Pumpkin risotto and biscuits

After the pumpkin pasta, I was thinking of what else to make with it. So I decided to make a risotto. I roasted the pumpkin whilst I was making the risotto. The pumpkin was then stirred in at the end with the cheese and lemon. I saw a recipe for a risotto served with a pesto, I like the idea so I stole it! The basil plants are doing well enough that I can use them to make pesto. Still not bored of the pumpkin!

Pumpkin risotto

• 1 Small onion, chopped
• 200 g risotto rice
• 1 Wine glass of vermouth
  
• Vegetable stock (approx 500 ml)
• 1 Lemon
• Pecorino Cheese, 2tbsps
  
• Enough pumpkin for 2, chopped

Roast the pumpkin @ 180 degrees C for 30 mins.

Meanwhile, soften the onion in a little olive oil in a saucepan. Add the rice and cook for a couple of mins. Then add the vermouth. Once this has been absorbed add the veg stock one ladle at a time. Once the stock has been absorbed, add another ladle until the rice is cooked. Stir in the lemon juice, cheese and pumpkin. Serve with the pesto.

Basil Pesto

• 1 Large handful of basil
• 1 Large handful of pinenuts
• 2 Cloves of garlic
• Lemon juice
• Olive oil

Blitz in a food processor, using the olive oil and lemon juice to taste.

For a few weeks Andrew has been making gingerbread biscuits. So I decided to give Andrew a break and make some biscuits. I saw this recipe when I was having a read through some of Stonehead's older posts. These biscuits were dead easy to make and were very hard to resist when they came out the oven. This photo doesn't do them justice.

Meme, 6 random facts about me

I have been tagged by Fiona at The Cottage Smallholder to share 6 random things about myself.

Tag Rules:

Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on the blog. Write six random things about yourself. Tag six people at the end of your post. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

6 random facts about me:

1. I have unbelievable memory when it comes to song lyrics, even if I haven't heard the song for a while. When studying it can be very annoying that I can't remember a simple scientific fact but can remember the words for many many songs.
   
   
2. I can pretty much sleep anywhere and through anything.
   
   
3. TV influenced many of my early aspirations for possible careers. When I was watching Silent Witness I wanted to be a pathologist, Kavanagh QC made think that maybe I could be a barrister and wildlife programmes made me think that maybe I was destined to be David Attenborough's assistant.
   
   
4. Like Fiona, I have tiny feet. I wear size 3 shoes. These are inherited from my mum. It makes buying climbing shoes very hard work.
   
   
5. I am grateful to Serena Williams, now people can spell my name correctly.
   
   
6. Once we have moved today, I will have lived at 7 address in 8 years!
   

I am tagging:

• Feast with Bron
• Not greedy. Just curious
• Lynn's cooking blog
• My cooking hut
  
• Today I will mostly be growing
• Veg plot
  

Yoghurt making

Andrew and I are really keen to try and be less reliant on the supermarkets as we can. So we have been doing little things. Ever since reading it on the beansprouts blog, we wanted make yoghurt. So we gave it a go. It was so easy. You can use a flask but we bought a yoghurt maker, for ease. It holds a litre beaker, which makes it much easier to clean. We bought a litre of milk to the boil and allowed it to cool down.


We then stirred in a few dessert spoons of yoghurt (this has to be live yoghurt) and poured it into the beaker.

We fill the yoghurt maker with lukewarm water. The beaker is then put into the yoghurt maker.

I told Andrew that it would take 8-10 hours, but he wanted to watch it work.

The first time I made it, I made Greek yoghurt. Which means you need to strain the yoghurt.

We have yoghurt with our lunches, so this is a lot cheaper than shop bought. It also removes one more thing off our shopping list. We normally make a fruit compote to have with the yoghurt. It is now part of our weekly rituals, as well as making bread and muesli. It's great to have the yoghurt in fridge ready for meals. We have started to use it as a substitute for creme fraiche in sauces.

Meme

Jules from Domestic Goddess in Training has tagged me for a meme, here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their Blogs.

So here are my facts:

1. After my GCSE's I did a year of catering college before I decided that I wanted to do something a bit more academic and went off to do A-levels.
   
   
2. I would love to own a smallholding.
   
   
3. When I am not working, climbing or cooking , I love to go the cinema. Picking a favourite film is very hard for me, so I'll leave that for another meme.
   
   
4. I have appeared on BBC News 24 and some national papers talking about my PhD work.
   
   
5. By the time I finish my PhD I will have spent 22 years in education, you would have thought that I learnt something by now!

I tag

• Closet Cooking
• Tinned Tomatoes
• Blagger
• Yumblog
• Accidental Smallholder

Thanks to Jules for thinking of me.

Pancetta and Bean Pasta

As a kid I never like any kinds of beans. Luckily things have changed and I have really started to enjoy them. I still don't like Heinz baked beans, but I don't think think thats the beans fault. With some runner beans and pancetta in the fridge, I decided to use them in pasta.

Whilst the fusilli was cooking. I fried two sliced garlic cloves and runner beans in olive oil for a couple of minutes. I then seasoned this and added a splash of vermouth and some of the water from the pasta pan. I then added a couple of spoonfuls of creme fraiche and grated in some pecorino cheese. Meanwhile in a dry frying pan, I cooked the pancetta until golden and crispy. I then drained and stirred the pasta into the sauce. I served this with some more grated pecorino and topped with the pancetta. I am sorry there aren't any exact amounts but I am not sure how much I used. If you were using chunks of pancetta rather than slices, I would have fry them in the same pan as the garlic and beans but before they were added.

I am entering this into this weeks roundup of Presto Pasta Nights. This week its hosted by Kevin at Closet Cooking. I love his recipes and can relate as our kitchen is also small. Which can make things challenging! Have a look on his blog for the round up for this week.

If you can't beat them, join them!

After reading the weekly curry posts from Jules and this post from stonehead at the weekend. We decided to have Rogan Josh for dinner on Sunday. I really love curry and the fact it is so loved in Britain. Whenever we have a new person in the lab I'm always directing them to my favourite Indian restaurant as well as my favourite Scottish restaurants. As you can see from the photo this was washed down with a pint of Black Sheep. Some people seem to have the perception that curry is a difficult thing to make but its dead easy!

Rogan Josh (Serves 4-6)

• 1 Kg beef or lamb, we use stewing beef
• 2 onions (chopped)
• 125g plain yogurt
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tbsp ground coriander
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp ground cardamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp tumeric
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 400g can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp garam marsala
• Almonds
• Fresh coriander

1. Fry onions in some vegetable oil until soft.
2. Stir in yoghurt, garlic, ginger and spices.
3. Add tomatoes, season and simmer for a few minutes.
4. Add meat.
5. Cover and cook for 1-1 and a 1/2 hr.
6. Take the lid off and reduce sauce.
7. Toast almonds.
8. When the sauce is thick enough, add the garam marsala and coriander.
9. Serve and top with almonds.
   

Pizza

Andrew usually makes the pizzas, apparently he's better at it than me! So after reading We Are Never Full's post about pizza, I had a craving for a decent pizza. Let's face the pizza's you usually get in a restaurant are over-priced and not that great!

We had some fennel salami and olives in the fridge so it seemed like a good topping. Andrew made the bases and sauce whilst I was still at work.


The pizza was great and we have another one for lunch. Yum, yum and it makes a change from soup and a roll.


Andrew used to make pizzas a lot when we at uni, so he is much better at it than me.

I started to filter the lemon and lime vodka last night. So all I have to do is add a sugar syrup. I'll put photos up later and let you know how it tastes!

Keep on swimming . . .

Yet again, I sat in front of my laptop trying to get on with my thesis. At the moment I feel like Dory from Finding Nemo. Keep on swimming, keep on swimming. I have to finish this thesis in 6 months otherwise I don't get, sounds simple!

Anyway, the veg box arrived. This week we had:

• Celeriac
• Onions
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Parsnips
• Cauliflower (don't tell Andrew!)
• Spring cabbage
• Leeks

Tonight we had a risotto, I haven't had one for ages. So I raided the freezer and found some chicken. So we had a risotto with leek, chicken, sweetcorn and cabbage.

I also pickled some beetroots which was left over from the box. I got the recipe from yet another blog, Fresh as a daisy. I made 3 jars, I will try and leave them to mature for about a week. Not sure that I can wait that long but I will try.

Some fishy looking pasta!

Yesterday I made the first soup of the week. After reading a recipe for parsnip soup on Musings from a Stonehead's blog. I was inspired to make my own. It was pretty much the same recipe, except I added 1 tsp of mild curry powder after the garlic was soft and let it cook out for a minute before adding the potato and parsnip. I left out the bacon, only because the freezer is low on meat at the moment so we don't have any!
I had the soup for lunch today, it was superb. Today I had a really busy lab day. I only had one tea break! It seemed to working well when I left at 7pm, so fingers-crossed. When I got home, Andrew was dishing up, perfect timing. As you can guess from this blog, Andrew rarely gets in the kitchen. Not because he can't cook far from but because I like cooking so much. Dinner tonight was tuna balls with pasta and homemade ciabatta from the freezer. It was really good. I was so tired from the lab that it was good to eat straight away.

After dinner I decided to make some seeded soda rolls to go with our soups at lunchtimes. I usually make these in batches, normally when one of the food shops in byres road has buttermilk. I made 20 rolls, which should last us a couple of weeks. Right, I need to go to bed. Lab work is tiring.

Preparing for the week ahead

We had a day outside yesterday, trying some climbing at a new venue though we didn't get much done there. So today we got some chores done. I went into the lab in the morning to run some more samples and check the instrument was behaving itself. I came back and Andrew had cleaned the flat. Then we had cheese and pickles for lunch.

Andrew wanted to make my blog look a bit prettier, so I thought I should make some rock cakes. These are one of Andrew's favourite cakes, so he didn't mind either. As you can see from the picture that he even likes the cake batter! It is one of the joys of making cakes. I think you will agree that blog does look much nicer now, All due to Andrew's hard work!

I also made some savoury muffins for Andrew's lunch. They were sweetcorn, ham and cheese muffins. Andrew is on site at the beginning of the week, so th should make a good lunch.

• 200g self-raising flour
• 50g cheddar, grated
• ham sliced, couldn't say how much about 50g.
  
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 150ml yoghurt
• 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
• 198g can sweetcorn, drained

• Heat the oven to 190oC/gas mark 5. Grease a muffin/bun tin.
• Mix flour, ham and cheese in one bowl. Mix the other ingredients in another bowl with 4 tbsp of water.
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix to combine.
  
• Spoon into the muffin tin and bake for approx. 20 mins until golden.
• Cool on a rack.
  

Tonight's dinner was a Moroccan inspire stew with lemon cous cous. This months beansprouts challenge is to eat one vegetarian meal a week. So this is a nice warming recipe to try.

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic
  
• Veg ( I used 2 carrot, 1 small swede and 4 smallish potatoes), chopped
• 2tsp ground cumin, 1tsp turmeric and paprika, 1/2 tsp ginger and allspice
• 1 tin of chopped toms
• 150ml of veg stock
• 1 tin of chickpeas
• a handful of apricots
• 2 tsp harissa paste

• Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft. Then add the veg and fry for 5 mins.
• Add the spices and cook for a minute.
• Then add tomatoes, stock, chickpeas and apricots. Cook until veg are soft.
• Just before serving, stir in the harissa paste.
• Serve with cous cous.

OK, I have an addiction . . .

Its not too bad, but I feel I should acknowledge it. So here it goes . . .My name is Serena and I am addicted to blogs.

It doesn't take over my life. But I do like to read them, a lot! My lab work usually requires an instrument to run the samples that I have prepared this means that I spend a lot of time in front of a computer analysing the data. So to break the monotony, I check google reader to see if anyone has written something new. I have 3 different folders, climbing blogs to see what local climbers have been up to. What I call self-sufficient blogs like Beansprouts, Musings from a Stonehead and The accidental smallholder. These blogs contain useful tips which I hope to use when I realise my dream of having a smallholding. These blogs are a bit life envy really. But I am sure that my dream will happen, though I am far from it right now! The last folder contains my food blogs, this includes blogs from The Guardian and Good Food but also from individuals like We Are Never Full and Domestic Goddess in Training.

It is this last blog which I found a recipe I had to try. Irish Mocha Cupcakes, as soon as I saw these I had to make them. The recipe did not disappoint. I made them on Thursday evening and I had with tea in the afternoon on Friday with the girls at work. They had 2 each so they must have liked them! I didn't pipe the icing, so they don't look as fancy as the originals. I added walnuts on the top.




See my addiction isn't that bad, it ends with cakes for everyone!

An easy weekend!

We have spent the last few weekends away from home or with people visiting us. So this weekend we decided to take it easy.

Andrew did some work on his thesis and I made some quick visits to the lab, just a couple of hours. Basically to check that the machines were working and to do a small amount of lab work. On Saturday I came back via Kember and Jones with some bread for a cheesey lunch. Normally we would have this kind of lunch with an nice English cider for example Westons or Dunkertons but we wanted to do some work afterwards. The cheeses were Cornish Yarg, Shropshire Blue, Arran Blue and Somerset Brie. With this lunch we had some fennel salami and hazelnut saucisson, also some homemade spicy apple and walnut chutney and Andrew's mum's spicy pickled onions. Yum, yum, yum. I may have a cheese addiction!


We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out, looking through our theses (or whatever the plural of thesis is!) and watching Britain winning lots of gold medals in the cycling. For dinner that night we had a beef stew made with Guinness, containing carrots, celery, parsnip and swede. We washed it down with Arran Sunset Ale.


Today I popped into the lab to check that everything was ticking over. Andrew continued to work on his thesis. I am wondering what we will do when we finish our PhD's they have been such a big part of our lives. I am sure that we will find something to fill the gap.I made lunch for the next couple of days, a vegetable broth containing swede, carrot, parsnip, cabbage and pearl barley. All I did was slowly fry the veg for 5 mins then added vegetable stock and pearl barley cooked for one and a half hour, adding the cabbage ten minutes from the end.

Dinner tonight was inspired by a blog I read regularly The Cottage Smallholder. Andrew and I try only eat meat that has not been subject to intense farming. We get the majority of ours from Farmers Markets. This means that we can't afford to eat meat everyday. I personally don't think that this its a bad thing. So I made Delia's (before she went to the dark side) vegetarian shepherd's pie. We didn't have the correct beans so we used a tin of pinto beans and also yellow split beans. It was still delicious. This was accompanied with an onion gravy and purple sprouting broccoli. The onion gravy comes from one of my favourite food writers and possibly one of my favourite cookery books. Its from Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. I love this book some much, when I got it for Christmas I read it cover to cover. Nigel writes so beautifully about food. Its a great book!


By the way we will be creating a separate blog for our climbing exploits, so this blog will be purely about our food.