Restaurant Review: Bishopsgate Kitchen, London

Poached eggs seem to be a bit of a thing with me at the moment. My team had a very early start recently when the company we work for reported its Q3 financial results, so when all was done, we went for a team breakfast (as it was also my manager's birthday) at the Bishopsgate Kitchen. I didn't realise until I looked at the website just now that it is run by Benugo's which actually runs the café in my office building!

This was definitely better as it is a proper bar and restaurant with quite a wide menu of dishes, far more than it would be feasible to offer in the workplace. I had the chorizo hash, which came with sliced potatoes, a poached duck egg, spinach and parmesan cheese, for £10.50.

It tasted really good though a little on the spicy side because of the chorizo and was very filling, though I think quite expensive for what it was. I also found the potatoes quite dry so I kept needing sips of water while I ate! Overall it was still a good breakfast and a nice change from the norm.

Read More

Leon Poached Egg Pots

I love the breakfast egg pots at Leon. Have you come across Leon before? They are largely based around London with branches at airports as well as a couple of other cities and their motto is 'naturally fast food'. I first went to a Leon at Heathrow airport but now there are several around where I work.

I still remember how good the egg pot was that I had at the airport three years ago - it was simple but a combination I hadn't come across before, with a poached egg, cheese sauce and chopped ham served in a little pot. I decided to make it for my husband and me for brunch last weekend and found this recipe on Lovefood, written by Leon founder Henry Dimbleby.

I didn't follow the recipe that closely as I didn't have any truffle oil to put in the cheese sauce and to poach the eggs I cheated and used 'poachies' - little bags that you crack the eggs into and put them in a pan of boiling water. I have an egg poaching pan, and a microwave egg poacher that I use sometimes at work, and have tried various ways to poach eggs and have found these to be the best by far, so I recommend them if you have trouble getting perfectly poached eggs!

So all I did was whip up a quick cheese sauce from a roux of flour and butter and then milk and melted cheese, poach the eggs and fry some chorizo. I served them in ramekins with the egg on the bottom, some salt and pepper, then the cheese then the chorizo on top - I can't begin to tell you how good these are!

Read More

Butterfly Thinking of You Cards

While I was sorting out my craft cupboard - which is a narrow (single) wardrobe from Ikea, with shelves and two drawers instead of a hanging rail - I came across some cards I made ages ago (probably a couple of years).

Sometimes you need a card for a sombre or sorry occasion, or sometimes just to wish people well and let them know you are thinking of them. All the elements on both of these cards came from one big pack; the butterflies are die cuts that I thought went well with the patterns of the backing paper. The 'thinking of you' sentiments are also both die cuts, with gold words and edging on white card; I mounted them on the cards with adhesive pads so they would stand out.

Read More

Cowboy Pie

This pie is based on an idea I saw in a Slimming World book or magazine a while ago but isn't actually particularly Slimming - I wanted an excuse to use my cow print rolling pin again! It came from Etsy and was a Christmas gift last year I think but I've only used it a few times. The rolling pin leaves an imprint of a cow pattern on anything you roll out!

I decided to theme a pie around it and use it to roll out the pastry to go on the top. The cow theme would work for cottage pie (which uses minced beef) but I decided to make what I call a cowboy pie - based on sausage and beans which have associations with cowboys sitting around a camp fire!

Preheat the oven to 180C. First fry or grill a couple of sausages per person until they are just cooked and cut into chunks. You can also add some diced chorizo or pancetta to the pan and fry. Put into a pie dish (either an individual dish or a large one - I did an individual one for my husband) and pour over half a tin of baked beans and mix together.

You can see how the rolling pin leaves the cow pattern on the pastry. I used ready-made shortcrust pastry though you can make your own.

Top the pie with the pastry and trim the edges; make a small hole for any steam to escape

When baked the pastry should turn golden brown (though it doesn't look very brown in this picture)

You also can't see the cow pattern very well any more in this photo, but it was there!

This is what the pie looks like inside - my husband said it was good. It's a nice change to the way you might normally serve sausage and beans, anyway!

Read More

Meal Planning Monday 2016 - Week 46

I was supposed to be away for three nights this week but have cancelled as my cat is very ill and I don't want to leave her on her own. It's been a very upsetting few days as I'm so worried about her. I don't much feel like eating but know I need to eat proper food and not live off junk food, and we are going back to the vet on Wednesday so hopefully will get some better news, otherwise the rest of the week's meal plan might go out the window.

Prior to my cat being ill I was trying to declutter and found a huge folder of Weightwatchers recipes torn out of their magazines. I haven't followed Weightwatchers for a long time and have probably enough recipes to cook something different every day for the rest of my life, but wanted to use a few of them before getting rid of the rest! So these recipes are from various magazines from several years ago - I will share some of my versions of the recipes on my blog over the coming weeks, if I get back into blogging - giving my kitty cat some extra love has been my priority recently.

Monday - curried fish pie from Weightwatchers magazine for me, with chicken for him as he doesn't eat fish.

Tuesday - tortelloni pasta with pumpkin and sage from Weightwatchers magazine - but I think I will use butternut squash

Wednesday - teriyaki salmon from Weightwatchers magazine for me, with beef medallions  for him

Thursday - chicken in a creamy tarragon sauce from Weightwatchers magazine

Friday - tuna polpette in red pepper sauce from Weightwatchers magazine; spaghetti and meatballs for him

Saturday lunch - soup with crusty bread
dinner: chicken fajitas and enchiladas I was going to do last week but didn't
dessert: pear and hazelnut crumble for me, from Weightwatchers magazine; chocolate crumble from this recipe for my husband as he doesn't eat fruit

Sunday
lunch- spicy prawn pockets from Weightwatchers magazine for me, with pizza filling for him
dinner - chicken basque from Weightwatchers magazine

This is a blog hop, join in!

An InLinkz Link-up

Read More

MidWeek Coconut Fish Curry

I love prawns, and think they work really well with pasta or curry, so when I came across this recipe for a coconut fish curry on the BBC Good Food website, where the prawns took centre stage, I knew I had to make it. The flavours are inspired by both India and Thailand and doesn't take that long to cook -the part that took longest was probably finding all the ingredients in the cupboard! So it makes a great mid-week meal.

The shrimp paste in the recipe is not the kind that you may have had n your sandwiches as a child; it is an essential ingredient in Thai cooking. These days it is easy to find in supermarkets like Tesco though, in the speciality ingredients aisle.

To serve 4, you need:
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 small red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
2 lemongrass stalks, split and bruised with a rolling pin
1 heaped tbsp. medium curry powder
1 heaped tbsp. light muscovado sugar
small bunch of coriander, stems finely chopped
400g can coconut milk
450g skinless hake or other white fish fillets, cut into large chunks
220g prawns
1 lime, halved
cooked rice to serve
I also served mine with some broccoli

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the onion for 5 minutes until softened. Stir in the ginger, garlic, shrimp paste, chilli and lemongrass and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the curry powder and sugar and stir until the sugar starts to melt, then add the coriander stems, coconut milk and 2 tbsp. water. Bring to a simmer.

 

Add the fish and prawns and squeeze in half the lime. Simmer for 5 minutes until the fish is cooked, scatter over the coriander leaves and serve.

Read More

GBBO Pistachio and White Chocolate Churros

I treated myself to the latest Great British Bake Off recipe book since it was only £7 at a Book People book sale at work. This was when the series was only part-way through and I wasn't sure what they would be making each week though the recipes in the book do give a clue. I really liked the look of the pistachio and white chocolate churros, which I think I remember were made by Jane, the eventual runner-up of the show.

The full recipe is available on the BBC Food website which is helpful as it would have taken me ages to write out everything I did! I consider myself a fairly proficient baker, but I found these really hard - not to make as much as to assemble.

The book had a good explanation of how to shell pistachios; after you remove the hard shell there is still a brown skin covering the green nut. Bring the pistachios to boil in a pan of water and simmer for ten seconds; drain them in a sieve then rub with kitchen paper or use your fingers and the brown skins come off easily.

When I made the pistachio custard and pulsed the nuts in a food processor, I just couldn't get them smooth enough, so my custard was quite lumpy, even after I sieved it.

 

Making the churros was fairly easy but the largest star nozzle I have isn't that big - I wasn't aware that they come in bigger sizes but it meant that the churros that I piped were pretty thin. This wouldn't normally be a problem - I just rolled some of them in sugar and served them with chocolate sauce and they were brilliant. However, the idea is to pipe the pistachio custard inside the churros which I found absolutely impossible as they were so thin, and my custard was quite thick. I ended up splitting them down the middle and serving as a sort of open churro!

 

 

These did taste really nice but were quite fiddly to make with the various stages and I couldn't work out how to pipe them big enough to fill. I won't be making these again, or applying to go on the Great British Bake Off any time soon!

Read More