Enjoy the Taste of Scotland Review

Well Enjoy the taste of Scotland was last Friday and only now have I had time to stop and write a report on how it all went.

It all started at 5.30am on Friday when I woke up and got ready for the day then started the drive up to the airport for my flight on sleazy jet. As I arrived in the queue for check in I turned around to see who was behind me and to my surprise there stood an old school friend. We ended up chatting all the way to Glasgow - in the departure lounge, on the plane, waiting for luggage and on the bus into Glasgow, then we went our separate ways but I really enjoyed our chat and it did keep me awake seeing as I'm not used to being awake at that time of day!

I arrived in Glasgow about 9.30am and the event wasn't starting until around midday so off I went for a walk down Sauchiehall Street - this street became famous for me when I was working in WHSmith because we were almost always in tight competition with the Sauchiehall Street store for all sorts of things. Anyways, I had a walk round and decided that although I'd be spending all my afternoon eating and nibbling that I was rather hungry. I had to laugh at myself because I had travelled to Glasgow to try some new and different food and I end up going into McDonalds for a Sausage McMuffin and OJ - yes I'm ashamed but I far prefer the breakfast menu in McD's to it's main menu.

Noon rolled round and I had just arrived at the big white tent in George Square.



There were lots of people running around like mad trying to set up last minute bits and pieces and me standing wondering where on earth I'm supposed to go or who I'm supposed to see. I end up grabbing someone who was trying to rush past me holding a radio (that must mean they're important right?) and asking where the press go, I was pointed in the direction of "Reception" while the girl rushed on to her emergency. I walked up to the desk feeling a little out of my depth and said who I was and that I was looking for Craig (my contact). Craig turned round to greet me, he handed me a press pack, a press USB pen and a press badge.



I was sent off to play round the various stalls and taste lots of different samples. I first arrived at Kingsmill and despite having a big bag for collecting samples and info was given another bag full of loaves and baps - a very generous gift and gesture but unfortunately I had to give the bag away because there was no way I would be able to get it on the place home. Warburtons tried to do the same but I had to refuse.

I went on and chatted more with lots of other food companies and brands including Border biscuits who sent me home with some lovely butterscotch crunch and chocolate chip shortbread (they went down well with a cup of tea!).

I got chatting to Greenvale - a potato producer - who mentioned knowing Wilsons Potatoes here in NI to which I replied "oh you know Angus? He's a good guy" and the guy looked at me blankly leaving me thinking that either my friend Angus Wilson is a liar (highly unlikely) or that this guy was just clueless.



Patterson Arran have also sent me home with enough oatcakes to last a life time! May need to use them to cater for youth group a few times.

I was still walking round nibbling almost anything people were offering and ended up feeling like something a little fresher than Mrs Tilly's Butter Tablet or Dean's Shortbread or some First Milk cheese - don't get me wrong I loved all of these tasty treats but my mouth was just a little dry and in need of something a little sweeter. I stumbled across Good Natured Fruit with some tasty strawberries - they're a pesticide free strawberries and raspberries. I got talking to a girl about how they go along the rows placing ladybirds on each of the plants to get rid of nasty bugs out to destroy. You could really taste the difference!

I also stopped by Oleifera who apparently are posting out a complimentary bottle of rapeseed oil, which I'm quite excited about. It has half the saturated fat that olive oil has, can help to lower cholesterol, has your essential omega 3 and omega 6, and even has a high smoke point. I'm really looking forward to getting to use this in a few recipes.

I went into the kid's zone for a nosy and got talking to a girl about an education scheme by the Royal Highland Education Trust for schools that is aimed at raising awareness of the importance of red meat in a healthy balanced diet and teaches children about the journey of cattle, sheep and pigs from farm to plate including animal husbandry, basic nutrition and what various world religions believe about red meat. Being the nerd that I am I was quite excited about this scheme.

I came across R & K Drysdale who were giving away a sample of peeled swede in a plastic bag that can be microwaved in the bag then mashed or sliced or whatever. So expect a blog post shortly about the results!

I decided after all that walking around Sauchiehall Street and then all around the exhibits that I needed to take a seat and the only seats I could find was the rowed seating for the cookery theatre so I got comfy and rested my feet for a bit. I had a look around and spotted Nick Nairn, who had almost run me over a few minutes earlier by running around the place pushing a trolley and being followed by a camera crew, getting set up to film a cookery demonstration.



It was also at this stage that I had spotted the walking Macsween haggii looking like happy chappys but I'm sure the people inside the costume were melting with the heat. (I also spotted a Baxter's soup man walking around waving and skipping too).



As I was sitting resting weary bones I also spotted someone sitting on her own also chilling out a bit. I decided to go over and introduce myself and it turns out I'd just met Lynn from Lynn's Cooking Blog! We ended up being buddies for the rest of the day. We hung around for the opening speeches then headed out for some tea and came back to do a little more browsing of the displays again.

This time round I got talking to a guy in a kilt giving out flyers on how to cook steak to perfection - I'll be sticking that up in my kitchen for future reference! I tried some Mackays marmalades and preserves and really enjoyed the variety of flavour and the natural flavours that came through in them. And also got talking to a girl from the Really Garlicky company who gave me a great press pack that included a bulb of smoked garlic (again expect to see some blog posts including this!). Then stopped by the Tunnocks stand to get some tea cakes for Rob who I had left at home alone with Stewie for the day.

Not all of the food on display has originated in Scotland - but then I suppose that's a difficult thing to do anywhere now. I came across Monaghan Mushrooms, who have some farms in Scotland too apparently. I also was given a packet of Yeungs chinese curry mix which I'm pretty sure isn't traditionally Scottish, but they are Scottish based and have been for over 18 years! There was also a stall for Edinburgh Tea and Coffee which prompted us to ask exactly where in Scotland they were growing the coffee beans and tea leaves.

There were also some cookery demonstrations on in the "Cookery theatre". I sat, watched, listened and even smelt my way through one by Joe Queen from Macdonald Hotels which I really enjoyed. I would have loved to have seen more cookery demos and in particular by some of the exhibitors themselves to show the versatility of their product and also introduce new ideas for using their product.

It was an interesting day, particularly when exhibitors asked "Which publication are you from?" - I eventually learned that saying I was 'freelance' was much less complicated than saying 'I'm a blogger' (which the writer for Farmer's Weekly who I got chatting to for a while at the airport on the way home told me was much easier than saying any publication sometimes). All in all I really enjoyed my day, despite my flight home being delayed a few hours and making my day that little bit longer. I enjoyed talking with food producers and cooks and bakers about food and learned quite a bit about the Scottish food scene, however I really would have liked to see more primary produce instead of the sweets companies, bottled water companies, and a few other random companies. And as I said earlier in this post I really would have liked to see more cookery demos and things from the actual exhibitors themselves as well as the scheduled cookery theatre program.

It really was quite an adventure for me trying out some products that are either hard or impossible to obtain in Northern Ireland. There were so many other companies there that I could talk about but this post is already long enough, so check out the Enjoy the taste of Scotland website for more details on that.

I really hope something like this can happen over here sometime! It would be great to see some more of our local produce getting a plug.

Thank you to Craig from Denvir Marketing for helping me work out how to get over to Glasgow and also for making me feel all privileged as "Press" for the day.

Bookmarked Recipes 2

Here's the second round up of of Bookmarked Recipes and this week we have some more great recipes from some more great bloggers:



Ryan from Ryan's Recipe Blog in the UK made a favourite of mine: American Pancakes topped off with bananas and strawberry jam which he had seen made on Ready Steady Cook.



Ricki from Toronto, Canada from Diet, Dessert and Dogs made a beautiful and delicious looking Mock Green Papaya Salad from Vegetarian Times Magazine.



Nilmandra from Soy and Pepper, also based in the UK, made what looks like a very elegant and tasty dish: Smoked Salmon and New Potatoes with lemon crème fraîche that she saw on "Jamie at Home".



Ohiomom, based in Cleveland Ohio, from Cooking in Cleveland made a beautiful Coconut butter pecan pound cake from "Pillsbury - The Complete Book of Baking".



Shira from Petit Pois made some Fennel braised with Thyme and Black Olives which is adapted from Molly Stevens' All About Braising and includes some new fresh garlic in the dish.



Dell of Cooking and the City from Melbourne, Australia joined the round up again with a fantastic Madeira Cake recipe she found on the BBC website by James Martin.



Finally, my own contribution, which shows that Dell and I were on the same train of thought this week: lemon madeira cake as my birthday cake!




That's it for this week. Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Every Monday I will post a round up of all the entries here on my blog for everyone to see, share and maybe even try for themselves!

Lemon Madeira Birthday Cake

This week for my Bookmarked Recipes entry I decided to make a madeira cake, but not just for the fun of making a cake but because tomorrow is my birthday!!!!!!! I decided about a week ago to make a madeira for my birthday and I had a recipe bookmarked in Easy Food Magazine (I promise I'll use a different source soon!), but made a few changes to it and used lemon extract instead of vanilla extract and instead of using the buttercream on the top of the cake I used some premade icing (yeah it's cheating but it's my birthday tomorrow so who cares!) so I only made half the volume of the buttercream but ended up using about two thirds of that, but in making the buttercream added a little more icing sugar to the mix as well.

Well here it is - my lemon madeira birthday cake! It may not be very creatively or beautifully decorated but I'm looking forward to tasting it.

And happy birthday to Sio at Cake Creations for tomorrow too!!!



The recipe below is my slightly edited version:

Lemon Madeira Cake

Ingredients

Cake
150g margarine
150g sugar
4 eggs
drop of lemon extract
150g self raising flour

Buttercream
75g margarine
100g icing sugar
drop of lemon extract

3-4 tbsp strawberry jam
premade pre rolled icing

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease an 8" cake tin.
2. In a large mixing bowl cream the margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the lemon extract.
4. Fold in the flour until the batter is light and creamy.
5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until a skewer can be withdrawn cleanly.
6. Leave the cake to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from the tin, then leave to cool on a wire rack.
7. In a mixing bowl, cream together the sugar, margarine and lemon extract until smooth.
8. Using a sharp knife carefully cut the cake into 2 sandwich cakes. Spread the jam on one of the sliced sandwiches then spread the buttercream on the other then replace the top.
9. Follow the directions of the premade icing pack to cover the cake and decorate as desired.

Daring Baker 3 - Cheesecake pops

This month's Daring Baker's challenge was an interesting one - Cheesecake Pops from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor. It made me hunt out some new goodies for my kitchen like a mini ice cream scoop for making the balls (which I haven't really got the hang of yet) and a 10" (non springform) cake pan - I was really having no luck at finding one that wasn't ridiculously priced but ended up buying Promt from Ikea because it was a great price for all I'd probably end up using a cake tin of this size for and also because it's a 2 in 1 tin - yes it's a springform which wasn't recommended for the recipe but I lined it with 4 or 5 layers of tin foil to prevent the water from the water bath getting into the cheese cake. I'm not sure if it was because of the multiple tin foil layers that I ended up having to bake it for longer, however on the new Daring Baker's Kitchen forum I noticed a few people had commented on how they also needed to bake theirs for longer. My other problem with this recipe was a lack of shortening in the UK - I'm not sure if there's a British version or name for shortening. So after consulting with Deborah of Taste and Tell who was co hosting this month's challenge with Elle of Feeding my Enthusiasms, who said that leaving out the shortening would be better than trying to use butter or oil or anything. I also couldn't find the lollypop sticks so ended up using drinking straws which were a little weak but did the job alright.

Anyways this was a really fun challenge and worked great around my business seeing as I could do a couple of steps and leave it then come back to it the next day etc.

I'm taking them all down to my youth group tonight where I'm sure they will be devoured!!!



Cheesecake Pops

Makes 30 – 40 Pops (I got 46 out of mine)

Ingredients
5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature (1134g - but for ease I used 1150g) 2 cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ cup heavy cream (double cream)
Boiling water as needed
Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks (I used straws cut in half)
1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate – candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.) (Note: White chocolate is harder to use this way, but not impossible) I used 600g mixture of dark and milk chocolate
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening (I left this out seeing as I couldn't find any)
Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) - Optional

Recipe
1. Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325˚F (160˚C). Set some water to boil.
2. In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.
3. Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan.



Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes. However mine took 75-80 minutes



4. Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.
5. When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball.



Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.



6. When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety. Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.
7. Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations.



You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.
8. Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.



Thanks Elle and Deborah for the challenge. It's been my first baked cheesecake so I've learnt loads!!!!

And for all who are waiting to hear about Enjoy the Taste of Scotland and also about our anniversary celebrations I'll hopefully have it all posted by Tuesday at the latest... I've just had a really busy week and had to cut a few corners quite often with the cooking and use jars of sauces! (I'm ashamed!!!!!) This week shouldn't be as bad though so I'll have lots to blog about. And sorry to people whose blogs I read and comment on, I should be back to speed and reading about all your lovely creations very soon.

Also don't forget about the Bookmarked Recipes round up! If anyone has any late entries I'd love to see them!

Going to Enjoy the Taste of Scotland

Today I'm away to Enjoy the Taste of Scotland being held in George's Square in Glasgow. I posted about it before here but can't belive it's actually today! It's going to be a great event. If you're in Glasgow or near Glasgow this weekend I recommend checking it out. The details are all on the website and it's absolutely free!

Bookmarked Recipes 1

It's the official first round up of Bookmarked Recipes and we have some fantastic dishes to kick it all off:



Sarah from Homemade created a delicious Butternut Squash and Goats Cheese pizza from Williams-Sonoma Main Dishes. I love butternut squash and I love pizza so this is a winner for me!



Dell (of Cooking and the City from Melbourne, Australia made a delicious Fusilli with Capsicum Bolognese she found on Cooks.com. I'm a big fan of bolognese and so's my hubby, I may just bookmark this myself!!!



Miss Bliss of Frolicking Foodie in England submitted a Chicken Rogan Josh she found in her "One Pot" book which is making me crave some Indian now even though I had some at the weekend!



Finally my submission for this week was a bit of a rush due to being away for First Anniversary Celebrations. My submission is Creamy old Fashioned Toffee from Easy Food Magazine





Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry

Every Monday I will post a round up of all the entries here on my blog for everyone to see, share and maybe even try for themselves!

Creamy Old Fashioned Toffee

After announcing the new blog event, Bookmarked Recipes where people blog one of those recipes they've had bookmarked for a while, I was trying to find a recipe to do quickly and easily. I ended up not getting it done until tonight what with being away celebrating our First Anniversary Celebrations. We arrived back today and I read through my pile of magazines. I found a recipe for creamy old fashioned toffee in Easy Food Magazine (February 2008) and noticing that I had all the ingredients to hand I decided this was the way to go. I had bookmarked this thinking of my attempts at making English toffee to Rob's liking. Unfortunately it's not the toffee he's thinking of and isn't really that creamy like the name suggests, but it's a good crunchy toffee and fun for sucking.



Creamy old-fashioned toffee

Ingredients
190g Butter
315g soft brown sugar
190g golden syrup
190g condensed milk

Recipe
1. Add all the ingredients to a saucepan on a low heat until the sugar dissolves.
2. Turn up the heat and stir continuously until it reaches the crack stage (see here for tips) or if you have a candy thermometer the temperature should be 150˚C.
3. Pour into a greased 15cm loaf tin. Leave to cool until just firm and cut into squares. Or leave to cool until hard then bash with a rolling pin to get rough shapes.

Our First Anniversary

Today Rob and I are celebrating our first wedding anniversary! It's a year to the day when we stood in front of all our family and friends and became husband and wife, then went off and started cooking for them all!!!!



Only kidding, but it's one of my favourite photos from the day.

It's been a fantastic year! I've really loved being married and making a home with Rob. I'll share more tomorrow about our celebrations and what we did to mark the occasion.



Also I've been tagged again for the 6 word meme by Kimi at My plate My world. Ryan from Ryan's Recipe Blog completed his by asking his girlfriend for help so I've decided to ask my hubby for a few....

Caring
Loving
Funny

After that he gave up so the rest are from me....

Cuddle-able
Loyal
Weird

I'm not going to tag anyone seeing as I've already tagged 6 people for this meme

Taste and Create: Strawberry Cupcakes with "Champagne" Glaze

I signed up for Taste and Create for this round and was looking forward to seeing who I was paired up with because looking at the blogs of people who have participated before you can see that there are some fantastic bloggers involved! The email arrived saying who was paired with who and when I saw the name of the blog I was paired with I was initially scared because I've never really made cupcakes before, but then was really excited to be trying something new. I must have read every recipe on Cupcake Project and this one for Strawberry Cupcakes with Champagne Glaze jumped out at me straight away because I had just bought some of the start of the season's local strawberries from a local farm shop. All I needed to do was get some champagne, but instead I went for a slightly cheaper bottle of Cava which seemed to work very well. What was also fun about making cupcakes that Stef described as "perfect for celebrating valentines day" was that they got me more excited about celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary this weekend!!!

These were incredibly tasty. I loved the subtle taste of the strawberry in the cupcake itself, the texture of the crisp glaze was a fantastic contrast to the soft cupcake and the fresh strawberry on top finished it of really well with fresh sweet taste. This made about 24 cupcakes and there was no way I would be able to eat them all as well as the top tier of our wedding cake this weekend, so Rob and I had a few and I took the rest to the church to help cater for the Girls Brigade display last night. They went down a storm and people were asking if there were anymore!!!! So if you're reading this Stef be proud of your creation because it's made lots of people happy and a few even ask for the recipe!



Anyways here's the recipe as Stef wrote it with my edits in italics....


Strawberry cupcakes with champagne glaze

Makes 24

Cupcake Recipe

2 1/2 cups cake flour Seeing as cake flour isn't available in the UK I used plain flour, removed 2.5 tbsp and added 2.5 tbsp corn flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil I couldn't find canola oil so I replaced this with vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup finely chopped fresh strawberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two standard cupcake pans with 24 paper cupcake liners. Set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together the cake flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Add eggs. Mix until smooth and creamy. Add buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Mix until combined. Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Mix until just combined. Stir in strawberries. Place batter into each cupcake cup filling each half full.



Bake cupcakes for approx. 18-20 minutes. Let cool.



Champagne Glaze Recipe

1 stick butter seeing as butter in the UK isn't measured in cups I looked up a translation which became 1/2 a cup of butter
1 C sugar
1/4 C water
1/4 C Champagne Being cheap I used Cava

Boil butter, sugar, and water for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat. Stir in champagne and let cool.

When I took the butter, sugar, and water mixture off the stove and mixed the champagne into the hot mixture it was delish and it had a strong champagne flavor. After it cooled on the cupcakes it was still great, but the champagne flavor did become a bit more subtle.

How to Glaze a Cupcake

The trick I learned for glazing a cupcake is dip the cupcake into the pot of glaze and twist the cupcake as you take it out to keep the glaze from dripping off. Coincidentally, dip and twist sounds like a move from my new hip-hop class. I double-dipped (a restaurant faux pas) but very important here to get a nice thick layer of glaze.

Top Cupcake with Strawberries

Once everything cooled and dried, I topped each cupcake with a half a strawberry. While I think these are my prettiest cupcakes yet, it almost seems too easy. I didn't have to mess with piping any icing at all. Adding a strawberry seems to be the baking equivalent to taking a picture of a kid or a dog, so easy to do with almost guaranteed viewer satisfaction.



I really loved these and I'm sure I'll be doing them again and I think I might just have to try making more cupcakes now: thanks for your inspiration Stef!

Bookmarked Recipes - a blog event

I posted on Monday about a new feature I was going to have on the blog called Magazine Mondays where I would blog about a recipe that I had wanted to try from any of the food magazines I read. I had only planned it as a way of trying to get through all those recipes I had been meaning to try and to also to unfold some of the corners in my magazines, however there were a few comments from people saying they'd like to do the same. It got me thinking there must be a blog event in this. I know I had mentioned about plans for a new blog event but this isn't it... I'll put that one on the backburner for now and announce this one to you.

Introducing.......



.....where anyone from anywhere can blog about a recipe they had bookmarked from a cook book, food magazine, food blog, food website, from TV etc, make it and submit it to a weekly roundup.

To take part here's what you do.......
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Every Monday I will post a round up of all the entries here on my blog for everyone to see and share and maybe even try for themselves! I can't wait to see what everyone does!

I'll keep this going for about 2 months and then review whether to keep it going or not.

UPDATE 23/1/09 Check out the Bookmarked Recipes Blog where the event is now being held

RFJ 3: Spiced chicken burgers with mango relish

The ingredients for this month's Royal Foodie Joust made me smile because I've never cooked with mango, but thought that mango, brown sugar and cardamom sounded like a great combination of ingredients. I had several thoughts for this but as soon as I remembered about a recipe for spiced chicken burgers I read in Anjum Anand's "Indian Food Made Easy" and decided to adapt it a bit and make a mango relish to go with it.

I'm also submitting the mango relish to a new and very exciting event: Putting up where the idea is to make a jam, conserve, jelly, marmalade, curds, butter, chutney, pickle, relish or preserve. I've never made anything like this before so it was fun trying something new.





On top of already using this entry for 2 blog events, I'm going OTT and entering into a third blog event: LiveSTRONG with a taste of yellow - 2008.



This was a great dish and I can't wait to make it again.







Spiced chicken burgers

Makes 4 burgers

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
2cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1/2 a small onion, finely chopped
handful or coriander leaves (cilantro), finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1 red chilli, deseeded
3 cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp caraway seeds, crushed
2 slices of bread, grated into crumbs
1 egg
Oil

Recipe
1. Mince the chicken breast in the food processor. Add the ginger, garlic cloves, onion, coriander leaves, salt, cardamom, cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, garam masala and caraway seeds.
2. Add the mix to a bowl and mix in the breadcrumbs and egg. Mould the mince mixture into 4 burgers.
3. Heat oil in a pan and cook the burgers for 4-5 minutes on each side or until cooked through.


Mango relish

Ingredients
1 mango, peeled, seeded and diced into small pieces
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 red bell pepper, diced into small pieces
2 scallions (green onions), thinly sliced
Handful of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp crushed cardamom pods
1 tsp light brown sugar
Pinch of sea salt
Pinch of coarsely ground black pepper
1 tsp honey

Recipe
Mix everything together and stir to mix well. Serve immediately or store in the fridge.

Magazine Mondays 1: Lemon and Garlic Chicken with Rice.

I mentioned in my last post about starting a few new "blog features" including the Weekly Look at the Cook Book and now I'm introducing another. I'm fed up with buying cooking magazines, folding over pages while saying to myself "can't wait to try that one" and then never actually making it. I've decided to make a bit of a feature on the blog called "Magazine Mondays" where I'll share the results of a recipe from one of the magazines each Monday.

Today's recipe is taken from the March 2008 issue of Easy Food. I had to half the recipe seeing as the original was meant for 4 and there is only 2 of us... yes we can eat a lot but not that much. It was delicious and fantastically simple to put together, thought needed a little more time in the oven than the magazine had said (I've edited that in the recipe below already)



Lemon and Garlic Chicken with Rice.

Serves 2

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
2 chicken breasts, skinned and cut into 2 or 3
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
200g cooked brown rice
2 tbsp lemon juice
375ml chicken stock
1/2 lemon quartered
1/2 cup of cooked peas
salt and pepper
freshly chopped parsley to garnish

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.
2. Heat the oil on a large frying pan. Put the chicken in the pan and cook for 4 mins on each side until lightly browned. Remove the chicken and set to the side.
3. Cook the onion and garlic in the pan for 3 or 4 minutes.
4. Place the onion, garlic, chicken,brown rice, lemon juice, chicken stock and lemon quarters into a deep oven dish and bake for 30 minutes.
3. Remove the dish from the oven. Add the peas , season and garnish with parsley.

Weekly Look at the Cook Book 1: Basic Chocolate Cake

I've decided to make a few "blog features" in order to get through some recipes i've been wanting to try for ages or to try some new ones I come across. This is the start of one of those "features" that I'm calling the Weekly Look at the Cook Book where I'll use one of the cook books I have and create one of the recipes in them every week.

This week I've made Donna Hay's Basic Chocolate Cake from her cook book Simple Essentials: Chocolate. I bought this book half price a few weeks ago and was looking through it when I was at our radio show and the members of my youth group who were there were keen for all sorts of treats from this book. I was planning to make the double chocolate cookies but heard that some of the group were celebrating birthdays this week and so it only seemed right to make a cake and the photo for this one was screaming out to me!

I had to split the batter between 2 smaller cake tins because that's all I had to work with but I sandwiched the cakes together with some Dulce de Leche, then topped the cake with a little DDL and then topped that with the chocolate glaze from the book too as well as some chocolate chips. It was a really tasty cake, but I'm not so sure about the glaze, it didn't come out as liquid as it looked in the book and I think was a little too chocolatey: next time I think I'd use a little less chocolate and a little more cream and use chocolate with a lower cocoa percentage, but it worked well as an icing as opposed to a glaze.

It got great reviews tonight from my youth group who almost ate it all - I had to save 2 slices for me and Rob and we loved it too, I'll definitely be making this again! I've decided to enter this cake in the Tried Tasted and True food event but not the glaze seeing as I didn't think it was as good as it could be.

Here's the recipes for the cake and the glaze from the book.



Basic Chocolate Cake

Serves 8-10 (I got 12 servings out of it)

Ingredients
375g butter, softened
1.5 cups light brown sugar
3 medium eggs
2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup cocoa, double sifted
3/4 cup milk
1 quantity chocolate glaze recipe (see below)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C
2. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and mix with electric mixer for 8-10 mins or until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well.
4. Fold in the flour, baking powder and cocoa. Stir in the milk.
5. Transfer the mixture to an 8" round cake tin lined with baking paper. Bake for 1hr 10 mins or until cooked through and a skewer can be withdrawn clean.
6. Cool for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack. Ice with the chocolate glaze.


Chocolate Glaze

Ingredients
150 g chopped dark couverture chocolate
1/2 cup single (aka pouring) cream

Recipe
1. Place the chocolate and cream in a saucepan over a low heat, stirring until melted and smooth.
2. Allow the mixture to stand for 10 minutes to thicken slightly.
3. Pour over a well chilled cake and tap to remove air bubbles. Or refrigerate and serve as a rich chocolate sauce for desserts.