Crustless caramelised onion & spinach Quiche

It's been ages since I've done a homemade quiche so a few weeks ago I tried one out using generally what I already had in, but also my favourite quiche ingredients when buying any from the shop.
They are relatively straight forward to make and generally a good people pleaser, so fingers crossed it would go down well with my little fussy eater!

I opted for caramelised onion and spinach quiche. I have to be honest I'm not overly keen on the flavour of cooked Spinach but I love it raw so I used dried frozen spinach and a few fresh leaves on top.
I did cheat a bit to save time and used pre-made pastry but I am including a recipe for short crust pastry if you'd like to make it yourself.

Recipe

Ingredients:

For the short crust pastry:

• 100g butter
• 200g flour
• 2tbsp water

For the Filling:

• 5 medium eggs
• 1 carton of single cream
• 115ml semi skimmed milk
• 200g grated mild or medium cheddar cheese 
• 1 small white onion
• Half a bag of frozen spinach
• Approx 10 cherry tomatoes
• Small amount of veg oil (for onions)
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar (for onions)
• 1/2 tsp salt (for onions)
• Seasoning (I used salt, pepper and ground garlic)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 200oc
• Make the short crust pastry
• Roll out and fit to dish. Blind bake for 10 minutes.
• Thinly slice the onions and fry them gently in small amount of veg oil. When they start to soften add sugar and salt. Heat until softened and gently browned.
• Whisk the eggs, cream and milk together.
• Dry off spinach between pieces of kitchen towel.
• Grate cheese and add to mixture. We also sprinkled some on the base.
• Slice cherry tomatoes and arrange on pastry base.
• Add spinach and onions into the quiche dish.
• Add the egg mixture to the dish.
• Cook for 40 minutes at 180oc

We had our warm with salad, it was lovely and it was a hit with my fussy eater too!

Apple, Orange and Cinnamon Strudel

As mentioned in my first basic budget tips post I always check the reduced sections when out grocery shopping. At the moment there always seems to be fresh puff pastry packs, usually anchor, in the chilled reduced section. I grabbed one and a 'roll back' short crust for some planned cooking/baking later in the week. You can freeze these blocks so don't worry if you spot some reduced and don't have any imminent baking plans!


 I love baking. It's an activity I like to involve G in, so the more simple the process the better at this age. Ready made pastry also obviously saves time which there never seems to be enough of! Cooking/baking everything yourself instead of buying it ready made from the shop isn't always cheaper like people like to preach (though this one would be if pastry was done from scratch - but it then still depends on what you're already stocked up on) but you can get past the problem of not finding exactly what you want.


I thought it would be nice to try out using orange juice and rind instead of the usual lemon for this recipe.

Our strudel turned out lovely but possibly a bit on the sweet side for those who don't have a sweet tooth.
Not everyone uses egg so feel free to leave this out if you prefer.


Recipe


Ingredients:

• Block of puff* pastry 500g
• 4 ready to eat apples
• Sultanas
• 50g Brown Sugar
• Flat tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• Orange rind and 1-2 tbsp juice
• 1 tsp margerine/butter
• 1tbsp flour
• 1 small egg (optional)
• Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180oc
• Roll out the puff pastry on a floured or icing sugar coated surface
• Roll into a large oblong shape
• Peel, core and chop apples into small chunks or thin slices
• Grate orange and add rind  to the apples, then slice and add the juice of one half of the orange. Make sure the apple is coated.
• Add chopped apples, sugar and a handful or two of sultanas to your mixing bowl
• Add small knob of butter/marge
• Add the cinnamon and nutmeg and mix well
• Add 1tbsp flour, mix well.
• Add the egg and mix well
• Place mixture in a straight line along side of the pastry (leaving a gap between the mixture and the bottom edge of the pastry).
• Fold the pastry over, sealing the filling inside.
• Make horizontal slices in the top (up to you how many) to allow steam to escape.
• Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until golden brown.

We served ours with custard the first time and ice cream the next. It's not keeping inline with my getting fit and healthy but it's a lovely pudding for the cold Autumn and Winter months.




*Strudel is also often made with filo pastry, the method is just slightly different when filling.

Amoy sticky glaze chinese BBQ Quorn Fillets and veg with noodles

A few weeks ago I spotted a couple of new 'sauces' whilst out grocery shopping. I picked up one of Amoy's new range; sticky glaze sweet soy.
I'm always looking for inspiration for new vegetarian dishes that don't rile my condition (e.g anything based on pulses, chick peas, lentils etc) and I'd always wanted to try sticky glaze vegetarian style so these were great.
I tried it with Quorn fillets and veg and it was a success.

Roll on a few weeks later and I've tried out 'Sticky Glaze, Chinese BBQ' using Quorn fillets, similar veg and noodles.



A really simple dish to make. Here's what you need:

• A pack of Quorn fillets, left out to defrost (we used 4 fillets)
• A sachet of amoy sticky glaze
• Veg of your choice. I used 4 carrots, a leek, one onion and some baby sweet corn.
• 2 tsp vegetable oil

Method:

1. Pre heat the oven to 200oc
2. I first put the carrots and corn onto par boil
3. Whilst they were cooking I chopped the rest of the veg.
4. I brushed the vegetable oil over the bottom of a casserole dish.
5. I placed in 4 quorn fillets and placed the onion and leek around them.
6. I then drained and placed the carrots and corn into the dish.
7. Then I added the sticky glaze to the fillets and brushed onto surrounding veg also.
8. Then put into the oven to cook for 25 minutes.
9. Put noodles on to cook five minutes before the dish is due out.
10. Serve

White & Dark Chocolate Cookies

I followed quite a basic recipe for these. They turned out quite well but next time I'll be following one online and trying out some corn starch for optimum results.

This makes a small batch, it yeilds about 10 - 12 large cookies.

Ingredients:

150g Dark chocolate broken into pieces

Half a small bag of white chocolate chips

225g SR flour

50g Caster sugar

50g Light brown sugar

125g Margerine

1 large egg

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method: 

• Preheat oven to 180oc
• Cream together the margerine and two sugars.
• Add in the egg
• Add in the vanilla Essence
• Fold in the flour
• Add in the chocolate and the chocolate chips

Put dollops of the cookie mixture onto a baking tray covered with baking paper.

Leave plenty of space between each one as they really do spread out. Some of ours didn't have enough space so didn't turn out a lovely round shape as we had to cut them apart from the others.

Bake for approx 12 minutes.

This was fun to do with G. Cornstarch is on my next shopping list and I'd like to try out some peanut butter cookies too.

Leek & Parsnip risotto ft Quorn

I would like to have a beautiful photo to open this post with but bad lighting and my own camera being temporarily out of action (pesky sand grains) lead to a dodgy one off my daughters camera I'm borrowing (which I'm very grateful about or photo's would be non existent right now). 

Anyway! I decided to have a go at incorporating some quorn products into a risotto last night. 

In retrospect I think less would have been more and I would have done this without the quorn bacon and the parsnip. The veggie bacon is lovely and parsnip goes wonderfully in risotto but this was a bit too adventurous and had too many ingredients! 

Also the stock is everything. I tried a cheaper version than I usually use with risotto, it was Asda's own vegetable stock and felt really let down on the flavour. Bisto all the way! At least until I find a good cheaper alternative.

If using the recipe below I would either just do the pea, leek and parsnip or as I mentioned above just the pea, leek and quorn chicken version.

Recipe

Ingredients:

Image sourced from internet

• 3 tbs vegetable oil
• 3 garlic cloves diced
• 1 red onion diced
• 2 handful's of frozen peas
• 2.5 pint's of vegetable stock 
• 1 Large Leek
• 2-3 Parsnips
• 2 handfuls Quorn chicken pieces
• 2 pieces of Quorn veggie bacon 
• 375g Arborio Rice
• Knob of butter/margerine

Method:

• Peel and dice garlic and onion and place into a large oiled pan (2tbs oil) to slowly soften.
• Peel and chop parsnip into chunks and place into separate pan of boiling water to par boil for 10 - 12 minutes.
• After 5 minutes break the 2 slices of veggie bacon into small squarish pieces and add along side the quorn pieces to the large risotto/wok/non stick pan.
• Thinly slice leek and add to the main pan.
• After 10 minutes turn up the heat slightly and add last tbs oil to pan and add in your risotto rice and mix together so coated in the oil.
• After a few minutes add a ladelful of stock and mix in.
• Allow the rice to absorb the stock and then add the next ladelful. Continue like this until you have added a pint of stock. Then add the par boiled parsnip into your risotto pan.
• Continue again to slowly add the rest of your stock, allowing it to be absorbed in each time.
• Keep cooking/adding stock until your rice is soft/al dente.
• Mix in a knob of butter/margerine for an extra creamy affect.

Apologies for the dodgy photo!  

The quorn turned out to be a lovely edition.

My favourite risotto is pea and parsnip. I think I'll be trying out roasted courgette risotto next but back to a good vegetable stock.


What's your favourite risotto recipe?

Quorn pieces 5 veg Stif-fry with Satay Sauce

I made this last night and whilst I think most people know how to make a stir fry I'm putting up a recipe just in case you have never made one before and would like to give it a go!

Ingredients:

• Quorn pieces
• 1 red onion
• 1 yellow pepper
• A handful of baby sweetcorns
• 1-2 Leeks
• 3 cloves of thinly sliced garlic
• 2 medium carrots
• Sunflower oil
• Asda Satay Sauce
• Sharwoods medium noodles

Method:

• Remove Quorn pieces from the freezer a while before cooking
• Wash, peel and slice all vegetables
• Par boil carrots in a separate pan for a couple of minutes
• Gently warm some oil in a wok/large non stick pan 
• Add the garlic and onion after gently cook
• After about 5 minutes, remove these into another dish and add in the carrots and sweetcorn to the wok with some more oil. I don't always do this, but if you have a smaller pan you need to to ensure the veg cook properly.
•  After a couple of minutes add in the leek and pepper.
• If using dried noodles rather than fresh egg noodles, stick these in a pan to cook now. Sharwoods take about 4 minutes.
• When veg are ready (tender but not overly so) add back in the garlic, onion and quorn and add in your sauce.
• Cook/stir for few minutes.
• Drain noodles and toss with some soy sauce
• Serve 

I usually use Quorn pieces or Tofu when making a stir fry. Out of the all frozen meat free chicken piece's I find Quorn's to be the best, but just to reassure anyone I'm not biased as I actually don't like their sausages or mince.
I tried Asda's own Satay sauce this time to keep on a budget. It was very mild which is good for my 3 year old but it could have done with just a bit more flavour!





I'll be experimenting by incorporating some Quorn chicken pieces and Quorn bacon into a risotto this evening so I'll see how that goes! I'll also be putting up a recipe for Amoy sweet soy sticky glaze Quorn fillets and veg on the blog very soon!




Have you ever tried any Quorn products? What did you think?

Apple and Cherry Flapjack

So we did quite a bit of baking over the summer holidays. Flapjack is a fun, cheap and easy one to do and a tasty snack.

Recipe:

• 2 sweet Eating Apples of any variety
• 250g Margerine or butter
• 250g light brown or caster sugar
• 3tbs Golden syrup
• 450g Oats
• Couple of handfuls of chopped Cherries

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160oc
• Grease and line a baking tray
• Peel, core and chop apples
• Melt the butter/margerine, sugar and syrup in a pan until melted.
• Take off the heat and mix in the oats, apple and cherries.
• Fill tray with mixture and bake for 20 - 35 minutes.
• Cut in to bars and refridgerate

I thought the chopped apple was lovely in this flapjack, rather than grated but I actually found the flapjack itself way too sweet. If done again I would use half the sugar or I fancy trying out this recipe without the apricots and seeds (I can't eat seeds and just not a fan of the apricots). Also I'd love to find some cherries to bake with that aren't glace as that was unneeded added sugar to the recipe as well. 

Jus-Rol Lemon & Blueberry Tarts

 After using Jus-Rol for our apple and blackberry pie the other week I ended up having a look on their website and found lots of lovely recipes. One quite simple fun looking one I thought would be good to do with Grace was the Lemon and Blueberry tarts. They sounded lovely and also quick to make thanks to using Jus-Rol Short Crust Pastry Block.

Of course you can make your own pastry for these but this was easier baking with a 3 year old who has a tendency (not just mine I'm sure!) of sprinkling sugar and flour everywhere - 'it looks like snow mummy' and an unawareness that holding the mixing spoon coated in a huge glob of mixture might result in said mixture going all over carpet/table/furniture/child, delete as appropriate!

Recipe:

1 Shortcrust Pastry Block (chilled) 

125g mascarpone cheese tub 

1 egg  

1/2 lemon Juice and rind 

75g caster sugar   

Approx. 100 blueberries (fresh) 

 icing sugar to serve if desired 

Method: 

Preheat oven to 200°C / 180°C for fan assisted

1. Unroll pastry, cut out 12 discs, use to line a 12 hole bun or jam tart tin.
2. Beat together the egg, cheese, lemon juice and rind and the sugar until creamy. Divide the blueberries between the pastry cases and top with the cheese and lemon mixture.
3. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until pastry pale golden and filling set.

To go to direct to the recipe follow this link

A bit messy but lovely!

We found you could make twice the amount (24 tarts) with the whole of the pastry block. You could also just save the other half of the pastry for another recipe.
We doubled up the filling ingredients so we had enough for the extra tarts.

Yum!

After filling all the tarts we still had some mixture left so put that in a pie dish and cooked that too. It was lovely just on it's own or could be had with ice cream.

G loved the final results which hopefully made up for mummy being stressy :( when she started sprinkling the sugar everywhere but the mixing bowl. We will definately be making these again :)

Blackberry and Apple Pie

So we went blackberry picking (brambling) last week in Bramhall park amongst other things with my sister and two of G's cousins. After our park adventures we made apple and blackberry crumble at my sisters house. The next day I took G to a nice little park closer to us and after a long play in the park I spotted loads of ripe blackberries (which I was quite excited by) so I took another haul and washed and refridgerated them and the next day we made apple and blackberry pie! I am tempted to go and pick some more before they all go and freeze them to use them for more baking or to go with yoghurt etc. Free fruit is always a good thing!

I'd already made flapjack in the morning and we did this when G was back from a tiring session at nursery so we were a bit lazy and cheated by using pre-made short crust pastry. 

It's not always the best idea to get pre-made pastry when on a budget but I got the shortcrust ready to roll block  by Jus-RolTM which is cheaper (and slightly less lazy) than the ready roll sheets and as luck had it the pack I picked up was reduced in price also! The blocks also have more pastry (500g) whereas the sheets were (320g) so I would have needed two of them.

G made good use of my sugar paste cutters I use for decorating her birthday cakes and made some lovely decoration for the top of our pie using the left over pastry.

We just went with the flow (like people would have before they had recipes to follow/like I do with much of my cooking ha) and what would fit in our pie tin, however there are plenty of specific recipes on the internet if you'd like one.

Here is our quite short and slightly vague recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 to 3 Large Bramley (cooking) Apples
• 350g Blackberries (roughly - we used a lot, did not weigh but basing on how many blackberries in supermarket cartons).
• Short Crust Ready to Roll Block (500g)
• ~50g Light brown sugar
• A little milk (we used soya) to brush the pastry

Equipment:

• Peeler and/or knife to peel and chop the apples
• Baking tin 9 inch
• Pastry brush



brushing with the soy milk

• Sugar Paste cutters (optional)

Method:

• Set oven at 175oc (we have a fan oven). 
• Grease pie tin/dish.
• Separate pastry into two balls. Roll out one to fit your pie tin/dish. Use a sharp knife to remove any extra pastry.
• Peel and slice apples. G placed half of them in.
• Sprinkle in first layer of blackberries.
• Sprinkle first layer of sugar.
• Repeat. There was room for more fruit after (we used 2 apples, next time would use 3).
• Roll out second ball of pastry to create lid. I also cut a strip of pastry to go round the edge of the pie to help seal the lid.
• Make a couple of air holes in your pie lid (ours got covered by leaves).
• Brush lid with little milk.
• If wanted create decorations with any spare pastry. G made leaves, flowers and stars for ours. Brush these with a little milk also.
• Set tin/dish on middle shelf of oven and bake for approximately 30 - 40 minutes. The lid should be golden/browned. Ours could have been browner but the decorations had started to catch.

Placing her pastry creations on the lid

 We used some of our half price Tesco's finest ice cream to have with it. It was lovely!

Soda Bread

Baking is something which I enjoy and sporadically takes place in our house. When I do it now it more often than not involves my now turned 3 year old. It's fun for her and I've slowly learnt to not worry so much about how messy it gets. It's a good activity when the weather is bad or a break from whatever we are doing at the time. It's usually just a simple recipe to make it easier as baking with a child but also as we're not often stocked up on lots of exciting ingredients due to lack of funds.

My mother used to make us soda bread when we were little and seeing it being made on one of CBeeBies shows recently reminded me. That along side it's simplicity and it being budget friendly meant I decided to to make it in our next baking session.

Ingredients:

• 250g/6oz self-raising wholemeal flour
• 250g/6oz plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 435ml buttermilk

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6/fan 180C and dust a baking sheet with flour. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Pour in the buttermilk and mix it in quickly, then bring the dough together very lightly with your fingertips. Now shape it into a flat, round loaf.
2. Put the loaf on the baking sheet and score a deep cross in the top. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. If it isn’t ready after this time, turn it upside down on the baking sheet and bake for a few minutes more.
3. Transfer to a wire rack, cover with a clean tea towel and leave to cool.

I got my recipe from bbcgoodfood.com and changed it slightly to suit our needs.
I didn't have buttermilk so we used normal milk and stirred a couple of spoonfuls of lemon juice into it 5 minutes before using it. I also used white flour not wholemeal and left out the oats (not used in simple/ traditional soda bread recipe's) due to my health conditions. 
I altered the volume of milk to accommodate these changes.

Mixing

The recipe tells you to handle the mixture very gently but this wasn't going to be something I was worried about as I wanted G to get stuck in and experience it. She often can get funny about getting messy hands but enjoyed this part and the needing as well as the earlier mixing parts. 

Getting Stuck In

We used 450ml of milk and our dough was a bit too sticky and needed more flour so I have altered my recipe to 435ml milk for this post.

Lovely warm with jam

We had our bread warm, G tried hers with margerine and I had jam (which she's not a fan of). If you haven't tried it before I would suggest only eating it warm as it's much nicer then. It would be nice to make it again in the Winter.

Vegetarian Cottage Pie

Please excuse the seriously dodgy photo!

In case you can't tell what it is from the shockingly bad photo (he only one that came out visible thanks to bad lighting and no proper camera) it's a lovely vegetarian cottage pie!

It tasted lovely so that's the main thing!


Recipe:

Ingredients:

•  Bag of veggie mince (I used Asda's own, I'm not keen on Quorn mince)
• 4 carrots peeled and chopped
• 1 large courgette (or other veg of your choice)
• Frozen peas
• 1 diced red onion
• Thinly sliced garlic
• Half tin chopped tomatoes
• 1tbsp tomato puree
• Pint of vegetable stock
• 2tbsp soy sauce
• 2tbsp vegetarian gravy granules (used to thicken as I didn't have any corn flour).
• Salt, pepper, various herbs for seasoning
• 1 1/2 tbsp margarine
• 2tbsp soya milk
• Approx 900g potatoes

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180c
• Peel, slice then boil the potatoes until tender. Drain and set aside.
• Whilst the potatoes are boiling, peel and chop the onion and garlic and fry in oil in saucepan until gently softened. Peel, chop and add carrots.
• Chop and add courgette or other veg to pan.
• Add the veggie mince, peas and vegetable stock, stir then allow to simmer.
• Add the tomato puree, tin tomatoes, seasoning, soy sauce and gravy granules. Allow to simmer and continue to stir. 
• When sauce thickened and carrots soft enough, pour into large oven proof dish.
• Mash the potatoes with the milk and margarine until smooth and fluffy. Add seasoning. Spread over the veggie mince then smooth over with a fork.
• Bake for approximately 20 minutes until the topping is crisp. I could have done with leaving mine to cook for a few more minutes but I had a hungry child to feed!

I would say mine would serve 8 to 10 depending on portion sizes. Serve with extra veg.....carrots, peas...what ever you fancy.