Je Goûterai - I will taste

For anyone else living in the UK, you will all know how unbelievably hot it has been today. Oh my days I thought I was going to burn all day. After dinner I wanted something really light and refreshing, I had frozen raspberries but didn’t know what to do with them!

So here I used 3 tablespoons of Vanilla Soy Yogurt, topped that with crushed frozen raspberries and grated 70% dark chocolate.

Omnomnom! Perfect for such a hot day!

Crispy Chilli Beef served with Brown Rice

No. 41: Crispy Chilli Beef – 15.5.12

On the odd occasion, my boyfriend will have found a recipe he likes and suggests we make it. I think he enjoys having a girlfriend who loves to cook so much c:  These also add to my list of new recipes and he always suggests some delicious ones. Today when we met up he said he’d seen a delicious recipe on Reddit. The recipe was actually from the GoodFood website and looked pretty simple! I also had 2 steaks in the freezer that I needed to use up so this was a good excuse!

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3655/crispy-chilli-beef-with-broccoli

Serves 2

Oil for frying (5cm deep, I used about half – ¾ of a litre)
300g thin cut steak, sliced into thin strips and tossed in 3 tbsp cornflour
1 small head of broccoli, breaking off the florets to use
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 x 5cm piece of ginger, finely chopped
1tsp dried chilli flakes or 1 dried chilli, crumbled
½ a bunch of spring onions, sliced on the diagonal (we used about 4)
4 tbsp soy sauce mixed with 5 tbsp sugar
2 limes, juiced.

• Heat a 5cm depth of oil in a wok until very hot and fry the steak in batched until dark and crisp. Drain with a slotted spoon and set aside on a plate with kitchen roll.

• Pour off most of the oil and stir fry the broccoli, garlic, ginger and chilli for 1 minute.

• Tip in the sweetened soy sauce and lime juice and cook for 2 minutes.

• Toss in the beef and spring onions and serve.

This was delicious! We used mangetout instead of broccoli because Ryan (my boyfriend) doesn’t like it but it worked just as well and served it with brown rice. The chilli wasn’t too hot and the balance of sweet and salt worked really well with the rest of the flavours. It was nice to serve it with rice as it soaked up left over sauce but by itself is a little bland so we served it with soy sauce. Ryan was in charge of chopping and got the garlic and ginger mixed up and sliced the ginger instead of finely chopping. I’ve never tried ginger in a recipe before and eating quite big slices of it was quite…. strong….. but we realised our mistake so we now know for next time ^.^

This is such a quick dinner and really simple to make!! Defiantly a good alternative to a take away!

Citrus Bars

No. 40: Citrus Bars – 11.5.12

Anything with Lemon in it I usually love. Lemon lemon lemon lemon. Shower gel, body spray, cakes, chicken, fish, air fresheners whatever, you name it, if it’s got lemon in it or smells of lemon I will probably like it. I also love food magazines with a passion. I buy GoodFood a lot (need to buy a subscription >.< ) and was flicking through the latest issue, June 2012 Jubilee issue, and came across Citrus bars. Shortbread and lemon? Perfection!

Makes 18 bars PREHEAT the over to 180oC

For the base
250g Plain Flour
85g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
175g butter, cut into small pieces

For the topping
2 lemons and 1 large orange ( I hate oranges so I used 2 Limes instead)
4 large eggs
400g caster sugar
50g plain flour

• Line a shallow rectangular tin (about 23cm x 33cm) with baking paper.

• Place the flour, icing sugar and butter into a food processor and whizz until it forms fine crumbs (or if you’re like me and don’t own one of these, rub the butter into the flour and sugar with your hands and continue this until fine crumbs form).

• Tip into the shallow tin, level out the mixture and press down lightly with the back of a spoon. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a pale golden colour.

• Making the topping! Finely grate the zest from the lemons and orange (or lemons and limes) and squeeze out all of their juices. You’ll need to use 120ml of this for the topping!

• Whisk together the eggs and sugar for 1 minute, then add the zest and juice and whisk again. Sift in the flour and whisk well into the mixture.

• Pour this over the Shortbread and bake for another 15-20 minutes until the topping has just set! Let it cool completely in the tin and lift out using the baking paper. Dust thickly with icing sugar and cut into 18 pieces (cut 3 length ways and 6 across).

These were so good! The sharp citrus really worked well with sweetness of the shortbread and complemented each other. Using limes instead of an orange was a very good replacement as Lemon and Lime is obviously a wonderful combination as it is so worked brilliantly in this treat! The textures were wonderful as well, the soft curd like topping with the hard biscuit base. Yum.

The only problems I encountered whilst making this was the fact, as the topping was cooking, I think most of it centralised so the bars round the edges had almost no topping on them! I don’t think they keep very long as well so when I only live with 2 people and uni isn’t really on anymore, we either had to eat the all or a lot were wasted! However I would make these in the future for bake sales and what not ^.^