Easter Menu Tag Game!

This morning I received an invitation from the lovely cajunlicious blogger, Jessica, to take part in an Easter menu tag game!  I feel privileged that she chose me to be a part of this game; it will be exciting to see what other bloggers come up with too!

The aim of the game - Each person that is tagged is to come up with 5-10 suggested MENU ITEMS for EASTER. You have to upload these entrees, appetizers, desserts, or whatever you think would make a lovely Easter dinner/lunch from your previous posts with the photos, and link them back for the recipe.  After doing this, link it to 10 bloggers for the invitation to do the same! 

LETS PLAY!

Cream of Butternut Squash and Chili Soup - served cold - starter sized portion.

Pork Medallions in a Lemon and Herb Crust, served hot, with salad and sweet potato chips (optional)

Pea and Ham Soup - served hot -main sized portion.

Spring Themed Chocolate Butterfly cakes 

After Eight Cupcakes - perfect for the end of a night; don't eat them until after eight though.

I am inviting to play this game - 
Lucy @ The Kitchen Maid
Linda @ My Kind of Cooking
Mary @ One Perfect Bite
Teresa @ A Blog About Food
Yadi @ Shop. Cook. Make
Mango Cheeks @ Allotment 2 Kitchen
Shahana @ Me n My Apron
Amy @ Amy's Dinner
Caroline @ All That I'm Eating
Amuse Bouche @ Amuse Bouche

Hope that you can all find the time to participate, it's just a bit of fun :)

Have a lovely Easter weekend everybody!

Cream of butternut squash and chili soup

This weekend I made butternut squash soup with a spicy twist to it.  I've always enjoyed this soup because of its taste and the fact that it is a good hearty meal, but I thought it was about time it was spiced up a bit and made more interesting.  I've tried red peppers in the past, but soaking and pealing them was just far too faffy, carrots didn't make it interesting either and butternut squash on its own - unless you use a tonne of butter, sugar, salt or garlic - will not even at the best of times be as flavoursome as anticipated.

Ingredients:
x1 whole butternut squash
x2 medium spice chilies (or hot - depends on your palette)
x3 garlic cloves
x1 tsp of butter
x1 pinch of salt
x1 chicken stock cube
x4 tbsp of sour cream
Enough boiling water to cover the ingredients in the pan

.Method:

1.  Add a pinch of salt and the butter to a deep pan, along with the chilies and the garlic and fry on a very low heat.  To save on washing just use one deep pan, instead of a deep pan and a frying pan.

2.  Chop the squash into four sections and spoon out the seeds in the middle.

3. Turn the pan heat up to a medium heat.  Peal and chop the squash into small cubes and add them to the pan.

4.  Cover the pan with a lid and leave to simmer, occasionally stirring to prevent the ingredients from sticking to the pan for about 20 minutes.  This is just to soften the squash and allow it to absorb the chili and garlic flavours.

5.  Boil 1-2 litres of water (you don't know how much you're going to need at this point because it really depends on the size of the squash)

6.  Add your chicken stock cube to the pan and cover the ingredients with water, about 1cm coverage over the squash will do just fine.  Boil this for 20 minutes on a medium heat.

7.  You can use a food processor or a hand blender for this part where all you need to do is carefully pulse the mixture until it is completely smooth.  If you do use a hand blender please be careful for hot splatters of soup getting on your skin, also it is orange so please wear an apron and avoid wearing light coloured clothing.

8.  Add your sour cream and lightly pulse until creamy, then serve.


NB: Your soup has just come straight off the hob so please wait until your soup has cooled down before eating it!

ENJOY :)

Saturday Tagine.

So, last summer Matthew and I visited Morocco for two weeks, by the end of the holiday we had pretty much had enough of couscous, tagine and Berber omelettes.  But, every now again we do like to eat our own Moroccan dishes.  Tonight I made us a vegetable tagine!

In Morocco you eat tagine out of your own tagine pot, it's not dished up and served on a plate like I have done and they are also boiled for hours and hours and mine was only boiled for one hour.  BUT it still tasted lovely and you can pretty much put whatever you want in this dish as long as you have the basic Moroccan flavours like fresh coriander, garlic, cumin and chick peas.  This is a recipe that I found on the BBC Good Food website which seems pretty good, but it could do with a few more tweeks.

Ingredients:
Olive oil.
Cumin.
Fresh coriander
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 small butternut squash
2 large carrots
Large handful of dried apricots
1 tin of chick peas
Couscous
Flaked almonds
Chicken stock with 600ml of boiled water

Method: 

1. Pre-heat your oven to 220'C/gas mark 8.
2. Chop up your onions and then pour 2 tbsp of oil in to a tagine or casserole dish and gently cook the onion until soft - about 10 minutes.
3. Add 2 tsp of cumin, salt, pepper, garlic and a handful of coriander - chopped. Stir in the harissa paste and cook for 2 minutes.
4. Put the squash and carrots into the dish, and stir well so that they are well coated with the paste and the onion.
5. Pour over the stock, add the apricots (chopped) and bring to a gentle simmer in the oven. Cook over a low heat for about 45 minutes until the vegetables are very tender.
6. Meanwhile, toast your flaked almonds in a small frying pan, about 10 minutes on a medium heat will do.  Put as much couscous as you are going to eat in to a large bowl and pour over hot water so that it is just covering the couscous.  Leave to stand for 5-10 minutes until all the water has been absorbed into the couscous. Gently fluff up with a fork and stir through the toasted almonds.
7. Add your chickpeas to the tagine and stir through 1 more tsp of cumin and another handful of coriander - chopped.  Season and then simmer for 10 further minutes.
8. Spoon the couscous into bowls then ladle the tagine on top. Serve scattered with extra coriander and pepper.

This recipe is great for weekend dinners when you have the extra time to cook it and you don't have to use butternut squash either, you can swap it for sweet potato!  

Enjoy the tagine folks!