Prep 10 mins

Cook 15 min

Serves 4

 Ingredients

250 g spinach

125 ml skimmed milk

2 medium eggs

250 g ricotta cheese

115 g self raising flour

60 g sun dried tomatoes

50 g kalamata olives, chopped

cooking oil spray

1/2 small bunch chopped basil

4 grilled tomatoes and 100 g baby spinach leaves to serve

Method

1. put the spinach in large heatproof bowl. Cover with boiling water. Set aside for 30 sec then plunge into a bowl of ice cold water. Drain well, squeeze excess water. Roughly chop remainder of spinach.

2. in a large bowl whisk the milk, eggs and ricotta together.

3.  gradually add the flour and whisk until smooth. Stir in the wilted spinach and the sun dried tomatoes, olives and basil

4. spray a large frying pan with oil and put over a medium heat

5. spoon 3tbsp dollops of mixture per fritter into the pan making three or four fitters at a time.

6.  cook for 2-3 min on each side until golden and cooked through.

7.  continue with remaining batter to make 12 friters in total, spray more oil if necessary.

8. sprinkle the grilled tomatoes with black pepper to serve with fritters and baby spinach leaves

Ingredients

300g diced butternut squash
Spray oil
1 onion
1 chopped and cored apple
1tsp medium curry powder
300 ml reduced salt chicken stock
350g cooked skinless chicken
2tbsp mango chutney
2bsp lime pickle
400g steamed rice
2 courgettes sliced, and steamed
A few sprigs of chopped coriander

1. steam the butteenut squash for about.10 min until tender
2. spray non stick pan with oil, add onion and cook until brown
3. add apple and cury powder and cook for 2 more minutes
4. add chicken stock and shrdded chicken
5. simmer for 4-5 mins then add lime pickle, mango chutney and butternut squash
6. simmer until curry starts to thicken
7. serve the curry with the rice and courgettes garnished with coriander

Quorn the healthy option

Keeping Fit and Healthy on a Budget

It is said that eating healthy food and doing exercise is a privilege only the affluent can enjoy. However, this is not necessarily true. Here are some tips you can follow to keep fit and healthy on a budget.

Bring your own meals to work

At work, rarely do people order healthy food, and if they do, it is extremely expensive to eat it on a daily basis. However, you don’t want to wind up eating fatty fast food. At home, take 20 minutes to prepare something like rice with chicken breast or vegetables for lunch plus a fruit or yoghurt for dessert to bring to work. To make this job easier, check out for example  some healthly recipes or  online.

Walk or use a bicycle

A car or a bus doesn’t have to be your only means of transport, nor a gym the only place to exercise. Depending on the distance to work, see if you can walk your way there, or your way back, or ride a bicycle. This is a great way to include work out to our daily routine without taking free time to do so. Another tip is using the stairs instead of the elevator. Try stepping with your ankle first, and then with the rest of your foot to focus the exercise on your gluteus muscles.

Take off your make up before going to bed

You don’t need to buy expensive moisturizers to have a good skin at all. Remember to take your make up off before going to bed, and washing your face with a neutral soap so your skin won’t get dry. After doing this, apply any face moisturizer. More important than buying an expensive moisturizer is having your skin clean and prepared for absorbing moisturizer.

Bio: Ivana represents http://www.quorn.co.uk company and likes to write about heatlhly foods and recipes.

Fresh Fig

• Dried Figs
• Broken Walnuts
• Sultanas and raisins
• And some frozen puff pastry

Roughly chop 225g ready to eat dried figs and put into a pan with 75g broken walnuts and 50g each of sultanas and raisins.
Add 150ml water and cook uncovered and stirring continuously, until the water has evaporated and the mixture is soft and thick.
Leave to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Line a 18 x 28cm shallow baking tin with ready rolled puff pastry.
Spread the fig filling evenly over the pastry and top with another piece of puff pastry.
Press the edges together with a fork and brush with a little mild, finally sprinkling with caster sugar.
Bake for about 40 min or until golden brown.
Serve slightly warm with ice cream as a pudding or cold as a cake.

Enjoy

You might think that strange but over the years I have always taken the role of being chief cook – not necessarily the bottle washer but definitely the only chef in the household.

And then this weekend, I have my daughter and son-in-law to stay with their beautiful baby and it’s Saturday night and son-in-law says he’ll cook.

How cool is that?

I am mightily impressed. He looks up BBC Good Food online, logs in, checks his favourites and decides on Bean & Bangers one pot.

He looks through my cupboards and decides there are a few ingredients missing, so writing the list he goes off to Sainsburys and buys the elusive red vinegar and Dijon mustard.

He suggests I have a look at the recipe and I have to say that it reads quite nicely and despite sausages not being my food of choice I am beginning to think it will be quite tasty.

I offer to sous-chef and prep vegetables but only get as far as chopping the onion and peeling the carrots before he takes over.  Am more impressed as time goes on.

He asks for different pans, bigger casseroles, measuring spoons, measuring jugs and .. A can opener.  I am reminded that daughter is vegetarian so he is also cooking veggie sausages as well as Cumberland and Toulouse chipolatas!

My contribution is a glass of wine, some play time with little grand daughter, another glass of wine and I lay the table. It feels strange not to be doing anything else.  Well, I have another glass of wine and we all sit down to eat.

Bowls at the ready I am served first.  [When did that last happen at home?]  This one-pot dish is delicious.  The melange of pulses, peas and onions is delicious and the sausages with Dijon mustard very very tasty.  

I am tempted back for seconds.

How spoilt am I?  It was lovely, I didn’t even have to clear up either.

What was most interesting though was  his attention to detail. He loves cooking and following recipes, and in their household is the main cook.  However, he follows the recipe to the nth degree and would not adapt or alter anything.

For me, I would have read the recipe, looked in the store cupboard and ‘bodged’ and made do. The recipe would have been ok I am sure, but maybe not as delicious as his.

Thank you dear son-on-law for spoiling me.  I enjoyed my treat.

Your turn to relax again today and enjoy our Easter Sunday dinner.

Use 2 hot cross buns per person
Favourite Jam
40 g caster sugar
3 eggs
568 ml milk/cream

Method

Split them in half and generously spread with your favourite jam.
Place “jam” sides together and cut each bun in half.
Arrange in a single layer, cut side down, slightly overlapping [like roof tiles] in a shallow buttered baking dish.
Whisk together 40 g cater sugar, 2 eggs and 568ml whole milk or single cream.
Strain over buns and leave to stand for 30 mins.
Place in preheated 160 degree oven and bake for 45-60 min or until just set and golden brown.
Serve hot – with more cream/ice cream

Salmon au Gratin

Why not follow tradition and serve fish on Good Friday?

This is a recipe I am going to try this weekend as I have visitors for Easter

Ingredients
2-3 leeks
1 lemon
2 salmon fillets
Handful of prawns
White sauce – 300ml
75g Gruyere cheese

Method

Thickly butter 2-3 slender leeks and cook in a knob of butter until just soft not brown.
Add finely grated rind of 1 lemon and spoon into a shallow baking dish.
Place 2 salmon fillets on top and sprinkle with a handful of small prawns
Preheat the oven 160 degrees
Make 300ml white sauce and stir in 50-75g finely grated Gruyere cheese.
Spoon over the fish and cover with a generous layer of fresh buttered breadcrumbs
Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown

Good with tiny new potatoes.

The barbecue is also a very versatile cooking tool, which can be varied in a whole bunch of ways to suit different occasions or events.

For an informal barbecue, perhaps for the family on the weekend, you have plenty of options. You could do hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids, or any other favorite family meal. Chicken, chops, steaks, sausages and fish are all great standard options. Barbecue cooking always adds a frisson to the food – as does the fact that it will be dad cooking for a change!

Easy accompaniments are leafy salads, and vegetables cooked on the grill. Corn on the cob is a classic, as are baked potatoes. Other starchy vegetables, including pumpkin and root vegetables, are also ideal for barbecue cooking, either wrapped in foil or placed directly on the grid to absorb that delicious smoky flavor. For a summer dessert you can’t go wrong with fruit salad and ice cream.

But you can also get really creative with a barbecue. Cooking on charcoal or an open fire really does boost the taste of meats, and you can be as adventurous as you like. Joints of beef, lamb or venison, partly pot-roasted and finished on the barbecue give a special taste for a more elaborate meal. We have a barbecue with a huge hood and a swinging rack. I place a few chickens on this rack and 3 hours later the meat is tender and falling off of the bone – an added bonus to the Sunday roast.

Creative marinades can turn your chicken drumsticks or lamb cutlets into something really exciting and you’ll find plenty of recipes and mouth-watering ready-made barbecue sauces to assist you. My current faves are Guiness sauce from Heinz and honey smoked barbeque.

For an upmarket barbecue, you have some great choices that are even suitable for formal occasions. Pit barbecues and slow-cooked spit-roasts are ideal for larger gatherings and will deliver a meal to remember. Just remember that you may have a lot of left overs with a spit-roast,

A great barbecue menu will probably feature red meat as the centrepiece of the meal. If you want a lighter option, kebabs are a great choice, and can be a good vegetarian alternative. Check that you can cook the vegetarian option away from the meat area…

With kebabs the trick is to cut the chunks of meat or fish, vegetables and fruit to exactly right size, so they all cook perfectly. You’ll find a wide selection of exotic kebab recipes from Asia and the Middle East, for a barbecue with world cuisine sophistication.

Barbecues often have a lot in common with a buffet, with lots of side dishes to accompany the meal. Common sense applies. If you’re grilling a rich red meat, choose complementary flavors, as you would for any dinner, and include lighter side dishes to balance the menu.

It’s rumoured that you can even make bread on a barbecue – or go for the classic garlic and herb baguette stuffed with cheddar. If you’ve got an open fire going, roast some chestnuts. Toast some marshmallows while you finish up with coffee.

Adapt your favorite ‘indoor’ meals. For the kids, try bananas with brown sugar or syrup, wrapped in foil and cooked till soft on the grid.

With barbecue the possibilities are endless. With a bit of imagination and forward thinking you can create a barbecue fit for any occasion, with the foods and flavors that tickle your palate and give you maximum pleasure. We just need the weather to go with it.

So good they named it twice?  It’s an easy grain to for quick cooking

Couscous cakes are a great school lunch pack filler.

1. Prepare 125g cous cous with 150 ml of boiling stock. Stir in 2 beaten eggs then make 6 patties.
2.  Fry in a little oil for 203 minutes on each side until golden!

Couscous roasted veg quiche

Prep – 10 mins

Cook – 50-55 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients

½ red pepper deseeded and in chunks

½ yellow pepper deseeded and in chunks

1 red onion cut into wedges

1 courgette sliced on diagonal

4 cherry tomatoes

olive oil

vegetable stock cu be

200 g couscous

50 g butter

3 medium eggs

1 tbsp fresh grated Parmesan

100 g crème fraiche

3 sprigs thyme

½ mozzarella ball

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C fan180 gas 6, place all veg in a roasting tin, drizzle with oil and season with pepper. Toss together then roast for 20 minutes turning half-way.
2. Meanwhile dissolve stock cube in 240 ml boiling water. Place cous cous in a bowl and pour hot stock over. Cover and let sit for 5 mins. Fluff up with a fork and stir in butte.
3. Spoon the couscous into a 20 cm flan dish, pressing evenly into the base and side. Place the cooled roasted veg on top.
4. Beat the eggs together and mix in the Parmesan, crème fraiche and thyme. Pour over the veg and top with torn mozzarella. Bake 30-35 mins, until set.
5. Serve with a rocket salad.

- Although many manufacturers state that their saucepan sets are dishwasher safe, it is usually better to avoid cleaning them in a machine. Certain detergents are not really suitable for non-stick cookware and over time the surface of the saucepans can begin to wear out.

- For handwashing, you should avoid using a scouring pad when cleaning non-stick cookware, especially if they made from metal as this can leave unsightly scratch marks. It is usually sufficient to just use a soft sponge with some washing up liquid, after letting the pan soak in warm water for a few minutes.

- Using knives, whisks, spatulas and other utensils that are metal based, are also not recommended, as they can also scratch the non-stick surface whilst you are cooking. After cleaning the saucepans, always ensure you dry them thoroughly because if your cookware does happen to have some scratch marks on them then they can easily rust.

- A mistake that people can typically make is to put a very hot pan straight into some cold water in the sink. This can be very damaging for non-stick saucepans because the sudden change in temperature can cause the pan to slightly warp, which can result in uneven heat distribution during cooking. It is best to leave your pan on the hob for a few minutes before it cools sufficiently

- Cooking non-stick cookware on a very high heat is also not advisable as over time the consequences can be similar to that of putting hot pans in cold water, i.e. they can warp and not spread the heat evenly during cooking

- Two final points to consider concern storage. Food should never be stored in non-stick saucepans, and when stacking them in cupboards, you should make sure that no metal pans or other products are on top of them as they can leave scratch marks.

Martyn Croston has a keen interest on all things related to cookware. Visit his site to read FREE reviews of the best saucepans and discover the best products for you