Addicted to Nachos

ad·dic·tion

   [uh-dik-shuhn] Show IPA

–noun

The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to somethingthat is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

This sums it up, I am enslaved to the salty, cheesy, japaleno and guacamole covered delight that is nachos. I make other people eat them with me because I know it's wrong. Last week I ate them 5 days in a row, but two weeks ago I found this recipe where I can indulge in a few nacho's and not feel as bad because there's some form of vegetable involved. It's from the Nigella Express book and I completely didn't follow the recipe because I only had half the ingredients so I substituted the rest, but it was still good, so I reckon it must be really good if made properly! Any way, I'm going cold turkey, it's been 3 days, wish me luck.

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Being Green

With some left overs from valentines last week and in the spirit of trying new recipes I decided to try two new things last week. One of them being an asparagus and (veggie) parmesan tart as I had a massive craving for asparagus and all of the other ingredients sitting in my fridge. It was really good, but as with most things I make I made the biggest portion in the world and ended up eating loads. You can find the recipe here.

The second thing I made was leek and pea soup from the Asda Magazine. I didn't use the cream though because I just don't like it in soups, I dropped a bit of the left over mascarpone in the middle instead. I think it's always worth picking up free magazines from supermarkets, in my opinion Asda and Morrisons do the best ones and there's always veggie stuff in them. They quite often pick things that are in season as well, making it a bit better for the environment. I've got one new recipe I want to try this week which is Gnocchi with roasted squash, fingers crossed it turns out okay!

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Valentines

As it was our 4th valentines this year, and as I have no job and lots of time on my hands I decided to cook a meal. It's really hard to cook for both of us because, well I'm vegetarian and he's not. He's not very enthused about vegetarian food and just generally a fussy eater. But I decided on a caramelised onion and goats cheese tart for the starter, ricotta and spinach gnocchi for the main and strawberry and champagne topped brownies for desert.

Caramelised Onion and Goats Cheese Tart.

This is so easy to make, all you need to do it roll out some puff pastry in to any shape you want. Make up some caramelised onions by softening some onions, adding brown sugar to caramelise and then add some balsamic vinegar and a bit of water. Let it reduce and put it on the pastry, top with the goats cheese and the bake in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi.

I went for this because I know by boyfriend likes pasta but had never tried gnocchi, I cheated a little bit and brought pasta sauce, because, well I couldn't be bothered to make any. But I used a recipe from a vegetarian women's weekly book (or something like that) and it was awful! It called for 960g of chard (what a ridiculous amount!), which I was going to substitute for spinach, and when i made up the gnocchi it was so runny I could never have used it. So I made it up as I went along and added flour ect! Here's the recipe (roughly!)

250g Ricotta

50g Spinach

50g Vegetarian Parmesan

1 Egg beaten

1/8 tsp Nutmeg

100g Flour

Serves 4.

Steam the spinach until wilted and remove excess liquid, chop finely and put in a mixing bowl. Add the ricotta, Parmesan, egg, nutmeg and flour and mix until its firm and well combined. Flour your hands and roll the mixture in to 12 balls and refrigerate for 30 Min's. Cook the gnocchi by boiling for about 2 minutes, until the start to float and serve with pasta sauce and a grating of veggie Parmesan cheese.

Champagne Strawberry topped Brownies with Mascarpone

Brownies always go down well, and I found a recipe for ones topped with champagne strawberries on twitter which sounded perfect for Valentines day. I used my favorite brownie recipe from the Hotel Chocolate 101 book, and used 85% good quality chocolate which made them extra rich! I usually use 70% and you can tell the difference between the two!

Topping

Strawberries

Icing sugar

Mascarpone

Vanilla extract

Champagne

Make your bownies then chop the strawberries and dust with icing sugar then pour over some champagne. Mix about 6tsp mascarpone with 2 tsp of icing sugar and a drop of vanilla essence. Warm the brownies in the oven or microwave and then top with the strawberries and pop some mascarpone on the side. I put some milk chocolate covered strawberries on as well just to make it extra indulgent!

My boyfriend got me this beautiful box of Artisan du Chocolat chocolates for valentines, which I was really happy about because I've been wanting to try them for ages! I've only eaten a few so far, but they are absolutely amazing! You can tell that everything is of the highest quality and the flavors are amazing! I'm trying to only eat one a day so that they last me a while, it's incredibly hard though!!

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Morrison's Meerkats

My quest for vegetarian sweets will be never ending, so today when I found these strange veggie meerkats I was overjoyed! Even though goody good stuff sweets are amazing, they're quite hard to find so if I ever need a quick sweetie fix, its good to know I can now pop to Morrisons. The texture will never be like good old haribo, and these are very chewy compared to goody good stuff, but the flavors are nice. They remind me of a mixture between the vegetarian funny mix and strawbs, but much better because they're in a smaller pack so you don't feel as bad for eating them all! So overall I'm pretty happy!

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Vegan Muffins and Phoebe's Ice Cream

This post is dedicated to my friends Phoebe and Emma. This is mainly because both of them were meant to come over yesterday, and although only Emma did, we talked, as we sometimes do about when Phoebe used to cook for us. When we were about 15-17 me and Phoebe used to spend pretty much all of our time together. when I stayed at hers we would return in the early hours of the morning slightly intoxicated and I would slump either on her bed, or on her floor while she went away for what seemed about 5 minutes, only to return with some kind of gourmet meal. I miss these days so, so much and one thing that sticks out is what she used to make for Emma when she turned vegan, this weird coconut, mango ice ceam/sorbet. So here's the recipe:

2 mangos,

1 tin of coconut milk,

1 lime.

This is pretty simple really, blend the mangos and add the coconut milk and the juice of the lime and freeze. Then serve up with some fresh pineapple and passion fruit!

Emma made me a vegan chocolate and raspberry cake yesterday which reminded me that while I was being vegan for a week, I baked some vegan chocolate and raspberry muffins. I thought I'd lost the recipe, but Emma cleverly pointed out that it was on my fridge!

320g Plain flour

100g Cocoa powder

1tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

225g Sugar

460 ml Soy Milk

120 ml Oil

1tsp Vanilla extract

180g Dairy free chocolate chopped into chunks (I used 70% house dark from Hotel Chocolat)

1 box Raspberries

Makes 12

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl (except Raspberries) and make a well in the middle. Add the wet ingredients and mix with an electric mixer until well blended. Then add the Raspberrys and mix in with a wooden spoon. Then spoon the mixture into muffin cases in a cake tray and bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen and spongy!

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Cake

I have decided to dedicate this week of my blogging life to cake, and baked goods. I've loved baking ever since I was little, when my dad let me wreck the kitchen for a weekend of (probably failed) experiments! A while ago my housemate and I made some cherry bakewells, they didn't have any marzipan but still tasted really good!

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

200g plain flour

100g butter

8 tablespoons water

For the filling:

50g self-raising flour

50g caster sugar

50g butter

1 egg

Cherry Jam

For the topping: Glace cherrys icing sugar

Method:

Blend the butter and flour together with your finger tips until it is like a breadcrumb texture, then add the water and mix until you have a firm dough. Kneed the dough for about a minute then roll out quick thick and cut 12 circles out with a cookie cutter. Place them in a buttered cake tin and fill with a teaspoon of cherry jam. Make up the sponge mix by putting all the ingredients in a bowl and mixing until combined. Spoon tsps of mixture on top of the jam and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown on top.

Once cooled decorate with thick icing and half a cherry on top and enjoy!

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