuts to finish.

 

It is totally vegan!

 

 

Multi-Cultural Day at Ipswich Library

It was Multi-Cultural Music Day at the Library this weekend, and I (and my friend Gemma) spent 2 days working really, really hard to make beautiful food to sell on a stall. We did make some glorious food which I will now walk you through:

I don't have a picture of me with the stall, but here is Gemma with our pretty stall. Isn't it cute?

 

Yum! Vegan Pizza. This one was mushroom, tomato, red onion and olive. We had other ones with mixtures of the same ingredients and capers. Nommy.

 

This is a Field Bean Falafel wrap. It has salsa, field bean and coriander humus, lettuce, falafel and vegan mayo dressing. Very tasty and lots of pretty colours.

 

Jiao-zi: A chinese steamed dumpling filled with grated carrot, cabbage, soy sauce and sesame oil. Oh and I think it had a little onion. We served these with a sesame seed dip.

 

 

Falafel: look at this huge bowl of field bean falafel! These we made with coriander and parsley, garlic, gram flour and of course the glorious field bean.

 

Cornish Pasties: These are made with shortcrust pastry (I'm getting good at pastry), they are filled with mashed potato, swede, parsnip, onion and carrot. I flavoured them with mint, rosemary and black pepper. Superb.

 

3 Salads: from the top - Potato salad, with chives, capers and vegan mayo, Rice salad 1- caramelised onion, sesame seed and lemon rind and Rice salad 2- spring onion and lime.

 

It was a pretty good day. A bit quiet but considering that we did a good trade and made a profit. We met some lovely people and had nothing but good feedback. So all in all, I am pretty happy. Its all been really good practice and I have ideas for future stalls.

Roast Butternut Squash Risotto

Ingredients:

Half a Butternut Squash
1 Onion
1 Red Pepper
2/3 Cloves Garlic
Green Lentils - a tin thereof
300g Arborio Rice
750ml (approx) Vegetable Stock
2-3 tablespoon Soy Single Cream
Olive Oil
Dried Basil
Dried Oregano
Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200oC. Peel and cube the butternut squash, place in a baking tin and drizzle with olive oil. Cook in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let it cool a little.

2. Fry the onion and red pepper in some olive oil. When the onion has softened and slightly browned, add the chopped/crushed garlic. Fry this for 1-2 minutes and then add your herbs, add as much as you like. Herbs are yummy.

3. Add the dry rice and fry for a few minutes. Add the roasted squash and stir in. Now start adding the stock a little at a time, until it is absorbed by the rice. Keep adding until you run out of stock. Add the lentils and heat them through.

4. Now add the soy cream and some salt and pepper to taste.

5. Eat up with a big salad. Lush.

My dear friends birthday cake, chutney and rolls

Huzzah, I return. Back to attempting to update my cooking blog on a semi-regular basis. So firstly, I made a cake for my bestest lady friends birthday. I am very proud of it. It is a Vegan, chocolate prune cake with chocolate buttercream and toasted flaked almonds. It is decorated with freshly cut carnations. Check-it:

 

I carried it all the way to the pub. Btw it was her 30th birthday.

 

Today my friend Gemma came over and we made chutney together. Marrow chutney to be exact. The Random Camels didnt know how to deal with the glut of marrows so we came up with an elegant solution. Here is the recipe I used:

 

4lb peeled marrow pieces; 1/2lb onions;mustard seed;ground ginger; turmeric; cayenne pepper;3 pints vinegar; 1lb sugar

 

Peel and chop the marrow into 1cm chunks, chop the onion finely and put both of these in a pan with generous helpings of ginger and mustard seed. Add a bit of turmeric and cayenne (a half tsp of turmeric and a pinch of cayenne). Add the sugar and stir into the dry ingredients. Add the vinegar and heat the mixture until rapidly boiling, then turn the heat down and simmer for 1-2 hours. Sterilise your jars and fill 'em up! Leave the mixture for about a month before eating.

 

Here is a piccy of the jars of chutney and the little wholemeal rolls I made this morning:

 

9 jars of chutney! We will see how it turns out. We are going to make some more to a different recipe soon, coz there are yet more marrows to use!

 

Thankyou Gem for an awesome chutney afternoon.xx

We LOVE Breakfast

The Place: Isaacs, Ipswich Waterfront
The Date: 17/06/12
The Time: 09.30am
The Price: £6.00

What we ate: Fried egg, 2 Quorn sausages, some fried button mushrooms, 1/2 fried tomato, beans, a hashbrown and 2 slices of toast (1 white, 1 brown).

Kate's review:  Very tasty! Except for the tomato, which was under-ripe and under-cooked. I don't usually like (or choose to eat) Quorn sausages, but I found them to be surprisingly good with brown sauce. The hash brown was ok, but not the best I've had. I really appreciated getting 2 slices of toast, I love toast and could eat a loaf of it given a chance.

I was very full afterwards.

We sat outside under a brolly which was very nice, 'cause I got to look at the boats for a while. Overall I find it a bit middle class at Isaacs which makes me a bit uncomfortable but the food and coffee was good, so overall I think it was a good brekkie.

4 pieces of Toast out of 5

Rob's Review: My tomato was ok. I never eat the middle bit anyway. My review may be skewed by my spilling my mocha before eating.

I didnt think much of the quorn sausages, they seemed bland. The hash brown was enjoyably plump. The button mushrooms tasty. I very much liked the toast, as it was a good generous serving. The beans were also a reasonable amount.

Overall a pleasant meal.

I disagree that Isaacs is middle class- its more wealthy working class (professional traders etc). I enjoy the waterfront.

3 and a half pieces of Toast out of 5.

I Love Food

Yep, thats right, I do. I'm a fat girl that loves food and is actually a very good cook. I'm bound to get a lot of hateful comments because of the 'fat thing' and being open about it. I am interested in fat activism and enjoying the body I am in. It is a struggle because people find it hard to understand. After all, we are told every day how its bad and unhealthy to be fat. Having done some research and opened my mind a little, I have found that it is possible to be healthy and fat. 'Health at Every Size' by Linda Bacon, provides very good info about this. If you want to know more, go find this book. Educate yourself and be happier.

As part of my degree show I made a zine, with a whole bunch of awesome contributors, called 'Rolls With Butter'. It was a fat activists cooking zine. It had pieces written by body positive people about their bodies as well as a whole host of gorgeous recipes. I illustrated it. It was a great project. I really enjoyed mixing my love of art with my love of cooking and my own activism.

Im hoping this will be an extension of that zine. I will add recipes made in my own kitchen and hopefully get other people to contribute too.

My boyfriend (Rob) and I are going to start doing breakfast reviews. We like to go out on a Sunday morning and have ourselves a cooked breakfast. We are ever searching for the best breakfast! My second post will be our first review.

Bon Appetit!