A Really Yummy Tomato Lunch May 20, 2010
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Foodiness.Tags: Food, food writing, oven-roasted tomatoes, recipe, tomato
1 comment so far
I had the most wonderful night out with the SMB girls last night. It was a social, and this essentially means that we meet up at the pub and gibber away for hours on end. Despite the fact that there were lots of lovely new members we still all managed to chat pretty much non-stop the entire time we were there, covering such diverse topics as online dating and the translation of literature to film. It was great, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Anyway, I thought today that I would share with you one of the yummiest creations I have made in the past few weeks. I didn’t get a photo of it as I ate it all far too fast for that, but believe me when I say it was ultra yummy! It was a oven-roasted beef tomato (with a twist!) served with cous cous, and I could see it becoming a major cupboard staple.
To make your own:
Cut the top off a large beef tomato, ensuring to remove any chewy green bits in the centre – I essentially chopped out the centre lump. Cut a clove of garlic into 2 or 3 pieces, and push these into the flesh fo the tomato, spacing it out evening. Pour a generous amount of olive oil and balsamic vinegar into the tomato – don’t worry about it being spread out evening, it never happens! Then simply sprinkle basic, unground sea salt and lots of pepper over the top! Put in a pre-heated oven and cook until it is starting to sink onto the tray.
I served mine with cous cous, to which I had added a cheeky knob of butter and a heaped teaspoon full of pesto (plus salt and pepper of course). It was gorgeous – try it and you will see!
There is something about the sweet and delicious simplicity of tomatoes in the summer that just keeps bringing me back for more!
To do list January 30, 2010
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Fashion, Life, Chatter & Politics.Tags: baking, bicester village, Fashion, food writing
5 comments
Inspired by Kate over at All Five Horizons, I thought I would put together a bit of a to do list for things I aim to get done tomorrow. Having spent today traipsing Bicester Village for deals (buying a stunning satin lime green dress, and touching the most expensive shoes I have ever seen), tomorrow is a time for action and productivity!
So, here is what I want to get done:
- Complete section 2 of my coursework
- Bake cakes for the office
- Make cheese scones and blueberry muffins
- Write an article
Achievable, Oui?
All on the hips October 26, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Foodiness, Inspiration, Life, Chatter & Politics.Tags: bodies, food writing, hips, self confidence
7 comments
I am thinking of starting up my Digging for Truffles food blog again. Whenever I do it inspires me to eat well and record my food habits, something I really ought to work harder on as there have been rather a lot of chocolate bars passing my lips recently! Of course, my body doesn’t crave or desire chocolate bars that often – I just eat them because somewhere deep down I feel I ought to! I also need to started using the Wii fit and exercising, so it is time for some real change to occur!
Other than food thoughts, however, I have been thinking about women, and our hips. My hips have always been a bit straight and boring, and I have this habit of assessing other women’s wonderful snake hips with utter jealousy.
How do their hips wiggle in just the right way? I have no natural swing to my hips, no rhythm – they just twitch occasionally and that is about it. How I long for svelte curvy hips swinging seductively from side to side. I have heard that practise can make perfect, but so far my hip swinging efforts have been failing terribly!
It doesn’t help that I am a straight figure, with few of those womanly wiles that make our bodies quite so beautiful, no matter what size they are.
The most wonderful hips have to belong to the stunningly curvy Christina Hendricks, and the equally brilliant Kate Winslet. Something to aspire to!
Curvy Christina Hendricks and her lovely hips!
English Rose Kate Winslet
Giveaway – Slow Gin and Beeswax Book October 24, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Books, Foodiness.Tags: food writing, foodie, givweaway
9 comments
Earlier this week I ordered a book on eBay. It arrived, but unfortunately the cover was a little ripped. I contacted the seller who was lovely, and sent out a replacement in the post. As she did so, she encouraged me to keep the old one as a wonderful gesture of goodwill. Now, I obviously don’t need this first copy, with its little rip. But it is a brilliant book, and I don’t want it to go to waste. I want people to be able to benefit from this woman’s kindness, and experience one of my favourite seasonal reads.
Now, what is the book all about?
Apparently according to the cover it is ” Seasonal recipes and hints from traditional household storerooms”. It is jam-packed with advice on what to cook in what season, how to cook it, cleaning tips, chutney recipes, and other such worldly gems of wisdom. I have read this book back to cover, absorbing all that knowledge, and it still hasn’t gotten old!
Sloe Gin and Beeswax - you can see the rip (sellotaped) at the top!
Now, last time I hosted a giveaway on my blog, someone unfortunately won with a monosyllabic answer and was incredibly ungrateful when I contacted her – I requested the address and literally got just that – no world of thanks or even any message! This time, therefore, I request that people just give a little answer to the question below along with some method of contact (a link to your blog or email address). The competition will close on the 7th November!
To enter, simply answer this: What is your favourite old wives tale or culinary tip?
To tweet this competition if you so desire, simply paste this into Twitter: “RT @LaurenEACooke Head over to my blog for the chance to win a copy of the wonderful “Sloe Gin and Beeswax” http://tiny.cc/8Y2p3“
Puff Pastry Parcel September 22, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Foodiness.Tags: Food, food writing, recipes
add a comment
Mmm, I had a delicious dinner last night. in fact, I will be having a delicious lunch today too, from the leftovers.
We had some puff pastry left over in the fridge from a scrumptous chicken pie Ben concocted last week, and I hated to see it sitting there, looking forlorn and unloved. So, a quick trip to the supermarket to pick up a few jars of expensive-but-long-lasting ingredients and some tasty extras resulted in this idea – which, incidentally, turned out delicious and yummy!
Bacon, Feta and tomato puff pastry tart
The pie close up!
How to make this scrumptous, salty and tangy pie? Read on!
Ingredients:
- Puff pastry, rolled to 0.5cm thickness
- Half a normal block of feta
- Bout 6-10 sun dried tomatoes
- 3 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
- A teaspoon full of capers
- 4 rashers of bacon
- 1 onion
Finely chop the onion, and fry it with the bacon. I fried it in basil/lemon oil to add some flavour, and added oregano as the main herb near the end of frying. Chop the bacon, and put both it and the onion into a bowl. To the bowl add the feta (sliced or chopped), the cherry tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes (chopped) and the capers. Mix hard with a spoon, ensuring that everything is broken up and mixed together thoroughly.
Spoon into the middle of the rolled puff pastry, fold over into a parcel and glazed with a little beaten egg. Cook in the oven for approximately 25 minute until golden brown.
We served it with a variation of garlic bread, butter and boursin toasted. To be honest though I would almost have preferred just eating the stinky boursin on a spoon straight from the fridge! hehe.
Accidental Onion Soup September 16, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Foodiness.Tags: food writing, onion soup, recipes
add a comment
I have discovered that if you make onion gravy and it doesn’t work, all hope is not lost. I managed to make the most lovely onion soup I have had since Paris, with only the effort of making a gravy! How did I do this wonderous thing, that resulted in Ben drinking from the jug? Read on!
First I fried onion gently in butter until it was soft and going translucent. Then I mixed flour with a little water to make a paste (1 onion, 1 heaped teaspoon flour), and added this to the pan. I stirred hard with a wooden spoon to absorb the butter and scrape up anything on the pan base. To this mixture I added a beef oxo cube and stirred that in too! Next was a healthy dose of white wine, which I boiled until reduced and stirred continuously. Add a good half-pint to a pint of water and boil hard, adding a little cornflour paste, a veg cube and perhaps a dash more wine. I kept boiling but it refused to reduce. The (very hot) result was the onion soup!
Yum!
Like Peas in a Pod | How to make Delicious Pea Soup August 17, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Foodiness.Tags: 5 a day, food writing, pea soup, recipe
add a comment
Inspired by this post over at Backwards in High Heels, I have spent the past few weeks intending to make my own version of pea soup. I finally got around to it yesterday and have to say that I was very pleased with the results. For someone who has never eaten or made pea soup, split pea soup, pea and ham soup or any more distant cousins of this luminous green delight, it had to be a brilliant start.
My general soup making mantra goes something along the lines of “stock stock stock stock stock” – you can have the best ingredients in the world, but they only ever taste as good as possible with proper stock in the mix! I have Knorr stuff at home but most people I know swear by bouillon! To me, of course, anything salty is great! Sometimes I wonder if I am bit of a philistine with food and leaving it only moderately seasoned! Is an addiction to salt conceivable at all?
So, how to make it? I don’t use amounts really (plus soup can always be boiled down if too thin).
The incredibly simple pea soup recipe is as follows:
- A small bag of frozen peas
- Boiled water with 1 chicken and 1 veg stock cube dissolved in it
- 2 small onions (1 large)
- 2 cloves of garlic
Chop the onion and garlic finely, then sweat in a pan with a big knob of melted butter. Don’t let them go brown. I also added a little basil oil to the mix for a fresh herby taste, but you don’t need this by any means!
Add the peas and toss to coat in the butter, and also to thaw them slightly. Add the boiled water and bring to the boil, stirring.
Leave to simmer for about 2 minutes. Add a handful of chopped mint, and a spoonful of sugar – this is Tania’s biggest tip and it was amazing!
Blend everything in a mixer until very smooth and green. At this point, blend in some small knobs of chilled butter to emulsify.
Return to heat, and simmer the fresh pea soup until at the desired consistency. Serve with cream (in a smiley face if you are as sad as me!), a sprig of fresh mint and a healthy dash of ground black pepper. A squeeze of lemon would work well too!
Delicious pea soup!
Whitecurrant Cupcakes with Decadent Icing July 27, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Foodiness.Tags: baking, cakes, Cookery, cupckes, food writing, hummingbird bakery, recipes
7 comments
As promised, here is a lovely picture of my delicious white-currant cupcakes with swathes of vanilla buttercream. Delicious! I am taking the remainder to Kate’s tonight for us girls to enjoy with pink wine and Hugh Jackman on the TV. I am inordinately excited about the film, which clearly indicates I haven’t seen enough heavenly male torsos in the past few weeks!
No recipe to post today – I used the unusual (more milk than butter) recipe from Hummingbird Bakery. I’m not totally happy with writing this up on my blog, but someone else has written it up here. I would definitely recommend the book though, as the pictures are beautiful and the recipes legendary. I look forward to trying out more in the coming weeks.
Whilst the cake method was revolutionary, the buttercream icing was just buttercream icing – butter, icing sugar, milk and vanilla. So simple but so effective! I realised I have definitely been a bit tight on the mixing time for the icing – I wouldn’t do it for any less than 4 minutes now!
As a complete aside, I much prefer the American “frosting” to the British “icing”. Whilst both cold and wintry in feel, I just get this huge burst of “Mmmmm… yummy” as soon as frosting is mentioned! This is much the same, I suppose, to my preference for “thrifting” over “being a tight bugger and shopping for bargains”!
New thing for the week! January 12, 2009
Posted by Lauren Cooke in Uncategorized.Tags: creative writing, diets, fitness, food writing, personal development, web desing, Writing
add a comment
Remember my “challenging myself” new years resolution? Well, so far I have stuck to it – doing something new each week. Last week I watched Australia (beautiful, sad, and with clothes to die for) with my Uni friend Laura, and Cie, and also stayed up til 12 playing pictionary for the first time in my life.
This week I seem to be attempting two new things! Or maybe even three! I have just decided that to further my career and add to my ability set I am going to sign up to the local web design course, which starts this Thursday. As well as serving obvious personal development purposes (Woo, go me! And this is OUTSIDE of work!), this will get me more involved in my local community, which is never a bad thing.
Secondly, I have taken my aspirations towards food writing into new areas. My recipe page on this blog is testament to the fact I like to cook – but I found the process of adding page after page (why has noone developed the idea of having two blogs combined into one site?!) tiring to say the very least, and my posting gradually tailed off. In remedy to this, I have decided to launch a new blog, called “Digging for Truffles“. On this blog I hope to catalogue cool bits and pieces I find during my everyday Internet trawling, chart my recipes, and generally gain myself some food writing experience.
In line with this, I am probably going to close down my “I want to write a book” site – it is simply too difficult for me to attempt to put my life on paper, whilst documenting all the ups and downs. I want to be able to take this emotional roller coaster ride at whatever pace I wish – even if that means suspending myself at the top of the loop-the-loop before I decide to swoop down it. Of course, good mate Jasmine will still be my immediate go to editor/friend – writing blog or no writing blog.
My final new thing will be an exercise DVD – cue uncoordinated thrashing, jumping and no doubt muscle strain!
A Typical Atypical 