pestosprouts

Eat, smile, be happy.

Caution: may change without warning May 24, 2013

Filed under: Meat,Quick and Easy,Thai food — pestosprouts @ 7:22 pm
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I can be quite quick tempered.

It’s not a great attribute, I am not proud of it. Neither is Dave.

I lose my temper (and my mind) fast and then, just as quickly,I regain it and feel terrible and embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as those who have had to witness what has just happened.

I have two examples that spring to mind.

1.

The time I was in Asda (Walmart) at 3pm, a full hour before closing and I wanted a fresh pizza made up. Sounds reasonable? Nope. The pizza lady told me she couldn’t make one as she was closing. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: Can I get a pizza please?

Pizza Lady: No, were shutting.

M: But it’s only 3’o’clock…

PL: I know, but we’re shut.

M: But you don’t close till 4pm

PL: Well the pizzas are shut now.

M: (starting to become petulant and loud) But I can see all the pizza ingredients still out.

PL: shrug of the shoulders

M: (irrational) ARE YOU JOKING?? I COULD COME AROUND AND MAKE MY OWN PIZZA! I CAN SEE ALL OF THE INGREDIANTS I WANT!

PL: We’re shut!

M: Speechless and seconds away from kicking the pizza counter

Dave: Look Jessie, they have spring rolls and poppadum’s over there.

M: distracted. Oooo I like those, shall we have them for tea?

Temper gone, mood lifted, pizza girl shell-shocked and Dave cross I’d caused a scene.

2.

The second was when Topshop hadn’t delivered some clothes I’d ordered two weeks ago, despite me paying for next-day delivery. I’m still not sure what actually happened since the man on the phone couldn’t have cared less and gave me 7(!!) different excuses, refused to refund my money, or give me my clothes. The conversation ended with me shouting how he was ruining everyone’s Christmas. He didn’t ruin anyone’s Christmas… It was like 1st December and it was just a t-shirt I was waiting for….

The silence that hung over the office when I hung up the phone was uncomfortable to say the least.

Yup that’s right… I was in work. At my desk.Half-shouting/half-choking up at a man on the phone.Over a t-shirt.

Few things in life happen as fast as these temper tantrums.

This meal, however, comes together almost as quick and just as easy, and it is far more enjoyable.

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Fiery Thai* Beef

I served mine with boiled rice and stir-fried veg. It was so good that I now make this without asking first for a take away!

Adapted from Orangette

Serves 4 – not really, this again served me and Dave……but we really need to look at our portions.

6 large garlic cloves, crushed

7 chillies chopped. I used a mix of red and green. Mine wasn’toverly hot, if you want it burn-your-mouth-hot, just add more.

1 shallot – sliced

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp oil

500g/1lb ground beef

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp brown sugar

60 ml/ ½ cup chicken stock

2 large handfuls of basil leaves

2 large eggs (we only used 1, since I can think of nothing worse than adding a fried egg to anything)

1 lime

Optional- rice and veg to serve.

Heat a wok or large frying pan over high heat, add 1 tablespoon oil, and add the garlic, chillies, and shallot. Stir-fry for a few seconds until fragrant, and then add the beef. Continue to cook, stirring, until the beef is cooked through and just starting to brown. Add 1 tablespoon fish sauce, the sugar and salt. Add the stock, it should boil instantly because of the heat in the pan, add basil, stir until the basil is justwilted.

Add the juice of half the lime, and taste for seasoning. It should be spicy, garlicy, meaty and fragrant and just salty enough that it tickles all your taste buds, if it’s not add more fish sauce.

Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, warm the remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a separate frying pan, and fry the egg.

Divide the beef and its juices into a bowl atop whatever you’re serving it with, rice ideally. Put your egg on top and crack the yolk so it all runs into the meat! I didn’t…. I had mine with chilli sauce.

Serve with a wedge of lime.

2012-12-30 19.57.39      2012-12-30 19.57.19

*I’m not actually sure how Thai this actually is…….

 

Naturally Sexy May 21, 2013

Filed under: Random — pestosprouts @ 12:53 pm
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I am tall. I have very little co-ordination. My hair goesHermione Granger (in the book, not the Hollywood movie) style-frizzy in the rain. I am socially awkward. Sometimeswhen I laugh, I spray drink out of my nose. I spillEVERYTHING down myself when I’m eating. I speak so fast, sometimes even I don’t hear what I’ve said.

So when, on Sunday, in a fit to do something both new (yes, I know it was new about 10 years ago) and something that scares me (group activities make me uncomfortable), as per my new years resolutions, I attended Zumba.

My tallness meant I towered over those in the class, so I had the pleasure of seeing my sweaty face, flying arms and oddly moving legs in the mirror (sometimes even when I’m stood still, my legs look like they’re moving in different directions)… despite me being hidden right at the back. I stepped on a poor woman’s toes about 13 times, and by the end of it, I was so far away from my bottle of water I had to use a map to find it again.

I tell you these details because I want you to have a very vivid picture.

Half way through the class, after dancing with 15 middle-aged women to ‘Gangnam Style’ (something that up to this point in my life I had thankfully managed to avoid), we were told to put our ‘sexy’ faces on.

Our sexy faces

I don’t have a sexy face. I don’t have a sexy bone in my bodyand, right then, I have never felt less sexy….ever. Even when on a first date I spilt a whole cup of hot tea down my white top. Even when I vomited into a shoe directly after sex. Never.

There was a point when I looked around the class andeveryone was doing something completely different to me. A different dance move, in a different direction. You could almost imagine people were dancing to completely different songs. I thought, what the hell am I doing here?! Thinking the only time I dance like this, is when I’ve drank a deadly combination of vodka, wine and tequila.

Then I looked again and I didn’t see people’s mis-matched dancing, unsexy faced and out of time, I saw people so completely unaware of anything else except enjoying what they were doing. No concern about what people thought, not worried about how much cleaning and washing up they had to do. Not caught up in all the tasks they had left when they got home. Just lost in the moment. Enjoying themselves.

I don’t think I thought once about the time in that class, not how long was left or working out how many songs would be on in an hour before I could go home and lie back in bed. I too became lost in enjoyment. I left the class elated. I came away thinking that, that’s what life is about. At the end of the day, the only people to miss out on life, are the people judging, criticising & worrying.

Those who are really living? They’re the ones dancing like no one is watching.

 

 

 

 

Lonely Saturday Nights May 11, 2013

Filed under: Cakes — pestosprouts @ 10:15 pm
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2013-05-11 21.51.22

I don’t ‘do’ sick. I don’t get sick. I hate it. I hate sick people and I have no patience for them so when I’m sick, I have no patience for me.
I mean sometimes I wish for a small bout of food poisoning…. You know, to lose a couple of pounds but normally when of sane mind, I hate sickness and I have a pretty high immune system. Or I did.
I’ve never been as sick as I have been in the last five months. I feel like I’m a broken record, constantly saying, I think I’m coming down with something, or I think I must be fighting something off, because you see for the last five months I’ve been pretty stressed. Now, I like to think I deal with stress pretty well, I work well under pressure and dead lines make me work harder but unfortunately for me, instead of dealing with stress in a mature, head on way, my body has decided to turn against me and send my immune system on an extended holiday, leaving my body to deal with a whole host of unwanted viruses, colds and office bugs. So I’ve been consistently run down… and stressed and then getting stressed about being sick, then getting sick again…. Can you see the pattern. The combination of these things have led to fun and enjoyable out comes. Such as: weekly cold sores, dry skin, a swollen tummy, spots, weight gain, crying…. all. the. time, and my final blow came in the form of what can only be described as death hands. Swollen, blistered, rashy hands and arms. It’s an infection apparently, which has led to nausea (although no lack of appetite) aching joints, headaches, tidiness (although to be honest I’m tired all the time anyway), I feel like I have been hit by a train.
So why am I telling you the joys of my horror hands? Because the Doctor put me on antibiotics that’s why. Booze free, antibiotics. So while this Saturday, is a friends highly anticipated birthday day/night out and everyone including Dave is drinking delicious strawberry and lime cider, eating pulled pork burgers and chilli cheese fries, I am stuck at home. Watching hours and hours of Hart of Dixie (man, I wish I was Rachel Bilson) and feeling sorry for myself. This is only punctuated by occasional photo texts of drunken times and burgers.
So what do you do in dire times like this?
You make brownies. That’s what. Not just any brownies, no, no, no. Frosted Brownies. Then you stick them in the fridge so they go all fudgy and eat them straight out the pan with a fork….

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Frosted Brownies

Adapted from The Live-in Kitchen

Serves 1 on a lonely Saturday night
For the brownies:

1/4 cup/35g plain flour
1tablspoon cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup/ 115g butter
3 oz/85g dark chocolate
1/2 cup/100g light brown sugar
1/2 cup/100g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup/85g chocolate chips – I just chopped up some dark chocolate

For the frosting:

1 cup/180g chocolate chips – Again I just chopped up some chocolate
4 tablespoons/60g butter
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup/60g icing sugar
1 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas mark 4 and place a rack in the upper third of the oven and line an 8 inch square baking tin.
In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate, heat-proof bowl add butter and dark chocolate. Either melt in the microwave, or place above a pan of simmering water (making sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Once the butter and chocolate have melted allow to cool for a few minutes then whisk in the brown and granulated sugar. Whisk in the eggs, the egg yolk, and vanilla. Add the flour mixture all at once and fold into the chocolate mixture with a spatula until well incorporated. Mix in the chocolate chips.
Pour the brownie mix into the prepared tin and bake 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out with moist crumbs attached. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before frosting.
For the frosting, put chocolate chips and butter in a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 20 second increments, stirring in between, until melted or melt on above the pan of simmering water again, whatever your move comfortable with. Take of the heat and again allow to cool for a minute or two, whisk in the vanilla and salt, then stir in the icing sugar. Add the milk a few drops at a time, whisking briskly, until the frosting is smooth and shiny. Pour/spread on the cooled brownies and put them in the fridge until the icing has set and the brownies a chewy.

2013-05-11 21.52.43

 

How healthy can you make nachos? May 5, 2013

Filed under: Light meals,Meat — pestosprouts @ 1:53 pm
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2013-05-03 19.55.47

Since I started this blog, a friend has been giving me requests. A new take on an English classic and a healthy alternative for nachos. I have a few different english classics, and I do promise to post them, but the Nacho thing as been playing on my mind.

At first I tried to just explain why nachos could be healthy, such as heart healthy, skin radiating avocado in the form of guacamole, and a fresh fat fighting spicy salsa and calcium rich cheese and good old-fashioned iron powered beef. But I was met with a stoney stare, because at the end of the day they all still top a massive amount of deep-fried tortilla chips.

So when my Kristin (she still doesn’t know she’s my friend) at iowagirleats posted a recipe for smothered sweet potato fries I got thinking and basically just stole her recipe.

These are so good, I made them a couple of weeks ago and had the next day for lunch and then they won on Friday over a chippy tea. It feels like each bite is a new flavour, a different texture a new mouth treat! They truely are amazing.

Eat them with your fingers nacho style or fancy it up with a knife and fork – this is the first time I’ve ever classed a knife and fork as fancy, but I truely would eat these with my hands tied behind my back and just my mouth as my weapon of choice.

So on top of all the ‘healthy’ nacho toppings I mentioned before there’s the addition of the wonder vegetable, magnesium, carotene, vitamin filled sweet potatoes.

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Sweet Potato Nachos

Serves two – although you know by now these are pretty big portions

Inspired by Iowagirleats

Sweet Potato Wedges

3 medium-sized sweet potatoes

1/2 tsp Cinnamon – which is an anti inflammatory  (helping flatten your belly)

1 tsp chilli flakes

1tsp smoked paprika

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp ground coriander

1tsp salt

1tsp pepper

1 tbsp oil (I used Coconut – I’ve already bored your all to death about my love of the magic coconut oil here)

Spicy Beef

400g extra

2 tsp chili paste (or powder)

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 tsp cumin (I toasted whole cumin seeds ground them)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp oregano

1/4 cup/ 60ml water water

Nachos

Guacamole or an avocado mashed with some salt and the juice of a lime

100g Chopped cherry tomatoes

1 Lime

1/2 salt

1 Red onion

1/2 chopped red chilli

50g Cheese – grated

Pre-heat your oven to 180°C/350°F.

Cut your sweet potatoes into 8 wedges. I do this by cutting them down the middles length ways then in half again and then each half in half again. Spread them on a flat baking sheet and cover in spices and your oil, mix so all the wedges are coated evenly and then spread them out flat. Bake them for 25 – 30 minutes. Until they are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle – They go almost creamy in the middle.

While they are baking, fry your mince continually braking up the mince, when brown add your spices and garlic and fry for another 5 minutes. When it’s starting to dry, add your water and simmer on a low heat until all the water is absorbed. Stir and making sure the mince isn’t sticking together. By this time the wedges should be done.

Chop your cherry tomatoes in half and dice your onion. Mix together with a 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, the chopped chilli and the juice of half a lime.

Take your wedges out the oven and turn on the grill.

Serve your wedges, topped with your mince, and cheese and then place under the grill untill the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Spoon over the guacamole and your limey tomatoes

Eat and repeat!

 

How long do you actually go without talking about food? April 27, 2013

Filed under: Meat,Quick and Easy — pestosprouts @ 10:29 pm
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2013-04-27 20.48.34

Last night I drunk a lot of vodka. We went out to give a work friend a good, old-fashioned boozy send off.

The conversation turned to food. Obviously. I talk about food a lot and I think about it even more. But last night I learnt that not everyone is quiet as devout to food as me. While everyone around the table likes to eat, the cooking part is a hardship for them.

They couldn’t get their heads around the fact I enjoy being in the kitchen. I like the prep, I like the need to stir, season, and attention needed. I don’t mind cooking when I get home from work and I love nothing more than a Sunday spent in the kitchen. Cooking for me, is not a chore. It’s a pleasure.

There are days however, when I don’t have the time, energy or brain space to do anything other than eat double cheese burgers in bed. But it appears this is a lot of people’s stance (maybe not the burger in bed part). But cooking anything more strenuous than pouring a sauce over some meat, or binging the microwave is a dreaded thought. For me if I eat something quick, like a ready meal, I feel disappointed because they’re vile and I spend the whole meal thinking ‘I could have made something 10x nicer in the same time, for half the price’.  I’m aware however that my vodka fueled ramblings aren’t going to change anyones mind. This meal however should.

It takes about 13mins.

It’s simple, easy and so incredibly tasty. I normally make mine with left over ham, but today I made a ham especially because I wanted this pasta. If I can make this with a horrible hangover, anyone can make it.

You can use ham you get from the deli counter. The only reason I don’t is because I have a fear of ham. Unless I make it, or it is baked and cut freshly, and I see that its come from a joint, I can’t eat it – weird right?!2013-04-27 20.40.40

It’s creamy, salty, and so filling. This is the only meal I’ve made two days in a row.

Creamy Ham and Pea Pasta

Serves 2 – well probably 3 but I was really hungry

Like always the recipe is very adaptable. You like more parmesan? Add more. Don’t like peas? Leave them out? Watching your weight? Tough!!

300g pasta shapes

150ml double cream

300g ham off the bone – the stuff you get on deli counters or left over ham from a joint (Nigella’s Cherry Coke Ham is very very very good)

100g frozen peas- I like the petit pois

50g parmesan - more if you can be bothered to grate it

25g Rocket – optional, I have it usually but I didn’t have any in today

1 tsp salt – plus extra for the pasta water

1 tsp cracked black pepper

Bring a large pan of water to the boil and salt well.

Add pasta and cook for about 10 minutes, or however long the pack tells you to,

Chop you ham into chunks.

In the last two minutes of your pastas cooking time add your peas to the pasta. When the pasta is just cooked drain and return to the pan.

Add the cream to the pasta and the ham and grate in you parmesan.

Stir in the rocket, until it’s just wilted and season with the salt and pepper. Taste it first because the parmesan is quiet salty so check before add all the salt.

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Sit down and enjoy a super quick, super easy tea made in the time the oven heats up for your ready meal.

 

 
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