Bananna and pecan muffins with cream cheese and molasses frosting

Last night Mercer and I went to a friends house to cook dinner for her and her teenage kids but when I say 'we' cooked I meant 'I' cooked, as Mercer's Idea of cooking is cheese and marmite on toast or a anything with salad cream and BBQ sauce but that's another story for another day.
I decided to make the slow cooked beef and spinach balti curry that I was supposed to make a few days back but never got to and for pudding I made some banana and pecan muffins with a very delicious cream cheese and molasses frosting which were so so good. I stole the basis for the recipe from Nigella Lawson's Banana Bread recipe but just separated it in to muffin cases and added the frosting and I am so glad I added the frosting.

100g sultanas
75ml bourbon or dark rum
175g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g molasses sugar
2 large eggs
4 small, very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed
Muffin cases
1 pack of cream cheese
extra molasses sugar to make frosting with


Put the sultanas and rum or bourbon in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil.
Remove from the heat, cover and leave for an hour if you can, or until the sultanas have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.
Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3 and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or
a wooden spoon, combine well.
In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Then scoop a spoonful in to your muffin cases until it's used up and place in the oven on the middle shelf and leave for around 15-20 Min's or until springy in the middle. When they are in the oven mix your cream cheese and add your molasses sugar a little at a time and I think it's totally up to you how much you use! The good thing about molasses sugar is that it dissolves very quickly and makes a sumptuous glossy frosting.
Let the muffins cool before using a palate knife to spread the frosting on top of the muffins or if you prefer slice them open and put the frosting inside which is what I would have chosen to do but they had not risen enough!



I am afraid the icing does have a few bit's of unmelted molasses in it but never mind! And my brother has taken his camera back to use for a few days so the photo quality is not fantastic but you get the idea.

What ever is in the fridge soup or just 'Fridge Soup'

I really wanted to make a slow cooked beef, tomato and spinach curry for mine and Mercer's dinner tonight and so I went to the shop's to get all the bit's that I needed and came back home and put it all away only to get a phone call from Mercer explaining that he would be staying out with friends until,late so not to worry about dinner. Well to be honest I was slightly annoyed and may have huffed, puffed and stamped my feet a little as there was no way I wanted to cook a curry just for me. Don't get me wrong though as I will cook extravagantly for myself when ever the fancy takes me, but I really wanted to enjoy this with another person!
So instead I searched the fridge to see what i could find and I pulled out several large carrot's, a couple of small potato's, half a butternut squash, a large red onion , fresh ginger and some roast chicken left from Sundays lunch and I thought the most logical thing to do was make it into soup which is exactly what i did by sweating all the veg and ginger in butter, olive oil, turmeric, garam masala and cumin seeds for about 5 Min's and then added vegetable bouillon and simmered until the potato's were cooked, blended it all before returning it to the pan and putting shredded chicken in and the topping with coriander and pumpkin seeds!!! In the end I was glad Mercer stayed out because it was one of the best soups I have made and I am rather fabulous at making soup!

Growing for the first time and basil pesto

I recently went to a huge car boot sale in Sussex with my lovely friend 'Miss Dobby' who drove us there, which was very lovely of her as I still can't drive and I'm nearing the age of 26 now so should really start learning! It was not the best boot sale I have been to but there was a lot of local people selling an array of vegetable and herb plants from there gardens and allotments and so I decided to buy two tomato plants, a basil plant and a little coriander plant to. I have been carefully looking after them ever since and if I do say so myself they are looking very good and are growing so fast that I am going to spend my day re-potting them all. The best thing of all is that my two tomato plants have actual real tomato's on them, there is only three that I can see between them and they are very tiny and green but they are definitely tomato's so I am very happy!



My basil plant seems to be producing more basil than I know what to do with so I made a batch of basil pesto which was very easy,and here is how to do it.

Basil Pesto

Ingredients

1 small garlic clove
A pinch of sea salt
25g pine nuts, very lightly toasted
50g fresh basil leaves (this is the amount of picked leaves you get from a large pot from the supermarket)
25g Parmesan, finely grated
Juice of ½ lemon
125ml extra-virgin olive oil

Put the garlic and a pinch of sea salt in a food processor and pulse, then add the pine nuts and pulse again until roughly chopped (be careful not to over-process). Add the basil and pulse carefully until it is well mixed but still very textured. Turn into a bowl and stir in the Parmesan and lemon juice. Pour in the olive oil, mixing to a juicy paste. Season to taste.
And do not worry if you don't have a food processor just use a pestle and mortar which is an equally great way to do this and it's a bit of exercise for your arm which can't be bad!
You can stir the pesto into tagliatelle with mushroom, onion, garlic and bacon with shavings of Parmesan over the top,or as an alternative to tomato paste on the base of a pizza with spinach,mozzarella and sun-dried tomato.
I how ever decided to have mine in a sandwich with tomato's and mozzarella for breakfast this morning along with a purple berry smoothie I made by mixing natural yogurt, oats, honey, half a frozen banana, frozen strawberries and blackberries to give it the lovely purple colour that I can't show you as I drank it, sorry!

Saucisson Sandwich

Oh how I love sausages, they are delicious and come in so many varieties and flavours whether it be a good old British banger cooked on a BBQ and served in a soft white bap with tomato sauce and mustard or perhaps some pork and ale sausages with creamy mash and rich onion gravy on a wintry evening with a glass of red wine, perfect.
I decided to go on an outing to 'The Brighton Sausage Company' with the intention of buying some delicious organic, home-made bangers and oh how delicious they are! I adore TBSC, they make many different varieties of sausage including wild boar and I am known to pop in there if I am peckish when in town as there sausage rolls are the best I have ever had!





But instead of coming home with sausages I am came home with Saucisson and a few extra goodies from the surrounding shops that ended up in me making hands down one of the tastiest sandwiches I have ever had the pleasure of eating.....
I bought a round of olive oil bread which I filled with Dijon mayonnaise, Gruyere cheese, hand carved ham from the local deli and last but not leat slices of saucisson and to have long along side it a bowl of little cornichon pickles and it was so good I ate it before I could take a photo, sorry guys.

Gyoza dumplings.

I had the day off work today and had a hankering for Japanese gyoza dumplings and thought it would be fun to make some ( not many people think making Gyoza dumplings on your day off is fun, especially some of my friends but to me it's a day well spent!) so I took a bus into Brighton and went to "Yum Yums" which is an amazing oriental supermarket selling everything you could possibly want to make a delicious authentic Asian meal.



I had looked on the Internet for the basic idea of how to make the dumplings and what should be in them, most were just pork but some had pork and prawn and thas's the way I decided to go as I think the prawns add sweetness. Obviously adjust the measurements to how many dumplings you are making.

quarter of a Chinese cabbage
2 gloves garlic, minced and crushed into a paste
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 Chinese spring onion
6 ounces ground pork
1/3 pound prawns, shelled, deveined, and chopped
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 pack Gyoza wrappers

Put the chopped cabbage in a bowl and add the garlic, ginger, spring onion, pork, and prawns. Stir the ingredients so they come together. Add salt, sugar, pepper, soy sauce, and sesame oil and combine well.
Scoop up about 1 tablespoon of filling and put it in the center of a gyoza wrapper. Fold, pleat, and press to enclose the filling into a pleated crescent shape. Place the finished dumplings on a plate lined with parchment paper (to avoid the bottom sticking to the plate). Repeat the same until the filling is used up.Heat up a frying pan over medium-high heat and add 1 1/2 tablespoons oil. Add the dumpling's one at a time and fry them for 1-2 minutes, until they are golden or light brown at the bottom.

Add 1/4 inch depth of water into the frying pan and cover it immediately with a lid and lower the heat to medium. Let the water bubble away until it’s dry, for about 6-8 minutes. After the water is gone, remove the lid and fry for another 1-2 minutes until the bottoms are brown and crisp. Transfer the dumplings to a serving plate and serve immediately with a dipping sauce if you remembered to make or buy one which I did not but they tasted amazing if I do say so myself.

Cherries and Halloumi but not together!

I am very prone to having a look around the aisles at my local Aldi as you can find some great bargains there occasionally, especially in the fruit and veg section and yesterday was particularly wonderful as they were selling big punits of gorgeous ripe cherries for 69p and considering how expensive cherries are usually I thought this was a great bargain and have been eating cherries in Greek yogurt for my breakfast for the last few days. I am off to buy more today to make some kind of summery pudding with them and will hopefully be putting the results on here!



I don't know about the rest of you but I love love love halloumi, what's not to love about crispy on the outside soft on the inside salty tangy fried cheese served with roasted vine ripened tomato, fresh salad and olive oil on a hot summers day. The only bad point is the incredible moersihness of this crispy fried treat that I ate a whole packet of at lunchtime today, whoops.

I am actually back now I promise.

I have not been here for ages I know and I am very sorry but I had an unexpected trip to Cornwall and have just got back and to be honest I would not have had it any other way so there, anyway moving on!
Mercer and I stayed in St Agnes and it was so stunning with lovely local shops including two butchers, two fruit and veg shops, a deli/fishmongers and a bakery all selling fresh delicious local produce.



One night we had steaks cooked on the BBQ from one of the local butchers with potato salad and we had bought these beautiful bags of salad with edible flowers in them to have with it, another night we had fresh crab and scallops with home-made garlic mayo and chips and oh God it was heaven!!! As the weather was so gorgeous we did Lot's of clifftop walking and on one of them we stopped in a bay where there was a small cafe selling an ice cream called a hedgehog which was local vanilla ice cream dipped in clotted cream and the rolled in toasted caramelised nuts and although it may be one of the most fattening things to ever pass my lips it was very much worth it!
We ate out a few times and one of my favourite places was Blue Bar in Porthowan and the views were stunning over the beach and the food was great to, I had a big bowl of mussels and chips and mercer had a chili beef pizza and everything was fresh and delicious. This is a photo of the beach that the Blue Bar looked over and Blue Bar.






It really was so beautiful there and I wished that I didn't have to come home!