Japanese Style Soup

This is so easy and tastes great. It's also a very versatile recipe, where i've used prawns here, chicken, crab or pork works well, and with a little tweak, beef is good too.


Ingredients:

7 or 8 small mushrooms
1 red pepper
3/4 spring onions (Scallions)
1 handfull peeled prawns
3 leaves of greens ( I used swiss chard here, it was in the garden, Pak Choi works very well)
2 Packets instant noodles
chives
parsley
coriander
Lemon Juice
1/2 tbsp sherry or white wine
1tsp fish sauce (Optional)
1 vegetable stock cube





Bring a medium pan of water to the boil,
add the stock cube, chopped pepper and spring onions and the mushrooms.













After about 5 minutes, add the noodles.
If they come with a sachet of flavouring, discard it. Also add the sherry or wine.

After a couple of minutes, chop your greens, and add them, and everything else to the pan.

Simmer until the prawns are cooked right through.

This should make a big hearty meal for at least

three people. Its deceptively filling.

Enjoy!

Roasted Tomato Soup

Easiest recipe yet!

Ingredients:

2lb ripe tomatoes

1 clove garlic

1 onion

any peppers you have lying around

optional 1 chilli

Halve the tomatoes and chop everything else and throw it all in a rosting tin, like this.

If you want ant herbs, basil or parsely etc, put them in now as well.

Drizzle a little olive oil over it, and salt and pepper to taste. Put the above in the oven at about 190 oC for about an hour.

until it looks like this..

If you want lumps in your soup, take about 3/4 of the roasted stuff and put it in a blender. If you prefer a smooth soup, put it all in the blender.

What ever is left, leave it in the rosting tin, add about 250ml chicken stock and put it on a high heat on the hob until simmering. give it a good stir with a wooden spoon to deglaze the pan, this adds a lot of flavour, and ensures nothing is wasted.

If you left any bits for lumpy soup, give it a bit of a mash with a fork.

Then combine this with what is in the blender and voila, tomato soup.

Chocolate Brownies

Who doesn't like brownies?

And they are so easy to make...

Ingredients:

100g Melted Butter

250g Caster Sugar

2 Eggs
1tsp Vanilla Essence
100g Plain Flour

50g Cocoa Powder.

Sieve the flour and cocoa powder together into

a bowl.

Add the sugar, and beat the eggs.

Add the melted butter, eggs and vanilla.

If you like nuts in your brownies, chuck em in now.

Beat the mixture well, you want to get a bit of air into it, so the brownies rise a bit in the oven.

Pour the mixture into a tin lined with baking

paper.

As you can see, this stage is really exciting!!!

Put the brownies on the middle shelf of the oven,

pre-heted to 170 oC / Gas 3

Bake for about 30 minutes.

Take 'em out and they should look a bit like this...

poke it with a skewer or knife, if you are used

to making sponges, it will look a little undercooked. Remember the brownies should be a bit gooey in the middle.

Let them cool , and then cut into squares.

Findus Crispy Pancakes

So simple I can’t believe I didn’t try it before. A real old school childhood favourite.

Thanks to Huge Fearnly!

Ingredients:

Pancake batter
breadcrumbs

2 beaten eggs

Plain Flour

Your choice of fillings

Make some pancakes, any recipe will do but make sure you substitute a teaspoon of salt for the sugar, remember they are savoury.

Choose your filling. Whatever you fancy really, in the pictures here, I had pastrami, cheese and chillies, Laura went for ham, cheese and tomato. The only boundary here is your imagination. If you are going to go for something like chicken, minced beef or fish, cook it first.

Put some filling on one side of the pancake, but be sure to leave about a 1.5cm border. Paint the border with a little beaten egg, and fold the pancake in half. Press down around the flat edge so it sticks. Then dip the pancake in flour, then beaten egg, and roll in breadcrumbs. If you want old fashioned orange breadcrumbs, add a little turmeric to them.

Shallow fry for a few minutes either side, the pancake is already cooked, so you are just heating it through, and perhaps melting the contents.

Perfect, Just like being Eight years old again. :)

Chocolate Pie

Chocolate pie

This is one I tried for the first time recently, It really is easy, and makes a spectacular dessert.

Ingredients:

85g Plain Chocolate
55g Butter or Margarine
3 Tbsp Golden Syrup
3 Eggs, Beaten
140g Caster Sugar.
1 Tsp Vanilla Essence
115g Milk Chocolate
500ml Whipping Cream

For The Pastry:

165g Plain Flour
½ Tsp Salt
115g Lard or Baking Margarine
2-3 Tbsp Iced Water.

1: Preheat the oven to 220 C/ Gas 7

2: Make the pastry, Sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, cut in the fat until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Slowly sprinkle in the water and gently mix with a fork until it forms a ball.

3: Roll out the pastry on a floured surface, then place it in an 8 or 9 inch (about 20cm) pie tin.

4: Prick the pastry gently with a fork, all over the base and sides; this will help stop it from puffing up. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned.
Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool, in its tin.
Note: I trimmed the edges of the pastry in the above picture, and it shrank, trim once its cooked..

5: Put the plain chocolate in a Pyrex bowl with the margarine and golden syrup. Put the bowl over a pan of lightly simmering water so the contents melt together. Don’t heat it too hard, or the chocolate will solidify.

6: remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the eggs, vanilla and sugar.

7: Reduce the oven temp to 180 C/ Gas 4. Pour the chocolate mixture into the pie case and bake for about 35 – 40 minutes, or until the filling is set. It will rise quite a bit and may look a bit like a soufflé. Remove it from the oven and let it cool.

8: Whip the cream until soft peaks form, and spread it over the pie with a spatula.

9: With a potato peeler, shave curls off the bar of milk chocolate. Use these to decorate the pie.

Great Isn't it.

Mexican Tortillas

Start off simple they say, and this is about as simple as it gets.
Great for a snack, or a meal, they are healthy, tasty and so quick and easy to make, I have no idea why anyone buys them instead of making their own.

Ingredients: Makes 6 Tortillas
200g Plain Flour
2tbsp Water
1 tsp Olive Oil
Pinch of Salt.

1: Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the salt.
2: Make a well in the center, and add the oil and about half of the water.
3: I use a spoon to mix it at this stage, because the resultant mix is sticky as hell, and a sod to get off your fingers.
4: It goes kinda stringy and sticky, thats when you add the rest of the water.
5: The first time I made them, I thought it was too wet, but after you have kneaded the dough for a couple of minutes on a floured surface it goes soft, silky and a bit like Pizza dough. And should look like this...

6: Divide your Doughball into 6, on a floured surface, roll out your little ball with a floured rolling pin.
7: Roll out until your tortilla is about 7-8 inches across, and really thin, about as thick as a credit card. The shape doesn't really matter, but bear in mind round ones are easier to wrap up.
Now it should look like this.

8: Get a frying pan good and hot, a nice high heat, with no oil in the pan. Dry fry the tortilla for about a minute either side, or until it looks like this..

9: Take it out of the pan, fillings are up to you, Bacon, Chicken, Tuna, Sausages, Salad, almost anything works. Best Served Hot!