I made these biscuits as a gift for my friend Louise. She has an intolerance to gluten and loves Amaretto, in fact, she is responsible for my current obsession with it. The biscuits are incredibly simple to make and very delicious although a lot more chewy than other Amaretti biscuits, I guess due to the lack of gluten. I think next time I will add a touch more liqueur as I do have a real taste for it. I also didn’t have enough ready-ground almonds and so I bumped up the quantity by grinding some whole and flaked almonds in a pestle and mortar which worked a treat. In fact, it was nice to have some lightly larger chunks of nut inside the soft and chewy biscuit. Warning – these are so unbelievably moreish! I must admit I did eat a few so called, ‘burnt ones’ before I finally packaged them up….I must start limiting myself with the Amaretto recipes, right now, I have an amaretti biscuit fridge cake chilling and I’ve promised myself the seafood flambe that Trig kindly brought to my attention. I do have a rather large bottle of Amaretto and I wouldn’t want to drink it all now would I?

Amaretti Biscuits

120g ground almonds
120g caster sugar
2 eggs, whites only
20ml Amaretto liqueur
Butter or oil for greasing the baking sheet
Baking parchment

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C/325 F/Gas 3

-Use a small amount of butter or oil to grease the baking sheet and lay a sheet of baking parchment on top.

-Beat the egg whites until quite stiff

-Mix in the sugar and almonds, add the Amaretto and mix again until you have a smoothish paste.

-Use a teaspoon to put small ‘blob’s’ of the mixture onto the baking sheet. Leave a gap of a couple of centimeters between each one as they will expand as they cook.

-Bake for around 15 minutes until golden.

(I packed the biscuits into a ‘food safe’ plastic bag (which I actually bought from E-Bay….) and tied the top with ribbons, ahhh…….)

Recently, Katy from Sugarlaws posted a recipe for mini spinach frittatas. The recipe originated from Kalyn’s Kitchen, where she describes them as ‘egg muffins’. Having recently bought myself a brand spanking new muffin tray, I decided to play around with the quantities a little and knock up some super-quick egg muffins! They are so easy to make and there must be endless variations. These were great to snack on once cold and I also like Kalyn’s idea of eating the muffins for breakfast given that I am currently trying to cut down on bread.

I am attempting to reduce my wheat intake as, for some time now, I’ve suspected I may be intolerant. Not allergic, just intolerant. I have all the symptoms, but I am so reluctant to give it up that I just keep plodding along! Apparently, a significant symptom of wheat intolerance is a craving to eat wheat-containing foods such as bread, pasta and the like, which would explain why I keep putting it off. So I’ve decided to cut down and start weaning myself off slowly. After all, I may be able to tolerate a little wheat? Possibly? Hopefully?!

I made the egg muffins with ingredients I had to hand which were leeks and Stilton. I also added a very generous amount of black pepper to the beaten egg mixture as I wanted the black pepper to be a major flavour and not just a background seasoning. I used eight medium eggs for this recipe, having tried it with six and then deciding that I needed more.The 6-muffin tin I used has deep trays which I filled around 3/4 full. I think the best way is to put your ingredients into the tray, whatever the size, then pour on your egg mixture until each cup is 3/4 full. Then you can just beat up some more eggs if you find you don’t have enough to go around.

The muffins souffled out of the tin rather impressively which caused much excitement for me as I removed them from the oven. They sink very quickly however, as you can see from the picture below. I have to say, the final results are not aesthetically pleasing – they look like wrinkly, spongy blobs, but they taste fantastic! So thank you to Kalyn for her brilliant idea. Although I like to keep things veggie sometimes, I think the addition of some meat like bacon or chorizo would be delicious.

Stilton, Leek and Black Pepper Egg Muffins

180g leeks, washed and finely shredded
80g Stilton, crumbled
8 medium eggs, beaten
Sea salt
Black pepper
Oil, for greasing + one table spoon for frying the leeks

1 six-large-muffin tin

-Grease the muffin tin and preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.
-Gently soften the the leeks in 1 table spoon olive oil for 5 minutes or so until cooked.
-Divide the leeks evenly between the muffin trays and do the same with the Stilton.
-Season the beaten egg mixture with a generous amount of salt and a very generous amount of black pepper (I put a lot of black pepper in the mixture but I think it could have taken more).
-Beat again and pour into each muffin tray until roughly 3/4 full. Give each tray a little stir with a fork.
-Bake for 15-20 minutes until risen, firm and golden.
-If you are a blogger – photograph them quickly, they will sink!!

Roast dinners, I think, are the sort of meals that allow you to practice the art of preserving every single bit of flavour and always get me thinking how I can squeeze the most out of every ingredient. Just the thought of cooking a meal with so many elements – all needing to come together at the same time used to fill me with fear but practice has seen fear dissolve into excitement. Particularly in the winter months, it seems appropriate to cook warming, hearty dishes that can be shared among friends or grazed over for a couple of days afterwards; roast beef and horseradish sandwiches anyone? How about lamb and mint sauce? Recent adventures in Yorkshire pudding making have led Chris to perfect his method. It seems that, whatever your recipe, allowing the batter to rest, heating the oil until very, very hot and definitely not opening the oven door during cooking are all crucial. These sound like tips I always knew about, so how come it’s only just started working? We’ve started cooking Yorkshire’s in the iron skillet instead of individually out of necessity but they work perfectly and are great for filling with sausages and onion gravy…In fact, putting the entire roast dinner inside is a very tempting idea.

The past few months, we’ve roasted pheasant, lamb, beef and quails. I recently learned that adding a small amount of water to the roasting tray creates some steam which helps to keep the meat moist (particularly in the case of pheasant, which can be dry) and leaves you with a nice amount of reducible juice for graving making at the end. I suspect this may not be news to everyone else…..I love it when a good bird comes with heart, kidneys and maybe even the neck, a little gift for the gravy and a treat for the chef. The bones are then left for making stock, which we freeze for using in soups and sauces for example. This makes me feel particularly virtuous, especially considering the current emphasis on minimising food waste. We like to bring elements of the meal together and get flavours running throughout so we might make a celeriac and apple mash for example and then continue the apple theme by making a cider gravy. If something is fried, maybe some bacon to combine with spring greens as a side dish, the fatty pan is waiting to impart flavour into the next part of the meal. We can get a little carried away, trying to preserve every last bit of flavour. Having a small kitchen means that re-using pans is essential so I’ll steam the greens over the boiling potatoes and so on, in order to save space on the tiny hob! Of course, these are winter lunches in the main, in summer we would be eating something light and seasonal like rainbow tomato salad.

And afterwards there must be something sweet (and often chocolatey!). The baked cheesecake in the picture is a Gordon Ramsay recipe from his book ‘Sunday Lunch’, the best ’secret Santa’ present I ever had! It works every time and is served with a marscapone cream perfumed with stem ginger syrup and chopped stem ginger pieces. Chris is also a big fan of chocolate fudge cake – as you can see he specifically requested it for his birthday. This all sounds quite traditional and it is, but only because of what is available from the veg box and the butcher during the winter. Sometimes I like to change the menu completely and hop to a totally different cuisine, perhaps serving a middle eastern buffet followed by a baklava. Tomorrow, I am told, it is my turn to put my feet up (it’s Saturday not Sunday but I kept my mouth shut) and Chris will be cooking for me. I feel this may be a more regular occurrence if only I would get the hell out of the kitchen once in a while and let the poor man in!

Anyway, what I am wondering is – What do you like to cook on Sundays?

I was a little wary of this recipe for obvious reasons, although curiosity got the better of me in the end. It’s been on my ‘to do’ list for a while, along with the famous, ‘roast chicken with 40 cloves of garlic’, which I still haven’t got around to making. I got this recipe from Das Sreedharan’s ‘Easy Indian‘ where he says that I will, ‘wonder how the strong flavour of garlic is so well tamed by the spicy and tangy tamarind sauce‘. He was right; although I did make a little mistake which meant the sauce wasn’t as tangy as I think he intended it to be. After soaking the tamarind pulp, without thinking I drained the liquid into the sink instead of saving it and then scraping the pulp through a sieve. So, I just ended up with the pulp which I then realised needed extra water to form the sauce of the curry. I didn’t have time to soak any more tamarind so I just added the extra liquid. The curry was still delicious, spicy but not too hot. The recipe calls for two dried red chillies and 3 fresh green chillies which are just slit lengthways to release a lot of flavour but not so much heat.

One of the best flavours for me in the curry is the fenugreek seeds. At the beginning, half a teaspoon of the seeds are fried with some whole garlic cloves and dried chillies, which are then ground to a paste. This makes a wonderful rich, pungent paste which gives a real depth to the curry, beyond the flavour of the garlic. I found the seeds burn easily so I would advise keeping a close eye on the heat. More fenugreek seeds are then added later in the cooking process. The flavour of the curry leaves is also essential and works really well with the fenugreek. I am lucky to live near to Asian grocers so I always pick up some fresh curry leaves when I pass by, which I then store in the freezer and just add them straight away as needed. Kaffir lime leaves also keep very well in this way, as does fresh ginger which I just grate straight from frozen. I didn’t add quite enough liquid to the curry so although the garlic was soft and edible, it was still pretty fiery and we couldn’t eat all of the 150g of whole garlic cloves (that’s about 3 heads in real money) that Das called for. I think that the curry should be soupier in consistency, while mine reduced to more of a thick sauce. I will definitely make the curry again (properly) and I think it will be really delicious. I urge you not to be put off by the quantity of garlic, although you might not want to cook it if you are likely to be in close proximity to anyone else for the next two days…..

I followed the recipe verbatim from the book and so I can’t rewrite it here although the recipes, here and here are similar (except for the addition of coconut, which Das does not use, although his style of cooking is Keralan and they do use a lot of coconut). We ate the curry wrapped in a paratha with a mango and spinach moru (very delicious, very yoghurty – like a warm raita with mustard seeds!), some chicken tikka, yoghurt and chopped coriander. This could be a contender for the ultimate kebab! I love making chicken tikka at home, so much tastier. Whatever recipe I use, I marinade the chicken in all the ingredients for as long as possible, leaving out the acidic element (e.g. lime or lemon juice) until 20 minutes before I want to prepare it, to avoid cooking the chicken. This means you can leave it in the marinade for as long as you want. I usually add an extra squeeze of lime at the end of cooking too or when they are under the grill, for an extra zingy freshness. The parathas I buy frozen – you just cook them for 2 minutes each side in a dry pan and they are actually really good. Unless you are brave enough to make your own, in which case, I salute you.