The Beginner's Guide to Making Shortcrust Pastry

Making shortcrust pastry is one of the easiest things in the world! Yes, you can buy it ready made, but save that privilege for the more complicated flaky and puff pastry. It is so easy to do and so quick to make.

You can make any amount of shortcrust pastry you like. The recipe is simple: You measure out half the quantity of fat to the amount of flour.

For example:

Ingredients

50g butter or cooking margerine

100g plain flour

Pinch salt

Water to bind

Greased Pyrex or pie dish (use sunflower oil spread with a little kitchen roll)

I would use this recipe to make the base for a medium quiche. Double the quantities for a pie. If you are making a pastry-based cake such as Bakewell tart, then measure according to the size of the cooking dish.

You don't have to stop at plain white flour, either. Use wholemeal flour for a more nutty flavour and interesting taste. Wholemeal pastry has a tendency to be a little drier.

If you are making a sweet pie, then you might like to add 50g caster sugar to the mix to make the pastry sweeter.

Method:

To make your pastry, put your butter or cooking margarine and flour in a bowl. Chop the butter up into smaller pieces, then get your (clean) fingers in there! Rub the fat and flour together, mushing the butter into the flour until the two are finely mixed together. There should be no large pieces of butter left and the mixture should look like large crumbs.

Add your water a tablespoon at the time and mix with a knife. When the mixture starts to stick together in bigger clumps, then it is probably ready.

Sprinkle flour on a washed surface and flour your hands before gathering the mixture together. Bring it together in a lump and put on the flour. Sprinkle more flour on the rolling pin and the mix.

Knead the dough a few times. Squeeze it together and turn. Squeeze and turn some more. Then pat it into a rough ball if rolling for a round dish. Make it a rough square shape if rolling for a square dish.

Roll the rolling pin over the top. Gently pick up the dough from the top and quarter turn it. If it sticks to the surface, gather it back together in a ball and re-flour the surface. Try again.

Roll and quarter turn, roll and quarter turn until the dough is approximately the right size for your dish, bearing in mind how far you want it to come up the sides.

To pick up the large, flat dough, put the rolling pin at the top and roll the top of the dough over it slightly. Pick it up carefully and transfer to the dish. If a little bit sticks at the stage, carefully prise it away.

Gently lay it over the dish and fit it into the corners. Trim any bits that come over the edge. Because I don't cook for show, I would use these to supplement any shorter walls!

Do You Need to Cook it Before Using?

For a quiche, I wouldn't pre-cook the pastry, but for a pie I would. The lightness of the quiche means that the pastry cooks through quite easily.

To cook it before using it, you can buy cooking beans to place in the bottom of the dish to hold the pastry in place. This is called 'blind baking'.

Pastry is best cooked in a medium oven to give the contents time to cook. I would suggest 190 degrees Centigrade, Gas Mark 4/5 for about 15-20 minutes. You can glaze pastry with a bit of egg or milk if you want a lovely brown finish. Pastry itself doesn't colour up much during cooking unless it burns!

Photo Credit: Rolling Pin by Niina C

A Tasty Pasta Supper Dish

Here is a really simple way to make a tasty pasta dish. You start with ready-prepared ingredients and add your own fresh ingredients to make an enjoyable supper.

Serves 4 generous portions. Use pasta according to the size of supper you want.

Ingredients:

Pack of fresh pasta tubes or twirls (if you use dried, start cooking it!)

Pot of Neapolitan pasta sauce

fresh basil (comes in packs or a pot)

onion (Peeled and chopped)

1/2 green pepper (deseed, washed and chopped)

mushrooms (2 or 3)

Cheddar cheese, grated

Parmesan cheese to grate

Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

Stir fry the onion and pepper lightly in a frying pan using a little oil (Olive oil tastes good with pasta)

Add the mushrooms when the onion and pepper is soft

Boil the kettle and add the water to the fresh pasta in the pan. Bring to the boil, and add a little olive oil to help prevent the pasta sticking together.

Cook the pasta for five minutes if fresh, and about 20 minutes if dried.

Add the Neapolitan sauce to the frying pan with the onions, peppers and mushrooms and stir in.

When the pasta is soft but with a slight 'bite' to it, drain it out and add it to the frying pan.

Stir gently and pour into an ovenproof dish.

Stir in two handfuls of fresh basil, torn up by hand.

Grate Cheddar cheese and light sprinkles of Parmesan cheese over the pasta.

Place in the oven for about ten minutes. You can cook a garlic bread to go alongside if you wish.

Serve with salad or on its own for a delicious supper.

I hope you like it. I did!

Photo Credit: Basil Leaves on Flickr by bluekdesign

Chinese Satay Dish

If you like peanut butter and Chinese Satay, then you might like this dish. It's really tasty.

Ingredients:

Chicken fillets (one per adult, half per child)

onion

1-2 garlic cloves

green pepper (other colours fine too)

A little fresh ginger

If you want to be authentic, use sesame seed oil

For the sauce:

quarter pint of water

two tablespoons soy sauce (dark is really tasty)

two tablespoons peanut butter (either crunchy or smooth is good)

squeeze lemon juice

teaspoon sugar

Method

Prepare the onions, peppers, garlic and ginger

Stir fry the chicken in vegetable or sesame seed oil until white all over.

Add the vegetables and stir fry until soft

Add the water, peanut butter, lemon juice and sugar into the pan and turn the heat down. Cook gently until the peanut butter melts and covers the ingredients with a lovely brown sauce. Stir gently to include all the ingredients.

Serve with long grain rice (20 minutes then wash with hot water to make it hot and fluffy) and peas (add frozen ones near the end of the cooking time) and enjoy.

My youngest doesn't enjoy this yet, but my eldest loves it when I serve it. You could experiment with other vegetables; these work for me. 

I really must start taking pictures!!

Photo Credit: Taken by Mike Johnson at The Busy Brain on Flickr.

The Great Brownie Bake Off

If you are really into cakes, then you might like to take a look at the Chocolate Consultancy website. They are holding a Brownie judging competition in London on 9th October which you can find out about here.

If you don't live near London, fear not! You can post your entry and the website gives tips on how to do it: for example letting the cake cool before packing it up. It sounds a really great innovative idea so well worth checking out.

The prize includes six months' worth of chocolate so can't be bad, although in the name of healthy home cooking, I suggest that you eat it slowly!

Let me know in the comments if you try this!

A Great Place to Eat in North Wales

Tu Hwnt i'r Bont or 'Beyond the Bridge' is a charming old tearooms which is situated under a bridge in Llanrwst, North Wales.

I first visited there as a school girl with my friends (I grew up in North Wales) and we used to enjoy going for a cream tea there.

You step into the room and you are instantly transported back in time. Ancient heavy beams line the ceiling and support the roof. The tables and chairs are wooden and traditional and it is always a popular place to eat. You can phone ahead and reserve.

The food is simple but good fare. You can order a lunchtime special for under £12 which will include a cup of coffee or a pot of tea (real tea leaves), a ploughman's platter with three different types of cheese and a substantial salad or a pate platter which includes three pieces of toast, a generous amount of pate and a large salad. You are offered a choice of mustards and chutney. Included in the price are also a home-made scone, jam and cream.

Healthy? Yes, as long as you don't indulge too often! Enjoyable? Absolutely! If you are in the area, then take the family and enjoy a light lunch or a cream tea.

Cooking with Your Own Produce

Tonight's meal was a real mish-mash but hugely enjoyable for all that.

We had shop-bought Scottish mince burgers (good quality) with cheese on buns, home-grown new potatoes and shop-bought salad. We finished with home-grown rhubarb crumble.

Growing our own produce has become something we experiment with every year. I normally try growing tomatoes and watch in despair as the plants wither, but the tomatoes remain! This year we have grown them hanging upside down and it has been a great success, but they are still green at the moment.

Potatoes were a first for us and they have been very successful. We grew them in bags which had flaps near the bottom to harvest the potatoes. They are delicious when eaten so fresh.

Finally we bought two rhubarb plants and have put them in far too hot a place. They are surviving and providing us with rhubarb. It needs quite a bit of sugar but was very nice to be eating our own rhubarb. We will also look forward to blueberries from our own blueberry bush in a pot later on in the year.

What have you tried growing this year?

Healthy Cooked Breakfast

I don't do it very often, but sometimes, it's the weekend, you've been lazing around and before you know it, it's 10.30 and you haven't had breakfast yet.

Now you can just get out the frying pan, but to fry everything up just isn't healthy for you and you will feel sluggish for the rest of the day.

So try finding lighter ways to cook the basic ingredients with less or no fat.

What Makes a Great Cooked Breakfast?

Bacon - grilled not fried
Sausage - best is Quorn or Vegetarian sausages, but you can buy half-fat sausages now which leak very little fat. Oven cook them for about 40 minutes for the best results but can also be grilled. Quorn sausages cook a lot quicker.
Tomatoes - oven cook for that deep flavour
Toast rather than fried bread
Mushrooms - can be cooked in spray oil and dill
Eggs - forget fried, scrambled is better for you.

With a little forethought and planning, you can have a cooked breakfast that will really set you for the whole day.

What are your tips?

Ice Cube Maker

Photo on Flickr by Castaway in Scotland Now

It's hot and the sun is shining. The kids have got the paddling pool out and your thoughts turn to ice cold drinks. Here's a cheap tip to enable you to have enough ice cubes this summer.

Our last fridge freezer had an ice cube maker (may it rest in peace!). This was a wonderful gadget, a bit like a shelf similar to two ice cube trays. Once the ice cubes were frozen, they could be tipped into a tray underneath to be stored until needed. It was such a great idea and it was with a heavy heart I had to consign my fridge freezer to the tip last year as it kept breaking down.

Sadly that model was no longer in production! The closest I could find was a big side-by-side fridge freezer which couldn't hold a candle to my dear departed fridge in terms of size and space. These models did come with ice dispensers, but they took a whole shelf out of the freezer, which, given the amount of space to start with was not such a great thing.

DH reckoned we could do without it, so we bought the side-by-side fridge freezer, but he loves his ice, especially in the summer.

His solution has been simple. He has invested in cheap ice cube trays and when they have been set, he has tipped them into a clean, empty ice cream tub with lid and kept it frozen. Then he has made some more. They do have to be used fairly quickly, but when you want ice cubes in quantity without paying for them, or losing space in your freezer, then it is a great idea.

Until we had an ice cube maker, I never realised just how useful it was. Now, I couldn't do without it and I'm glad I don't have to!

How to Create Your Own Breaded Chicken

Breaded chicken is a family favourite, but the supermarket versions are full of colourings and additives. Here's how to create your own fresh chicken nuggets!

Ingredients:
Pack 4 chicken fillets
2x slices wholemeal or white bread (the more fibre the better)
2x eggs
2-3 tablespoons plain flour

Method:
Blitz the bread in a food processor and reduce it to breadcrumbs. Set them out in one bowl. Break the eggs and beat them in a second bowl. Put the flour in a third bowl.
Cover the chicken with greaseproof paper and flatten out with a rolling pin. Then cut into chunks as you wish.
Heat olive oil or a good sunflower oil in a frying pan.
Dip the chicken in the flour, then the egg then the breadcrumbs. Fry gently in the pan until golden brown, then turn over. Fry in batches and keep on a plate covered with kitchen roll to drain off excess oil.
Serve with homecooked wedges and peas or sweetcorn.

It is possible to oven cook these chicken nuggets which would probably take 20-30 minutes in a medium oven after the flour, egg and breadcrumbs.

Make Your Sunday Roast Go Further - Chicken Stock

It's still cold out there, we still have snow on the ground and more may be forecast. You may still have no money from Christmas and be looking forward to next month's paycheck. Here's a great way to save money.

Do you buy free range chicken? I try to, but the cost is very expensive. If I can use the chicken for more than one meal then it makes more economic sense. Of course you can use a normal cheap chicken for this too and it still goes further than previously.

You can roast the chicken and enjoy it for Sunday lunch. I usually buy the biggest bird I can find and that means that there are leftovers.

We use the remainder of the chicken to make stock. The bird is stripped of the meat and the carcass is put in the slow cooker with a quartered onion, a chopped carrot and a good amount of water (depending on the size of your slow cooker). Discard the skin which will add fat to your stock. You can add salt and pepper, herbs such as parsley and a bay leaf according to your taste. Slow cook for about 4-6 hours.

When you feel that the stock is ready, you can strain it and either freeze it or use it to make delicious home-made soups or even risottos. I will post some more recipes to use this stock in the coming weeks.

The supermarkets have all caught on to this idea that stock is great for healthy home cooking and sell it in packets, but it is easy to make your own and helps make that expensive food go a little further too.

Where did January go?

I can't believe it's February today! We've had a lot of snow in Worcestershire, UK today - in fact a white blanket fell last night and we woke to about an inch and a half! Daughter walked to school and DH walked to town to catch a bus. Son moaned all the way about having to wear school uniform. The joys of parenting!

We went to a family thing at the weekend and I welcomed the excuse to make my favourite cheesecake recipe - 'The Best Cheesecake Ever'. I can only make it occasionally as it's a real treat. It all went at the event, so hopefully other people agreed.

The secret is in the cream cheese - Marscapone is soft and creamy without that aftertaste that most cheesecakes have. If you are looking for a signature pudding, you can't go wrong with this one. Sorry no pics - it got eaten before I could get my camera out!

The Best Cheesecake in the World
200g/7oz Hob Nobs or Oat biscuits, crushed (take your frustrations out on them)
100g/4oz butter melted

Topping
200g/7oz Mascarpone Cheese (can sometimes find a lower fat one)
200 ml/7 fl oz whipped cream
1 tbs grated fresh ginger
3 tbs honey

To add a caramel nut crunch:
2 oz caster shugar
100g Pecans/chopped hazelnuts/other nuts of choice

Method
Melt the butter in a pan. When completely melted, add the crushed biscuits. Press into a flan dish/cake tin with removeable base. Chill in the fridge.

Whisk the cream until stiff, then add the ginger, honey and Mascarpone to it and stir together thoroughly. Add it to the biscuit base and replace in the fridge to chill.

To caramelise the nuts, heat the sugar and nuts together in a pan on the stove. Keep stirring and as the sugar heats through, it will begin to liquefy. The nuts will collect the caramelised sugar. You need to keep stirring until the nuts are all covered to avoid the sugar burning. Tip the nuts out onto a baking tray to cool. When cooled, sprinkle over the top of the cheesecake.

Enjoy.