# 15 - ninja breadmen!!

The ultimate in Christmas ginger breadmen!!

The recipe I nicked from channel 4 food website - principally as it didn't involve treacle as well as golden syrup (which I've discovered comes in squeezy tubes = less mess!)

http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/baking/gingerbread-recipe-07-12-06_p_1.html

Couple of top tips - if your egg and golden syrup mixture leaves the dough a bit dry and crumbly add a little water to help it stick (but not too much else you won't be able to roll it).

I used a medium egg and the mixture wasn't quite wet enough - a large egg and a heated spoon so the golden syrup slides off easier would have probably helped too - but water worked fine!

The ninja breadmen cutters I found from Urban Outfitters I think - but you can find them on amazon too:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ninja-Bread-Men-Cookie-Cutters/sim/B0045EQ8VC/2

Hope you have as much fun making them as I did!

The Camden Road Cook

# 14 - Chicken soup for colds...

My most favourite chicken soup because its easy to make, luxurious yet (fairly) low calorie, oh and tasty of course!

Beautiful pics! but now to the scientific stuff...

The recipe is from the 'cook yourself thin' cookbook and should serve 6 - but with my friends you need accompaniments with it if its to go that far (e.g. garlic bread!)

you will need;
2 teaspoons oilve oil
1 onion finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic (well it will scare a cold away!), peeled and chopped
300g risotto rice
200ml dry white wine
2 litres of chicken stock (I used stock cubes)
200g chestnut mushrooms, wiped and sliced
1 tbs low fat creme fraiche
1 tbs flat leaf parsley finely chopped
20g freshly and finely grated parmesan
1 cooked chicken breast, skinned and shredded
salt & pepper

start off by heating half the oil in a pan (in this case my lovely large le creuset - remember you need to fit 2 litres of liquid in here) & gently fry onion & garlic over low heat for 5 mins until softened

add the rice and fry for a further minute stirring and coating the rice with the oil

pour in the wine & stir until its all absorbed. Pour over chicken stock & bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 15 mins or until the rice is tender (it doesn't matter if it gets well cooked).

The soup will be quite thin but fills out when you add the other ingredients.

Meanwhile heat a large frying pan & fry the mushrooms in the remaining olive oil for 5 min until golden brown.

When the risotto is cooked stir through the creme fraiche, parsley, parmesan, chicken and mushrooms et voila!

the camden road cook

# 13 - Sushi koko

So for Christmas this year I got a sushi making lesson at Yo! Sushi in Poland Street.


I went along on Saturday morning ready to learn what makes good sushi and I can tell you that the following are definitely required:

• sushi rice - cooked properly (I still need to pin this one down!)
• fresh fish
• fresh nori
• sushi rolling mat
• lots of practise in making!

Once you've cooked your sushi rice you need to spread it out and let it cool and then season with vinegar (or prepared rice seasoning you can buy in the supermarket).

Then for thin rolls (maki) you need half a sheet of nori and 80g of rice. Spread the rice evenly over the sheet from one edge, leaving a few cm uncovered on the other long side:

Me with nori sheet and sushi rice - you need to spread it out evenly... (this helps when the rice is cooked properly!)

When your rice is done, you add the filling eg. cucumber, down the centre of the rice (not the centre of the nori else it rolls off centre) and using the sushi mat roll the rice covered edge away from you to the uncovered edge.

The uncovered nori then acts as a seal - once your roll is formed like this increase the pressure to ensure the rice and filling is compacted and then shape - for beginners square is best as its easier to cut neatly.

The finished article - with classic beginner mistakes (the cucumber is off-centre and none of the rolls are in the 'right' shape).

Fillings you can use - cucumber in maki, but also tuna/salmon avocado etc

For larger rolls e.g. california inside out roll, this classically uses crabsticks, avocado, mayonnaise and sesame seeds, with the twist being that the rice is on the outside of the roll, rather than being inside (the stickiness of the rice ensures that it stays on!)

When I've had a chance to practise these and the very pretty hand rolls I'll post some more photos so you can either a) marvel at my progress b) spot the mistakes!

The Camden Road Cook

# 12 - Cookie monsters

I think most people love cookies...

Recently rediscovered my favourite cookies - and they are almost healthy!!

From the most comprehensive cook book I own - The Joy Of Cooking, the best cookies are the classic oatmeal ones.

Right ingredients & quantities are quite important in baking so I will actually write them out!

First pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Cand grease baking sheets (I also line them with baking parchment so that I can slide all cookies off in one go for endless rounds!)

For a half size recipe - about 20 odd cookies - you need the following quantities:

125g plain flour
1/3 teaspoon bicarb of soda
1/3 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (although I seem to have lost mine....)

whisk these ingredients together thoroughly

beat the following ingredients on medium speed until well blended

115g unsalted butter softened (really make sure its soft if doing by hand!)
150g light or dark brown sugar
22g sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

stir the flour mixture into butter mixture until well blended and smooth. Stir in:

80g dried cranberries (original recipe says rasins, but T recommended cranberries and they work really well - any dried fruit could be substituted)
175g rolled oats

Now the recipe says drop the dough, but whenever I make it, it turns out more a roll-mixture than a drop mixture :) (think I might need to use bigger eggs, or else actually remember the vanilla extract or something?!)

Anyway drop/form in hands about a tablespoon of dough for each cookie, leaving 8 cm between them on the baking sheet, press down lightly to flatten into 1 cm thick rounds

Bake 1 sheet at a time until the biscuits are lightly browned all over (turn halfway through cooking) and almost firm when pressed in the centre - 6 to 9 minutes

Remove the sheet from oven and let stand for 2 minutes until the biscuits firm slightly and then transfer to a rack to cool

When cool enough to eat, do so.

If feeling kind distribute to friends, colleagues and other cookie monsters (like PP ;P)

Else just eat :)

The Camden Road Cook

# 11 - cooking frenzy!

Ok - so today I'm trying to be super organised and cook up some stuff with the fresh veg in my fridge (as opposed to letting it go off like last week - salad soup anyone?? nah thought not...)

So tonight I've cooked up a hot and tasty cous cous number and Jamie Oliver's recipe for smashed courgette paste:

Hot and tasty cous cous

So I love cous cous, but to be frank cooking it from scratch seems overkill when I can buy ready flavoured-cooked-in-5 minutes cous cous from the shop, so my recommendation, buy a packet of Sainsbury's own brand and follow packet directions.

When my cous cous was cooked I added shelled pistachoes, halved cherry tomatoes, chopped mint, a squeeze of lemon and seasoning.

Then I took my already marinating halloumi and diagonally sliced courgette (whoops shoulda said already - these were in a mixture of rose harissa and olive oil), and a hot hot griddle pan..

Result = almost setting off the smoke alarm, but also tasty griddled halloumi (ummmm - Jess and Em know what I mean!)

Mix with the cous cous mixture and settle down into an eating frenzy!

Smashed Courgette Paste:

Whilst eating the cous cous the following was cooking away on the stove - olive oil fried off with 2 cloves of garlic and some chopped fresh red chilli (Jamie uses dried, but when I have fresh might as well use it!), and 6 courgettes coursely chopped (large lumps!)

Cook over a medium heat with the lid on the pan for about 30 minutes, giving the pan a shake every 5 minutes to ensure courgettes don't stick to the bottom.

When the courgette lumps are soft and almost pulped take off the heat and taste - add seasoning, lemon juice, 4 'Jamie' glugs of olive oil and a large handful of chopped mint, stir and eat!!

I plan to actually eat this with pasta and feta cheese for lunch tomorrow - yum!

The Camden Road Cook (stuffed full of cous cous)

#10 - Recipe: fail! Aka filo fun

So inspired by a Sainsbury's magazine section on cooking with filo pastry - i.e. the ready made stuff you can buy in the chiller section - I tried a few of the recipes to varying results!



Roast squash and blue cheese filo tarts

I've no pictures for these - but they were really simple, first roast the squash in cubes/chunks for about 20 / 30 mins in a 180 oven with some olive oil and rosemary (other herbs also work)

Then line some tart dishes, or in my case a low sided bowl, with the filo pastry, overlapping each layer at an angle to create a pretty layered effect.

Then fill the bowl with the roasted squash and crumble blue cheese over the top. Put back in the hot oven for 10 minutes or so, until the cheese is melted and the pastry cooked, et volia! easy peasy filo tarts!


Filo salmon en croute

So bouyed by the ease of the first recipe I decided to try the salmon en croute recipe for the first time I booked for PP.

The recipe involved taking a large salmon fillet, slicing it in half and filling with homemade pesto sauce, then wrapping with the filo pastry to bake in the oven.

So firstly I didn't get one large piece of salmon, but instead 2 pieces of similar size I could stack.

Then the pesto sauce was made with basil, toasted pine nuts, garlic, parmesan and olive oil all whizzed up in a hand blender together.

This pesto paste was then put between the two salmon fillets and the little remaining on top!

The whole lot was then wrapped in the filo pastry and cooked in the oven for c. 15 mins

The result however didn't impress PP!

The filo pastry wasn't the best pastry for a en croute as it managed to shatter everywhere when cutting in! And the thin but tall salmon fillets weren't as good as a flatter fillet would have been, but overall it tasted good, just the look wasn't the best lol!

Not sure there will be a next time after that recipe fail...

The Camden Road Cook

#9 - Oodles of noodles

Or the safari dinner gone wrong....

So the idea was for me and some friends to do a safari dinner one Saturday night.

The general gist of this is that you have a different course in each house scattered around Camden making an interesting night, bit like a restaurant pub crawl and pot luck mixed up.

First issue was lack of participants, despite J's best efforts it ended up being me and the 3 J's (who all share the same flat - so wasn't going to be much of a safari....)

Then the weather was miserable, so instead of even attempting the travel the 3 J's brought their dishes to mine...

We started with cava and canapes - blinis with cream cheese and smoked salmon & veggie vol au vents, very sucessful - went down a treat with X factor on the telly!

Then came my disasterous main course.... prawn noodles. This was a Sainsbury's recipe, for ginger marinated prawns with mange tout and baby corn and those thin rice noodles.

Now I have cooked rice noodles before, however it hasn't been for quite a long time... so cooking enough for 4 I followed the instructions on the pack, excepting one...

The pack said use a pyrex dish, but this wasn't big enough for all the noodles, so cleverly I used a ceramic oven dish.

You are supposed to soak the noodles for 5 minutes in the pyrex dish, before rinsing with cold water to stop them cooking and then adding to the stir frying rest of the ingredients...

The noodles were terrible, they stuck together, in one large lump, some were under cooked and al dente... some were worse than al dente, and then in desperation to make them work I over stir fried.

In short we ended up with one lump of noodles which was over cooked on the outside and crunchy in the middle - you couldn't have done this if you were trying!!

Everyone very politely tried the noodles and then gave up and just picked the veg and prawns out - so in short not a successful course.

J managed to save the meal with his cheese board and port, after the varied chocolate course from the other J..... and then some Jenga (to go with the J theme??)

So bruised from the bad experience I decided to test the cooking instructions for the noodles...

3 different set ups:

- a pan of water on the hob brought to the boil, noodles added and then removed from the heat
- pyrex jug with freshly boiled water poured over noodles and left for 5minutes (per pack instructions)
- plastic container with boiled water as above

The results?:

- Pyrex al dente noodles (but edible)
- Plastic cooked noodles, potentially overcooked and cooled to set in one lump (nice!)
- Pan al dente, but better than pyrex

Conclusion - do not follow pack instruction!! use a pan on the hob and treat noodles similar to pasta, but taking off the heat when brought to the boil...

The Camden Road Cook