Biscuit Baking the Tim Fisher Way!

Tim Fisher is an award-winning and widely respected pastry chef, having won more than 50 competition awards including over 30 medals at the British Open Cookery Championships. He also won the Dessert of The Year title in 2004.

And I, budget baker that I am on occasion, have had the immense privilege not only of meeting Tim on many occasions but also enjoying samples of his work - melt-in-the-mouth chocolate chip cookies, mini pastries, petite gateaux and delectable savouries when he catered for my friends' events.

This is why I am so happy to endorse his Biscuits and Cookies book, which can be snapped up at Amazon for a sweet £14.

I've enjoyed trying out his recipe for peanut butter cookies (you may recall I am obsessed with PB, and have a couple of years ago posted my own budget PB cookie bake). I won't say whose is better but I'll give you a clue - it's Tim's. Don't tell him! I'm also going to try out his custard cream and jammy dodger recipes - the sort of biscuits one never thinks to make at home but Tim makes it look easy...

What I really like is that Tim has made this book exceptionally accessible to the normal person who likes to bake every now and then. Too often recipes call for random and expensive items, like Belgian woodland truffle flakes, or Fijian salamander scales dipped in 100% Cambodian carob. This is not baking on a budget, but cooking on credit.

But Tim's book is designed to help even casual bakers like myself produce great-tasting treats for friends and family without having to shell out on unusual ingredients. Of course, if you want that little bit extra, there are some fancy biscuits in there too for those extra special occasions!

For those of you who happen to live in Surrey, England you might be interested in joining his Facebook: Tim's Pastry Club, or following him on Twitter: @timspastryclub Instagram: Tim's Pastry Club www.timspastryclub.com

Free? Yes please!

Tonight (14 January) I made dinner for two - for free. Let me caveat this: while this blog is predominantly for my own low-cost recipes, often using leftovers, this recipe is neither my own, nor was it using any leftovers. But it was free, and for that reason it gets a mention here. 

This evening my husband carried home with him a brown paper bag. When I asked him what was in it, I got the succinct reply: "food". It transpired that as part of a PR exercise, several bags of 'food' had been delivered to the office, and a couple of days later, the final one - ours - was finally on its way home.

I had been planning to use up the veg in my house, but when I opened the bag it became clear that the contents would not keep. For within the brown paper bag lay a variety of vegetables, including a rather ripe avocado and some downcast spring onions. 

The bag also contained a press release and a recipe. The bag had been delivered from a new healthy eating venture called Mindful Chef.  Its mission is to encourage good healthy and delicious recipes suitable for vegans or those with gluten intolerances. The recipe card I had was for Chipotle black bean burger with parsnip and sweet potato fries, accompanied with an avocado, parsley and cherry tomato salsa. 

Every ingredient had been measured to perfection, from the tiny pot of chipotle paste through to the parsnip and sweet potato. No waste, nothing left over. Exactly enough for two people and I didn't need to add anything to bulk it out (except, of course, for the obligatory tomato ketchup!) 

Rather than write out the recipe I trust the photo (s) to the left and the right will suffice.

They're not very clear but I don't have a decent camera. Or a decent smartphone.

What I loved: 

1) the black beans were lovely and full of flavour. I'm not sure where these particular organic beans can be bought but I suspect they will be relatively expensive compared to a supermarket's brand. I will do a test to see how brands compare as I will do this recipe again.

2) The fact every bit of food was used, with no wastage. You don't need hundreds of ingredients to make a delicious meal.

3) I will be honest. When I first saw it was a vegan recipe, I swore. Effing vegans and their cardboard-tasting no-meat crap. I am not sure why we meat-eaters get so antsy about vegans. Partly because every single thing is healthy and we feel guilty? Or because old habits die hard? I was also a little sad that there was no cheese melting over the burgers. But as tempted as I was to adulterate the recipe with a bit of Snowdonia's finest creamery cheese, I obeyed the recipe and was very glad of it. My husband and I both thought it was delicious, filling and after it, we felt satisfied, without the bloating that often comes with eating rice, potatoes, pasta, etc. 

4) The sweet potato and parsnip fries were enjoyable and we did not miss 'real' chips (even though I make my own potato chips).

5) The recipe was quick and easy to follow. In fact, it was a delight to follow.

Vegan meal. Pic credit SimoneySunday

What I did not like

1) Probably as a result of the bag being left in the office for two days, the avocado was just too mushy to form a proper salsa. Everything in the salsa bowl was covered in a little green slush. I thought it still tasted lush, but I would have preferred a firmer, crisper texture to the salsa. 

However, the lime dressing was a little too sharp for my husband, so perhaps in future I would not use the whole lime.

The slushy avocado and cherry tomato salsa @SimoneySunday

2) I was indeed confused by the very first instruction to 'boil a kettle'. There seemed to be no reason why. Was it to make a cup of tea while waiting for the burgers to cook? Was it to wash the veg? We shall never know. Perhaps MindfulChef could shed some light? 

With those two minor caveats, I have to say I loved this recipe and the idea of creating healthy, gluten-free meals. Indeed, I often cook meat-free meals to make sure we vary our diet and do a little bit to save the planet, but the fact we ate five portions of fruit and veg each in this meal, with no extra naughties save some salt and ketchup, means I am going to introduce more vegan meals into our weekly routine. 

While I would not buy the meal packs from Mindful Chef - we are attempting our own wee garden and have a good local grocer supporting local farms - I applaud and support its endeavours. I just wish there were something similar but cheaper for the people my blog aims to support: those on the breadline, struggling to meet daily bills. This is the sort of healthy, waste-free food so many families need, but cannot always afford.

Bread and Butter Pudding

Another brilliant way to use up leftovers is to make bread-and-butter pudding.

Bread and Butter Pudding. Instagram pic credit: SimoneySunday

Too many people throw away crusts of bread or bread that has started to go slightly dry. This is a terrible waste.

According to a study published in September in The Guardian, 49 per cent of UK adults claim they they eat bread every day, with 38 per cent of them buying two loaves a week.

However, the research, commissioned by the group Love Food Hate Waste, as part of its #UseYourLoaf campaign, also found that 18 per cent often threw away a forgotten loaf before opening it, while a quarter of had discarded the bread before reaching the end of the loaf.

I haven't bought bread for over a year, not since we were given a breadmaker for a wedding present. Instead of keeping this as one of those 'gadgets' that never get used, I decided to use it.

Flour, yeast, milk, oil, water, salt and sugar - these are the basic ingredients to making brown bread or white bread. And as one 1kg bag from Tesco costs about 80p, and I can make 2.5 3lb loaves from one bag of flour, I basically spend £1.60 on five loaves of bread.

I've already shown how to make cheap sauce and jam for gifts or just slathering onto toast in this blog. I will do a post later on how to make Rosemary bread with olive oil. Yum!

With the bread I make, I cut half of it straight away, and one half I wrap up tightly and put in the fridge, where it keeps about a week.

The other half, I slice, and wrap and put into a tupperware tub for making sandwiches in the near-term. Sometimes I freeze slices individually for 'emergencies'. This really reduces waste - which also reduces our yearly food bill!

However, when there's one slice left and some crusts, I take a bread knife, create some thinner slices, lather them in butter... and prepare a bread and butter pudding.

How to:
Take 2 medium eggs
2/3 cup of semi-skimmed milk (or cream if you really like it rich)
Handful of currants or raisins, washed
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
Your slices of buttered bread

Cut the bread into small enough pieces to create layers - bread & butter, some raisins, some brown sugar, some of the spices.

Do this as many times as you can. Sprinkle the rest of the raisins over the bread and butter.

Mix the remaining spices up with the eggs (whites and yolks) and the milk, and pour over the bread and butter.

Cook for about 1/2 hour at 160 degrees or until you can see the mixture is no longer runny.

Serve with cream, custard or home made icecream - a recipe for this is also here.

Enjoy!

Bad Boy Mac 'n' Cheese

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh my days, yes. Photo: Simoney Sunday

This is a classic, comfort food dish and most people have their own way of making macaroni cheese. 

But I like mine extra, extra cheesy, with minimum effort, stuffed with zing and flavour.

Obviously the fewer ingredients you have to buy, the better. But I like to use leftovers - either shreds of roast chicken from the Sunday dinner - or, in this case, two hot dog frankfurters that had failed to make it into a soft white roll and smothered in mustard and ketchup at a barbecue a few days before. They were so lonely, sitting there in my fridge... until Bad Boy came along.

Ingredients (Serves four)

1/2 pack macaroni; 250g of a 500g bag. I used Tesco's own label but a basics or budget one works just as well.

1/3 (roughly 150g) of a 450g block of mature cheddar. Again we used Tesco's own label.

3 tablespoons of flour

1 cup of milk

Small knob of butter

Spinach

1 brown onion

1 clove of garlic

Frankfurters

In fact, everything here was Tesco's own label apart from the Frankfurters. Why pay through the nose for brand name food when you're cooking on a budget?

To taste:

I grow my own mini chillies and chives on my kitchen windowsill, then dry and store the chillies for later. For this, I used just one.

Paprika

Salt and Pepper

Parsley

Feeling Extra?

Lightly shaved parmesan and breadcrumbs for a topping. (TESCO!)

How To

Put the macaroni in a saucepan and cover with water. Set it to boil and stir frequently to prevent it sticking.

Dice the onion, crush the clove of garlic, finely cut up the chilli and put these to brown a little in a frying pan with a little cooking oil. Remove from heat and set aside.

Chop up the frankfurters and set these aside.

Grate the cheese and set aside in a bowl.

In a separate saucepan, drop in the butter, then the flour and stir into a smooth paste. Quickly add the milk and stir vigorously and continuously on a low heat to remove all lumps and bumps.

When it looks like it is starting to thicken, scoop a handful of grated cheese, the salt, pepper, parsley and paprika and stir together.

Once it has thickened into a yellow cheese sauce, take it off the heat and make sure it is not sticking to the pan.

When the macaroni has softened, drain immediately, and mix it into a casserole dish together with the onions, garlic, chilli, frankfurter and spinach.

Add the cheese sauce and make sure it is stirred in well.

Toss the remaining cheese all over the top of the mixture and put into a pre-heated oven at 160 degrees Celcius (gas mark 3) for about 8 minutes.

If you want to be extra, add a little grated parmesan to some breadcrumbs, then toss this over the cheese on top of the food before it goes in the oven.

Yep, it is delicious x

Rocky Road Easter Cake

Rocky Road Easter Cake. Photo: SimoneySunday

My hubby is not a great fan of chocolate eggs or bunnies. Nor does he rave over marzipan and dried fruit, which means making him Easter eggs and Simnel cakes, while ostensibly appreciated, is futile (I have to eat them myself).

Therefore as he does love eating chocolates and chocolate cakes that are stuffed full with bits, such as brownie squares, cookies and fridge squares, I decided this year to make him a Rocky Road Easter cake. The question was, how should this best be done to look professional enough as a gift?

I did have a round cake mould, plenty of chocolate and plenty of digestives. I always keep stacks of chocolate and digestive biscuits for baking, as well as marshmallows for entertaining the youth group. Sure enough I also had glacé cherries in my cupboard so I set about my fiendish plan.

Preparation time: 30m
Keeps: two weeks in a cool, dry and sealed environment.
Serves: 12 easily, 14 if you are stingy. 2 if you are dedicated to eating it every day for two weeks.

Ingredients
Chocolate (I used Sainsbury's Basics range of chocolate bars, three dark and three milk. This came to about £2.10 worth of chocolate)
1 bag large marshmallows
Half a tub of glace cherries
1 pack of Basics digestive biscuits
1 pack Sainsbury's white chocolate
Various leftover icing decorations from the previous Easter (they keep mostly forever)
A cake mould (ring looks cool but I am sure you could do this with a loaf tin)

How to
I melted all the milk and dark chocolate in a large saucepan on the lowest possible heat.
Once the chocolate was stirred and melted the pot was removed from the heat and I then mashed nearly all the digestives into it using the end of a rounded rolling pin.
Some biscuits fell into my mouth by accident. It was great.
Don't mash the digestives up too much - leave some fairly chunky to give texture and crunch to the finished product.
Cut each cherry into half and stir into the mix.
Cut the marshmallows up (if they are large) into quarters. I found that I had to keep bathing the knife in warm water as it was getting sticky, so I gave up, washed my hands and tore the marshmallows up myself. Some may have fallen into my mouth by accident. I plead the fifth.
Stir the marshmallows into the mix.

Once it is all stirred, spoon into your cake mould. I should have put greaseproof paper in first but I didn't.

Leave to set in the fridge overnight.

Now the next day, if you have sensibly used greaseproof, simply lift it out of the mould. If you didn't, then like me you will have to warm it up a tiny, tiny bit so it melts enough to slide out without being a mess. To do this i left it sitting in a bowl of warm water for five minutes.

Once it is out and on a plate, decorate with melted white chocolate. I drizzled this over using a honey stirrer, from a fair height, and then dotted last year's sugar icing decorations around it in a fairly even pattern, and left it to set.

For the finishing touches, I wrapped it in clear polythene. I had bought a huge roll of this years ago from Woolworths for sweets I was making to put into little teacups for beautiful, unusual birthday presents (I will hunt for pictures and write up the recipe soon) and I still have plenty of this left.

Ready for Easter Morning. Photo credit: Simoney Sunday

A tiny scroll of shiny gold ribbon, an Easter verse from the Bible and some colourful Easter paper cut-outs and voila! A professional looking Easter Rocky Road cake.

And it was delicious.

Of Dating and Dicing: the United Dairies' Delectable Chicken

UD three-wheel float, c.1954. Photo posted to the Milko group by Don Reid

This is the first ever recipe I tried out of the first recipe book that I ever owned and it has become a staple in the Mermaid household.

Until 1995, I had learned from my mother, along with some stalwart cookery books from 1940-1978. Fruit cake? No problem. Rissoles? Easy! Stuffed Sheep's hearts? Bugger off.

But here I was at university, and I was about to cook my first meal for a man. Not just any man, but a chap with whom I was hoping to become romantically involved. This called for some more modern cuisine. But it also called for dining on a budget. I was a student, after all.

There was no proper internet to turn to, nor smart phones. I didn't even have a mobile phone back then. But then staring into the Spartan fridge in our painfully clean kitchen (we were three OCD neat freaks and still best friends, though not quite so tidy now), my gaze landed on a pint of milk and I had a brainwave.

Now during the 1980s and 1990s we used to support our local Milkman from the United
Dairies. He would come every Saturday with fresh eggs, milk in cool glass bottles, pats of golden, creamy butter in shimmering gold paper. And, once a year, my mother would buy me a diary for the year, which had recipes dotted throughout. I turned to this for help and there it was. For 1998, Pan-Fried Chicken in Mustard Sauce.

I cannot quite remember how UD told me to cook it but it was a doozy of a recipe. Here is my version, with love.

As an aside, I used to wash and clean the chicken before I cooked it. I used to wash off all the blood and fat, and then clean it with lemon juice and salt. All my friends' mothers did the same. Apparently this was not the right thing to do. Oh well I ain't dead yet. Anyway I do believe the lemon, salt and pepper gave something extra to the chicken. You decide.

I've built on the recipe by adding mushrooms and crushed garlic, but these are optional.

Ingredients (serves four)
1 pack of slender chicken breast fillets. I think at the time I used Sainsbury's budget label or Morrisons.
1 tub of 200g creme fraiche
2 medium brown onions
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 pack baby button mushrooms
6 teaspoonfuls of Dijon (grainy) mustard
Also
2-3 cups of basic white rice
1 bag of green beans (or mange tout if you want to be posh)

How to:
In one saucepan, start to boil the rice in a little water.

While this is doing, finely chop the onions and start to fry them in a little olive oil (or whatever you have) in a large frying pan. Add the crushed garlic.
Start dicing the chicken.
When the onions start to brown, turn down the heat.
Add the diced chicken to the pan and stir gently until it starts to turn white on the outside. Keep on a moderate heat for 10 minutes until the chicken is white in the middle.

Dice or slice the mushrooms. Clean and prepare the beans, and put to steam for five to eight minutes. If you do not (as I do not) have a steamer, put a small covering of water and butter over the beans in a saucepan and lightly cook with the lid on for about 8 minutes.

Add the diced mushrooms to the pan and season with a little butter, pepper, salt and/or garlic to taste.

Whack in the creme fraiche as soon as the meat starts to brown on the outside and stir in the mustard. Within two to three minutes, the sauce should look brown and the mustard worked through. As soon as the rice and beans are done, serve.

To look fancy
I grow my own chives so it's easy and cheap to put a lovely garnish on the meal. Also to create the bowl effect with the rice, put lots of rice into a small bowl - I have a small round plastic one left over from Uni days - and turn upside down on the plate.

It looks great, full of fresh flavour and zing, but all for less than £8:00 for four people. Now THAT is a champagne taste on a Cola budget!

Oh, and I ditched the romantic interest from University eventually, even though he loved the meal.