Storecupboard standbys

This month I have mostly been; broke. For some reason there just seemed to be too much month at the end of my money. So I've been eating my way through my storecupboard, glad that I have a few meals that I can knock up from tins and other goodies stashed away in the pantry. I say pantry, really I mean big cupboard that my flatmate and I each have a shelf in, but after all - this blog says I have one, so I have renamed it 'The Pantry'

Reverting to my student standbys is always a good way to extend the month/ money ratio, and this pasta dish is actually still tasty whilst being concocted from things that lurk at the back of my fridge and cupboards.

Pantry Pasta (serves 2)

1 clove garlic

1 chilli (or equivalent storecupboard ingredient - my flatmate's mum gives us bags from her chilli plants that we freeze. The chillis not the plants)

1 tin anchovies in olive oil

150g pasta (I use wholemeal penne)

1 tablespoon tomato puree

1 tablespoon red (tomato) pesto

Put the water on to boil for your pasta, add salt. Cook pasta as per packet instructions - 5 minutes before it's done, get another pan out and do the following:

Open your tin of anchovies, drain the olive oil into your pan, warm through and add your chopped chilli and crushed/ chopped garlic. Let this sizzle for a minute or so then add the anchovies. Let these melt down into a sort of grey mush (attractive huh?) and then add your tomato puree and red pesto. (If you have any fresh tomatoes lying around, feel free to chop a couple up and add them now) Cook for about 4-5 minutes then add your cooked, drained pasta to the pan. Stir the sauce through so that it coats the pasta. Serve (if it's not the end of the month add wine).

Unsurprisingly by slightly nearer the end of the month (baked potatoes with beans and cheese) I was missing treats, so found a packet of puff pastry in the freezer and decided to experiment with eccles cakes.

I used a Delia recipe for these, but made them a lot bigger, as her suggestion for size was quite frankly, pants.

75g butter

150g soft brown sugar (I used golden caster sugar)

150g currants

1 teaspoon cinammon

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Grated rind of 1 large orange

50g mixed peel

Given that mixed peel is up there with aubergines and macaroni cheese on my Things I don't eat list. I was slightly trepidatious of adding it. But for one reason and another I do trust Ms Smith, so went ahead and was pleased to note it didn't render the eccles cakes inedible at all.

Melt the butter and the sugar together in a pan. Add this to the fruit and spices in a mixing bowl. I let it cool whilst I rolled out puff pastry so it was really thin (at most I'd say half a centimetre thick) and then started using a cookie cutter the size Delia suggested. On seeing that I could get about half a teaspoon of filling in that, I quickly abandoned those and started cutting out pudding bowl rounds of pastry which worked far better. I put a good dessertspoon of filling in the middle of the round, brushed the outside edge with milk, folded the pastry in half so that I had a semi circle and then brought each corner in to the middle, turned the eccles cake upside down and made the customary 3 slits with my knife. The cakes were then brushed with milk and cooked in the oven at 220 degrees C for 15 minutes.

Fantastic, and as I had all the ingredients; bargainous. Next time I would freeze them before cooking so that I could take one out as needed between then and payday. Sadly these were snaffled by colleagues and flatmate as otherwise they would have gone stale. Lesson learned.

Thankfully it's payday tomorrow so wine and foodstuffs will be mine. Tonight. Scrambled eggs on toast.

Iron Cupcake: Chocolate Guinness cupcakes (my non entry)

I think I mentioned previously about being interested in entering London's first Iron Cupcake comptetion, which naturally had a theme of Chocolate.

Being more than a little retentive, I naturally expended energy in planning my entry - an adaptation of Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness cake. Duly had a practice run to see how much like a pint of Guinness I could make my cupcakes look. Result - plain white cupcake wrappers in a silicone cupcake mould (no matter what anyone in John Lewis tells you, you do need a cupcake wrapper in these) with a plain piped frosting. I then just had to work out how to transport my cupcakes to the competition, as I work in West London and this was going to be in South - normally my cakes I take into work have to be fairly tough going as an hour and a half commute necessitates this. Sadly, at this point there was a flaw in my plan. Just how was I going to get them in one piece to work, stop my colleagues murdering me to get to the cakes and then get them to London Bridge. Shortly before my head exploded at the thought of so many obstacles (quite literally in the case of my tube journey) I realised that the competition actually clashed with John Barrowman's Royal Albert Hall gig which a good friend had got me tickets for months beforehand. So the cupcakes were made - and eaten by a very grateful team and flatmate.

Next month is summer fruits... if I can work out the transportation issue then watch this space...

Chocolate Guinness cupcakes (from Feast, Nigella Lawson)

This recipe makes 14 big cupcakes, which need baking for 20 minutes at 180 degrees C

250ml Guinness

250g unsalted butter

75g cocoa

400g caster sugar

1 x 142ml pot sour cream

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

275g plain flour

2.5 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven and line your cupcake tin/mould

Pour the Guinness into a saucepan and add the butter. Heat gently until the butter has melted.

Whisk in the cocoa and sugar.

Whisk the eggs, vanilla and soured cream together and then add this to the saucepan.

Finally whisk in the flour and bicarb. Use an electric whisk btw.

Use a ladle to measure out the cupcakes, then put your tin/s on a baking sheet and cook in the middle of your oven for 20 minutes.

When done let them cool in their tins before tipping out. Then when completely cold you can ice them.

Cream cheese frosting

300g cream cheese

150g icing sugar

125ml double or whipping cream

Beat all of this together until smooth, then using a piping bag and round nozzle, ice your cupcakes so that the white frosting looks like the head of a pint of Guinness. Trace a shamrock in the frosting with a cocktail stick if you're really going for it (yes I was going to do this).

Changing the World: One cake at a time

As the title suggests, this is a post about the wonderful cafe that the Guides ran last weekend. I'm so proud of them - anyone who is known to roll their eyes, despairing of the 'youth of today' had better not come within a 10 mile range of me at the moment. Our girls having decided that they would support Help the Hospices (and the North London Hospice in particular) as part of their Changing the World project decided that phase 2 of their project would be to host and run a cafe in their Guide Hut. Which they did, and raised (at the last count, with more monies to come in) nearly £300.

The girls made cakes, decorated terracota plots and then grew nasturtiums, marigolds and herbs to go in said pots, ran a raffle, and put on a performance of songs and dances for the assembled audience. I don't think I need say any more, as save for a small panic the day before as to whether the Guinness in Nigella's chocolate Guinness cake would cook out so it was suitable for children! very little of the work was done by me... all the praise is due to a unit of 10 girls aged between 10 and 14.

As much as I would love to show you pictures of the girls, Child Protection means that I can't, however their cakes and hard work all come below:

Grazing at my desk

See how tidy my desk is? What do you mean no?!

I don't know about anyone else who finds themselves desk bound, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm - there's a variety of things I bribe myself with to stay there, which progress to threats when a trip to Lush to stock up on goodies, or a Milkybar stops working (by the way, as an aside... why I have I failed to understand the inherent goodness of white chocolate until recently?) However, in an attempt to eat more healithy of late (last years summer skirts are feeling just a little bit too tight) I have found myself staring wistfully on at my pc as colleagues tuck into cakes and biscuits.

And then I discovered Graze, through a recommendation from a similarly desk-bound friend. Graze is basically a box of mixed fruit, nuts and seeds that is delivered to your desk when convenient for you (I tie in my deliveries with Tuesdays as Guides normally means I don't find time for dinner) You can use the website to select favourites and the type of box you want - Personally I have the one which guarantees you 2 portions of your 5 a day, as of late I have struggled to meet this. It also lets you deselect anything you dislike 'Be gone grapefruit!' I'm not going to pretend it's a wonder service, but it is a nice way to increase your fruit intake and decrease your biscuit intake during the day.

I've been using the service for about a month now, and although I can't report any astounding weight loss (dammit) I can say that on my Graze box days I look forward to it arriving (who doesn't like nice things in the post) and I don't snack. I do occaisionally have to avoid the temptation to inhale it all before midday, but if staggered through the day, or occaisionally over 2 days I find it does help me to resist the call of the biscuit tin. Which can only be a good thing.

If you want to try a free box and then another one for £1, courtesy of Penelope's Pantry, then enter this code X5DB99RA

Ginger: Does everything Fred does, but backwards and in heels

Or at least perks up biscuit recipes no end. This Sunday, with the recent acquisition of a pot of candied ginger, and nothing to do except watch the rain and prep for Guides I decided to make some ginger biscuits. There must have been something in the air, as Jules from Trainee Domestic Goddess had the same idea.

I knew I didn’t want to make ginger nuts, as much as I love them I am yet to find a recipe that accurately replicates the crunchy and fiery biscuit that seems to have been made for dunking alone. Before I open up any cans of worms, this is my blog and as such I get ultimate veto. The judges decision is that: Dunking is to be encouraged, but only with worthy biscuits such as the ginger nut.

My stack of cookery books did little to help in my quest; I’ve already tried and put post in notes on the varying ginger biscuit recipes that weren’t up to scratch, so with a sinking heart I decided to approach Google. Now for most things in life that I don’t know, the answer is Google it. Recent queries have included:

How to tie a friendship knot in a necker?
What are the actions to ‘Alive. Alert. Awake. Enthusiastic’?
Gordon Ramsey F word lasagne recipe

So as you can see, whatever the question Google generally has the answer, with great faith I entered the search criteria ‘ginger biscuit recipe’ hoping that someone somewhere would have one that I would like. The proliferation of recipes for Gingerbread men saddened me, as without an appropriate cutter I had little hope of making those, and was getting progressively more excited each time I saw one as I went through my search results). Note to self, definitely buy the next gingerbread man cutter I see – this is a necessity.

Eventually I found a blogger - Carla Nayland who seemed to have a recipe that:

a) Sounded interesting
b) That I had all the ingredients to in the cupboard and so didn’t need to get changed out of my yoga pants and Popular t-shirt.

c) Was in old measurements. Does anyone else find recipes in pounds and ounces distinctly comforting?

So off I pottered… I did make some changes, so this isn't exactly the same as hers, although the method is.

Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: April recipe: Stem ginger biscuits

4oz butter

2 tablespoons golden syrup (when measuring this out, fill a teacup with boiling water and dip your spoon in it before each spoon of syrup and it'll slip straight off)

1 oz sugar

4 oz candied ginger (this is doubled from the original recipe - I considered blitzing it to a paste, but wanted the textural difference)

6 oz self-raising flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger (again I doubled it)

Put the butter, syrup and sugar in a saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved. Remove from the heat.

Stir in the flour, ground ginger and candied ginger. Mix thoroughly. It should form a soft dough that leaves the sides of the pan clean.

Put teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking tray, spaced about 1 inch (approx 2-3 cm) apart to allow room for the biscuits to spread as they cook.

Carla says that she, usually gets 30 biscuits out of the quantities given, but using a teaspoon I probably got half that...

Bake at about 180 C (approx 375 F) for about 15 minutes until the biscuits are golden brown and set.

Remove from the tray and cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight tin. If they get the chance, they keep for up to 2 weeks (they lasted 24 hours in this house!)

The biscuits were nice, I should have probably flattened them with a fork, and remember thinking that I needed to do that so I have no idea why I forgot. They could still be more gingery, and I had already added more than the recipe suggested but I do like things fiery and if I were to do it again, I might add some pepper aswell, although then I'm crossing over into Christmas tree biscuit territory. Overall though, the quest for the perfect ginger biscuit recipe continues apace.

I picked our first rhubarb of the year this weekend, and as my flatmate had already wowed us with her rhubarb fools (I forgot to take photos but they were lush) I made a fruit compote with apples, tea soaked sultanas, cinammon and more ginger. It tastes amazing on porridge and makes me feel like I'm being super healthy in the morning - probably at least in part to the tartness of the rhubarb.

Part Three: Brown paper packages tied up with string

These are a few of my favourite things:

Part Two: Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Which always makes me think of playing Maria in West Side Story, “white is for babies!” but then as I’m sure you know by now, my links are at best tenuous and at worst, well arbitrary... and that’s being kind.

Seasonality is a big thing for me, so cakes, and bread aside I am very happy at this time of year because we have ASPARAGUS! Or sparrowsgrass as my darling Daddy used to call it. I have no idea why, but it’s a clear and happy memory which is important to me. It would have been his birthday recently so I thought this might be a good time to see a mini-Penelope and her Dad.
Anyway, you can stop thinking – what was she wearing? Now, thank you very much (she says looking down at a sparkly purple Xanadu t-shirt and yoga pants with slippers. Erm...OK so moving along) because asparagus and it’s lamentably short season – to paraphrase Laura of Hungry and Frozen in her quest for quinces lately “from 5pm Monday till 3am Tuesday” is the topic of the day.

I wait for April and May to come around (depending on the weather) and for English Asparagus to hit the shelves, each supermarket brands the bundles with as many Union Jacks as two elastic bands can hold and trumpets with delight “English Asparagus. Season SHORT!” As all too soon we will be left with stocks imported from Peru. Now as sure as I am there’s nothing wrong with asparagus from Peru (after all this blogger likes to do her bit in the name of world peace et al) but I would rather mine had travelled from Kent than Cuzco.

All of that said, and powerfully so as I’m sure you’ll admit, I am always at a bit of a loss for what to do with asparagus. I love it, but end up just eating it steamed with butter and a little black pepper which as I’m sure you agree lacks originality. Not being particularly starving yesterday I plumped for the asparagus with poached eggs on toast. I didn’t need the toast.

I brought a pan (with a lid) of water to the boil, and popped two eggs in poachpods (I know they’re cheating, but just can’t get the swirly water thing right) and at the same time dropped in my asparagus, and put the lid on. After five minutes, voila! Perfectly poached eggs, with asparagus for dipping. And toast as a completely extraneous side.