Filo Pastry Disaster!

I keep seeing recipes popping up in my emails using filo pastry! I had a chance to go the surpermarket and managed to grab a roll which is pre-made! I have never used filo pastry before so was excited to test this out! In all the recipes that i have read about filo pasty, you just need to brush it with some oil or melted butter and unwrap it and fill it up with your filling! Simple, right!?

In hindsight, i think, I should’ve looked it up on YouTube on how to use Filo pastry!! Mine was a disaster, i had no idea how fragile the sheets are as it kept tearing and then i wasn’t sure how many sheets to use or how it cooks etc! It also took me ages to prep and make!

I saw this on BBC Good Food website – Crispy Greek-style pie. The times were – prep time – 10 mins, cook time – 30 mins. My timings was more like 30-40 mins prep time and an hour or so to cook it!! I mean the recipe looked relatively simple so I thought i would add some mushrooms to bulk it up slightly. It all started to go wrong from Step 2 as there were a couple of issues! Firstly, my tin was too big, secondly, the pastry kept tearing up and i felt like it couldn’t hold the fillings. When i tried to scrunch it all up at the end, there wasn’t enough pastry to cover it as there wasn’t any ‘over hang’ so i ended up added another one on top and at the bottom because it was splitting. After 30 mins of baking, the pastry still looked pretty raw so i had to leave it in the oven for a longer time, for about an hour!!

My husband said it was very tasty, i don’t know if he was trying to comfort me as i couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or not!! lol! I thought the pastry was too thick but the filling was delicious! 🙂 I had left over pastry and i didn’t want to waste it so i looked online to see what can you do with the left overs.

I found this recipe from BBC Food website – Chocolate and hazelnut filo rolls by The Hairy Bikers. I had some nutella in the cupboard, although i didn’t make the vanilla cream dip! They were very yummy!! However, I think for next time, i won’t be so generous with the nutella as it was really sweet!

After this disastrous cooking with filo pastry, would i use it again?! Yes, i would and i would definitely look it up on YouTube and use a smaller tin!! I can always improve so look out for my future posts! 🙂

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Melting moments with oats and vanilla

It was the time to bake something with the boys and they wanted to bake some biscuits!

We normally make chocolate chip cookies but we wanted to make something different. I had a look at my baking books and found this recipe from Lorraine Pascale’s Bake Book called Melting Moments with oats and vanilla (page 19). I don’t really use oats in biscuit making only when making granola bars! I know the boys like using their hands and thought this would be fun to make with them!

The recipe says it makes 18 biscuits, we managed to make 25 biscuits so there was plenty to go share! You don’t need any special ingredients for this as you should have most of these in your store cupboard. The recipe is easy to follow and very fast to make!

Ingredients: 225g soft butter, 120g caster sugar, 1 egg, 2 x tsp vanilla extract, 180g porridge oats, plus large handful for rolling and 275g self raising flour. You can use a mixer and a bowl and wooden spoon for this.

Method: Preheat oven to GM4, and line your baking sheets. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla, oats and four, mix it until just combined. You don’t want to over work the mixture or it will become tough.

Put large handful of oats on the work surface and take a tablespoon of the dough and roll into a ball with your hands, then roll it over the porridge oats and put on the baking tray and press down lightly. Space them out on the trays and bake for 15-20 mins, or until they have turned a lovely golden brown. Once baked, remove them from the oven and leave them to cool before munching!

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Salmon with Creme Fraiche

My hubby was suffering really badly from tooth pains the other week so I wanted to cook him something soft to eat for dinner. I had some salmon fillets and left over creme fraiche and found this recipe on the BBC Goodfood website which was really simple to follow.

You don’t need alot of ingredients, as long as you have the fish and creme fraiche, you can put any vegetables you have in your fridge. I cooked this with leeks, mushrooms and chives, and the great thing about this recipe is that you can just use the 1 pan to cook everything. It was really yummy and just what my hubby needed!!! I think for next time, if i am cooking this, i would use less stock as it turned out to be really saucy. Also, you can just use veg stock instead of chicken stock if you are vegetarian!

Vegetarian Dishes – Sept 2020- Best stuffed shells

As we are having our veggie day once a week, i don’t want to cook the same usual dishes all the time as i like to learn something new. I was searching online for inspiration of vegetarian recipes and come across this blog called Cookie and Kate. Once, I was on her site, i subscribed straight away to receive their new posts. I really love this website, her photography is bright and colourful, the recipes are so easy to follow and love that they include a video of how the food is made so you can have an idea if you are making it the same way. The only snag, is that you have to covert the ingredients into grams as they use cups and ounces in America but you can do the conversions easily on the mobile phone.

I have been meaning to try out her recipe called ‘Best stuffed shells‘ and was having a hard time to getting the ricotta cheese in the supermarkets. It has now been sitting in my fridge for awhile as i just haven’t had a chance to make it. My brother in law was coming round for dinner and it is a nice dish to share with people so took the opportunity to make this. Unfortunately, i just used up most of my spinach the previous night for dinner so i only had a handful left over. I then, decided to bulk this up with some mushrooms and leeks. The best thing about this recipe, is that you can fill it with anything you want so it doesn’t have to be vegetarian as you can add chicken pieces, bacon or chorizo etc.

I used a whole bag (500g) of the big shells and i had enough fillings to make 2 trays. I used a shop brought jar tomatoes and basil sauce for the base and had enough left to drizzle on top. I must admit, it is quite fiddly to stuff each pasta shell but it was worth it as it was really delicious! My hubby and brother in law was really impressed by the dish and the flavours. I was impressed myself!! I will definitely be making this again and probably experiment with the fillings.

Kate has got a book out called ‘Love Real Food’, this will be on my list to buy. You can find her best stuffed shells recipe on her blog. Watch this space as I will be making a few more recipes using her blog!

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