High Quality Sausage Buttie

April 2nd - I've been busy emptying cupboards because I'm off on holiday and I had some sausages in the fridge that I'd not used at the weekend.  Bill Granger Easy offered Roasted Sausages with Peppers and Onions.  Put sausages (BG suggests coarse Italian sausages ..... if you can get them where you live!), 2 sliced yellow and 2 sliced red peppers into a baking dish with a red onion sliced into wedges, 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes, and a teaspoon of fennel seeds.  The whole dish is roasted for about 45 minutes in the oven then sprinkled with fresh basil and drizzled with basaltic vinegar before serving in a crusty roll.  It was like a summer barbeque in a bun!

Cheesecake Bliss

March 29th - I was out for supper a couple of weeks ago with friends and one of them brought pudding - Orkney Fudge Cheesecake - a recipe by Sue Lawrence.  Since my daughter was home for the weekend and she loves cream, fudge and tablet I thought I'd give it a go.  It's a no cook recipe and I was right back in my comfort zone bashing up biscuits for the base - Hobnobs this time instead of digestives.  The crushed biscuits were combined with butter for the base and the topping had 200g of whipped cream cheese combined with 250g of grated fudge and 600ml of lightly whipped cream.  The remaining fudge in the original recipe is supposed to be chopped and put on top of the biscuit base but I stuck all the fudge in the cheesecake and put some chopped Islay tablet on top of the creamy top.  She managed to restrain herself just long enough to take the photo..........

I was amazed at the cheesecake selection online - every possible combo of cream and sweets! Check it out!

Mass (Catering) Panic

March 28th - Saturday morning should be a day of rest and relaxation...coffee with friends, a bit of food shopping, and maybe even checking out a cookbook to see what you want to make for Sunday dinner. However my husband was organising a fundraising dinner for a school expedition and was bemoaning the fact that there were no brandy baskets to go with the cranachan.  At this point I should have just nodded and agreed...but instead said that shortbread goes really well with cranachan.  There was just that look...and then I heard myself say that I could make some.  Shortbread for 100! And I'd only ever made one disastrous shortbread before.  However I'd just been given a recipe from a colleague at work - her shortbread is fab - and there it was at the bottom of my bag on a post-it.  I had the ingredients but no method so apologies Mary Berry but this is what I did.  First I put 3 blocks of butter and 12oz of icing sugar in a bowl and attacked it with a hand mixer.  That was my first mistake - I was covered in icing sugar and the kitchen windows were covered in blobs of butter!  Undeterred I fished out the butter and softened it a bit first before adding the icing sugar.  Then I weighed out 12oz of cornflour and 24oz of plain flour.  I only added a bit of this at a time and ended up finishing mixing it by hand.  The cooking was a bit hit and miss with timing - some were a bit overdone...but those that were a pale golden tasted great.  So if you need a sneaky wee shortbread recipe this one is really good and if I can manage it so can you!

Not Mary Poppins!

March 26th - I like a steak....and it's a quick cook....so I was up for trying Steak Salad and Chimichurri Dressing in Bill Granger Easy. The steak can be cooked as you like it and the dressing was easy and delicious - 2 tablespoons of chopped flat leaf parsley and the same of coriander, 2 teaspoons chopped oregano, 1 crushed garlic clove, 1 chopped green chilli, 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon of caster sugar, 80ml of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. A quick chop, bash and mix and there you are...........It's a bit like salsa verde and has a lovely fresh taste.

Mother of Invention

March 25th - Home alone with lots of lovely vegetables but not much else.  I really liked the pot noodle idea so here is a variation on a theme - no recipe - pure invention!  First I gently fried a few spring onions before adding in thin strips of red pepper, some fine broccoli and sliced button mushrooms with ginger, garlic and red chilli (I'm getting bolder!)  Then I added some chicken stock, pak choi and peas just letting it cook off for a few minutes before adding a few fine noodles.  To serve I bashed up some honey roast cashews for the top. Mmmm.

Make the most of your gifts!

March 23rd - Home alone and the cooking for the past few days has been scrambled egg x1, bagel and cream cheese x1, soup x1....but in the fridge sits a gift.....from the 'Purveyor of High Quality Meats'......aka my brother-in-law of D. Comrie & Sons.........some black pudding!  I never used to like black pudding but was given some Stornoway black pudding as a Christmas present from my boss at work and I became a convert. In fact I have even been known to buy some black pudding from.....the opposition, although I ended up confessing to the deadly crime!  Has anyone noticed that there are not a lot of recipes out there for black pudding and the only thing in my cookbooks was black pudding in pastry, which sounds great but not when you are trying to lose a few pounds.  I saw a recipe online for Black Pudding Stuffed Mushrooms and thought that might be a nice combo so I gently fried some spring onions, button mushrooms and mushroom stalks before adding a few breadcrumbs and the black pudding.  It looked a bit dry at this point so I added in a couple of teaspoons of cream cheese and some fresh thyme and piled this on top of a large mushroom.  I stuck the lot in the oven.  It started to look a bit burnt on the top so I grated on some nutty gruyere and heres the result......

I'll definitely try this again.  And the moral of this tale...always make the most of your gifts...culinary or otherwise!

Good Things Small Parcels

March 17th - Home alone - again - with the pressure on to stick to my resolution because I've not tried a new recipe for a week (been away).  I am in 'body is my temple mode' (well, since yesterday, having avoided cake, sweets (bar a few smarties!), wine and bagels thus far.....and I even went for a swim) so I was in the mood for something light and healthy.  I had lots of lurking vegetables in the fridge and had bought myself some fish before looking in the recipe books for an idea.  The picture for Fillet of Sole en Papillote with carrot, ginger and leek looked perfect and the list of ingredients was not too long.  I had no leeks or white wine but did not let that put me off.  I quickly 'sweated' the carrot (julienne-ish), ginger and broccoli and added some pak choi.....great I thought, but then I had to turn to page 149 for the teriyaki marinade.  Ingredient disaster.... so I took huge artistic liberties with the recipe and combined soy sauce, sesame oil, a bit of honey, red chilli and some hoi sin sauce instead.  I couldn't wait till the veg cooled so put everything in the parcel and stuck it in the oven.  It was ready in 12 minutes.

My mum is a big fan of cooking in parcels so this one's for you mum!