With all the time I've been spending at home, I've been able to get into my cooking a bit more. Boyfriend has been absolutely loving coming home from work to all these crazy new dishes that I've been coming up with. British cuisine has never been my favourite, so I've been learning how to cook food from different cuisines. As you can see from the pictures below, I've broken into Mexican, Italian, Spanish and Moroccan cooking, and been focussing on learning how to cook different breads as well. I get most of my recipes online - it's just about finding the right inspiration for my cooking. I lean towards healthier options: while I love to use olive oil in my cooking, I try to avoid cream and butter and sugar. The best meal, in my opinion, is a large one that is light enough to stop you from feeling full at the end of it. Yumminess!! Check out some of my food below...and stay tuned cos I'm still cooking!!
Mexican Fish Tacos and Sweet Potato Enchiladas with a Chilli Tomato Sauce
The fish tacos are made with simple frozen white fish, which I marinated in chopped jalapeño pepper, garlic powder, cayenne pepper and paprika. After pan frying the fish with chopped onion, I added it to a heated tortilla with lettuce and served it with a spicy jalapeño, red chilli and lime salsa. The enchiladas were made with a filling of cooked sweet potato, red pepper, onion and peppered goat's cheese. I pan fried the tortilla for five seconds on each side, rolled it up with the filling and covered in sauce made of blitzed red chilli, sun dried tomato and basil. I then cooked it all in the oven for twenty minutes. I have to admit I got the enchilada recipe from a book, but kind of made up the rest. So a Mexican meal with a Mediterranean influence that made for an absolutely delicious and light dinner.  |
In this picture I have cut the ftira in half lengthwise and filled it with a taħlita (Maltese for 'mixture') of chopped fresh tomatoes, olives, maltese peppered goat's cheese, basil, chilli and a ton of olive oil. Although this is technically a sandwich, I don't think of it that way - for me it's the perfect thing to eat on a hot day at the beach or to take as a travel companion; it's perfect for any occasion really, and delicious!!!
Indian Fish Wrap
I'm home for lunch a lot at the moment, and I'm enjoying taking my time to make healthy and tasty lunches that I certainly won't be able to make once I start work. This is one of my new favourites: an Indian white fish wrap. It's super easy to make: I like the Warburtons squarish wraps which are low calorie but are pretty flavourful. I marinated a piece of frozen white fish with garam masala, cumin, turmeric and garlic, with a little tomato paste, and used the same herbs on chopped fresh veg: peppers, carrot, onion and green beans. And don't forget the pepper people!! I cooked the veg in the oven on a low heat and pan fried the fish. This was assembled in the wrap and was the most delicious and spicy lunch. Loved it - I thoroughly recommend if you have the time!!
Tapas: Gambas pil-pil, Mixed fish paella and Spanish chorizo potatoes
I was absolutely dying for some yummy buttery prawns the other day (I have to admit, this particular meal was not exactly low fat). I decided that having prawns alone for dinner was probably not the best idea, so I put a bit of extra time in to make a few different spanish dishes to create a final yummy meal.
Gambas pil-pil are super easy to make and super delicious to eat. I've only ever had them at DukPond, my favourite restaurant in Preston, but I didn't have much difficulty finding a recipe. Very simply, melt some butter and oil in a pan, add garlic and chilli, and finally the prawns. Done! The spanish potatoes weren't much harder to put together: I cooked chopped chorizo and onion in oil, added peeled, chopped, par-boiled potatoes, and cooked until the potatoes were crispy.
Finally, the fish paella....super easy too but a bit more time consuming than the others. I cooked chopped chorizo, onion and garlic in oil, added rice then deglazed the pan with white wine and finally veggie stock. I then added some chopped veg, and added salmon and white fish just in time to have it cooked to perfection. Delish!!!
Sticky Lamb Tagine
Oh god yes...I love Moroccan food. Mum just bought me a traditional tagine pot from Lakeland, and I was dying to use it. So a few days ago I made a pretty traditional Moroccan lamb tagine and I'm not gonna lie....delish. Again, really easy to make because it's a simple case of tossing all the ingredients in the pot and leaving them to slow cook, which I did for about four hours.
So...ingredients. Lamb, tomatoes, beef stock, dried apricots, almond slices, onion, garlic, ginger, paprika, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, honey and parsley. I should have put saffron in as well but didn't have any...I'm waiting for my sister to bring me some from Dubai!!! Anyway, after you brown the lamb it's a fairly simple matter of assembling the ingredients within the pot and chucking them in the oven. I chose to add fresh chickpeas, carrots and broad beans as extra veggie ingredients and they give the tagine a bit of extra heartiness. I served it all up with fresh parsley and couscous and it was a fantastic (and pretty damn filling) dinner. I'm having the leftovers tonight!!! :D
An Indian Feast
Nowadays we don't order takeaways very often, as I prefer to cook most things myself. Indian food is definitely one of those foods that I love to cook myself, especially since I've gotten the hang of preparing and cooking my own chapattis and naan breads. This picture is just an example of one of the many Indian dinners I've made, although I usually replace the rice with a chickpea chana masala instead, which is totes delicious, and spicy!! I love chickpeas and spice!!
Again, with curries, I tend to go for tomato-based dry curries, rather than creamy curries like kormas. However, in the summer especially I prefer less sloppy food, so I've started creating my own beef and lamb koftas, and an especial favourite of mine is cooking whole tandoori chicken. Can't seem to find a picture of it anywhere though :(
Some Traditional Italian Dishes
You ask someone what Italian food is and they'll tell you pizza or pasta. They are two of my favourite things, although I don't cook them very often. That's probably because it takes so long to cook them, because I make everything from scratch. That includes the pizza dough, which I like to flavour with herbs, garlic and chilli, and the pasta for my lasagne and cannelloni. I also make my own meat sauce for the lasagne, the béchamel for the lasagne and cannelloni, and the ricotta and spinach mixture for inside the cannelloni.
I now have a pizza stone as well, which is perfect for cooking really traditional, thin-crust pizzas. The trick is to get the stone as hot in the oven as possible, and once the pizza is in, it cooks in a matter of minutes. Like magic!!!
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| Traditional lasagne |
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| Spinach & ricotta cannelloni (pre-oven) |
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| mmmm...pizza |
Bread and a Half!!
I love making bread. It's so easy when you have a Kenwood mixer doing all the work for you - the important thing really is to have the patience to let it rise properly, otherwise it won't taste that nice or even have the right texture. It's taken me quite a few tries to get my bread right, but nowadays they come out pretty good most of the time. Here is a selection of some of my recent breads. Note that most of the recipes come from Paul Hollywood's recipe book, but I've added my own personal touches to a few of these :D
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| Sundried tomato and rosemary focaccia |
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| Ciabatta |
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| Rosemary flavoured breadsticks |
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| Pleated white bread |
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| Bread rolls |
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