Tuesday 26 February 2013

Fideos En Cazuela.


So, this is pasta with peas, chicken and pork chops.  In fact, it has sausages in it as well and basically used the amount of meat we might buy in a typical week all in one meal!!!

For this month's Random Recipes, Dom gave us something of a free-reign.  I decided to randomly choose a recipe from the beautiful book - The Food Of Spain by Claudia Roden.  I got the book for Christmas from my lovely husband but hadn't actually managed to make anything from it yet.



I may not have chosen this recipe if I hadn't picked it for Random Recipes.  I don't generally do pasta and meat unless it spag bol.  I'm just not entirely tempted by it.  We did manage to make it last two nights but, even then, it really was a big dent out of our food budget with the sheer amount of meat in it.  You can use rabbit instead of the chicken and I would certainly do this next time I found rabbit available in the butcher - I think the rabbit flavour would complement it perfectly.

You basically cook half a ton of meat then add it to the pasta and peas with a sauce of onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic and chicken stock.  At the end you stir through a picada - paste made with hazelnuts, garlic, parsley and saffron.  Certainly there was LOADS of flavour in this meal to go with the huge amounts of meat and the kids loved it because it was pasta.  I did like it but I think I am going to have to adapt a bit to suit my tastes and budget a little better.  I loved the flavours in it but I wonder if I might prefer it made with rice or another carbohydrate rather than the pasta.  I will certainly use the picada for something else - it was very tasty.


Hmmm, I wonder if I might need to stop posting pics of my kids now they are at school? This might be the last pic of my wee ones on here. I might need to be more like Little Macaroon who shows The Boss in pictures but keeps her partially hidden.  Probably sensible. 


Wednesday 20 February 2013

Pinnies And Petticoats Valentine's Showstopper.

Double chocolate shortbread hearts.

The Valentine's Showstopper Pinnies and Petticoats was our least attended baking club since the first one back in September but we can easily blame blizzards.  I passed three accidents on the way into town and was lucky to get there at all. It took me about two hours to get from work but I was actually very lucky as I had thought I might get home first and so had taken the road towards home rather than the most direct route to town which I heard on my radio had two fairly big accidents on it and was virtually closed for hours. Victoria from STV Online had chosen to cover the evening for a piece - see here - but the poor thing only managed to get there once we had given up waiting for her and so had cut into, and started devouring, everything.

I made the stripy heart double chocolate shortbreads (top pic) by adapting a recipe from The Great British Bake Off, How To Bake book. They were a last minute attempt after I tried the marbled-red-velvet-cream-cheese-brownies (look at the amazing photo of these!) from The Novice Chef Blog  but found my heart cutter wasn't deep enough.

My marbled brownies before I ruined them by trying to cut out hearts.
Photos of some of our other lovely bakes -

My favourite of the evening - Karen's gougeres.
Colene's showstopping banana and chocolate cake box filled with salted caramel macarons.
My perfect dessert - Tom's and Martin's Nutty Delight Cheesecake with a decent amount of amaretto.
Foodie Quine's Cherry Tomato Hearts and Cheese Oatcakes.

Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?



If anyone would like to join our friendly, informal baking club, please see our facebook page or come along to our next event.  You can bake anything you like for our Comic Relief Bake on Wednesday the 13th of March at 7pm at Tiger Tiger on Shiprow, Aberdeen. Bring a bake,  £5 for Comic Relief, and a Tupperware box to take home some samples of the baking. Friends are also welcome to help us finish all the yummy bakes!