Brown Butter Tomatoes

Tomatoes go with olive oil, right? That is what I have always though, and whilst it does I was very intrigued by this recipe for brown butter tomatoes which popped up on Food52, and then again on Last Night's Dinner (by the way, I am very glad Jen is blogging again, you should read her blog). Also the simplicity of it appealed to me. I made some quinoa and chopped up lots of fresh basil and parsley, added some olive oil and plenty of seasoning, that made the base of the meal. Good quality tomatoes sliced up on top (not fridge cold, they should be room temperature), pour over the brown butter, season and then some creamy mozzarella to finish it off.

Perfect easy meal on a hot day and the butter surprisingly works very well.

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Tiffins Tea Emporium, Long Melford

I do love a day in Suffolk, it is a very picturesque area of the country and not too far from us but feels like such a change from normality. We were booked for a morning 'Owl Encounter' at Lavenham Falconry, and this fortuitous turn of events meant we could visit nearby Tiffins, who I'd been following/admiring on Twitter for a while.

Long Melford itself is beautiful and the tea room definitely lives up to its surroundings. A pretty little building with a tower of scones in the window, an array of cakes on stands, tea pots and lovely vintage style furniture.

Tiffins is run by the very cheery Kirstie who made us feel really welcome. We started with savoury - a goats cheese and pepper ciabatta for Mr and the intriguingly named Suffolk Ploughmans for me, cheese scones instead of bread - but toasted so the cheese is all melty and lovely - served with 'cheeky chutney' which was a lovely fresh salsa like chutney made with tomatoes. I had some of the Tiffins Blend loose tea and Mr some Suffolk apple juice.

Of course we had to have some cake too - and it was a tough decision - there is such a great choice of sweets - chocolate, coffee, lemon drizzle, victoria sponges, flapjacks, brownes, tiffin (of course) and fruit scones. Mr had a slice of pleasingly orangey Chocolate Marmalade cake with little white chocolate stars, and I had a coffee cake which was tooth achingly sweet - perfect for me. I had a bit of a sugar high upon leaving and then a crash later on in the afternooon...

We really enjoyed our lunch at Tiffins, it is a beautiful place and very relaxed surroundings. You can find them on Twitter and they have a website too. Do visit if you are in the area - Long Melford has some pretty shops and neighbouring Lavenham is a must see.

Oh and here is a picture of one of the owls we met!

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Making pasta at The Bread Bin

Pasta making has been on my to do list for such a long time, and I've seen lots of recipes I wanted to try but never found the time to get around to it - or maybe conquer my fear of it! So I jumped at the chance when Miss Sue Flay said she knew a local lady, Ruth from The Bread Bin, who taught pasta and bread making from her home, she'd also tasted her fresh pasta, which she sells to people in her village, and vouched for how delicious it was.

It was great fun, I'm quite used to working with dough and it was much easier to make than a pastry or a bread dough. Just eggs and flour slowly worked into each other, rested in the fridge and then rolled out and taken through the stages of a pasta machine.

The pasta machine part gets a bit tricky as the dough gets thinner and longer but as long as you work carefully and have plenty of space on your work surface you'll be fine. And if it breaks, well, you can start again or you just have slightly different shaped pasta!

Ruth is a fantastic baker, she bakes all kinds of things for her family and also to sell - breads, breadsticks, pitta, flavoured pasta. She has a real passion for real bread and uses the best ingredients and sources them locally. Her knowledge of all things made with flour is encyclopedic! Miss Sue Flay baked breadsticks whilst I did the pasta, and the bread dough she used can also be shaped to make lovely fluffy pittas - something I must try.

You can find Ruth on Facebook, where you'll find details of her courses and also make bread orders to pick up on Fridays, ready for the weekend!

Photo by Miss Sue Flay

We've been enjoying eating the pasta I made - tagliatelle, bows and little cups of pasta - since the class last week. And now I am on the hunt for a pasta machine.

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Shelford Deli, Cambridgeshire

The Shelford Delicatessen has to be one of the best loved spots in South Cambridgeshire, they are renowned for their amazing sandwiches which every office worker in within a 5 mile radius knows about. I worked nearby a few years ago and we regularly sent a colleague out with a sandwich order when the local supermarket offering got dull.

Back then they were just a small shop selling cheeses, meats, olives, all sorts of jams, pickles, oils and vinegars along with fresh pasta, bread and the aforementioned sandwiches. They also did a small line in fresh fruit and vegetables and the best tomatoes you could get your hands on.

I was tipped off recently that they'd extended the shop into a cafe which sold the same brilliant sandwiches along with hot dishes, pasta, salads, cakes and Monmouth coffee.

We settled upon a 'meze sandwich' each plus coffee. The sandwiches are in fact more like a ploughmans or a deli platter. Mine was ham with piles of pickles, salad and gorgeous granary bread, and of course English mustard. The ham is cooked and glazed in the deli and it certainly tasted so too, lovely. Mr had the vegetarian meze which consisted of a plentiful plate of homemade things - carrot houmous, guacamole, tapenade, olives and more fresh bread. The coffee is excellent, as you would expect with Monmouth.

We shared a chocolate cake (I am on a diet after all...) which was very rich, sugary and chocolatey - everything a proper chocolate cake should be I think.

The food here is great, a little on the pricey side as is normal for the area.The only thing I didn't really like about it is the strange ordering system, it is a bit like our experience at The Eden Cafe, but more complicated and ends up in lots of people bumping into each other - you order food at one place, drinks opposite, they write it all down on a bit of paper and you come back to a third till to pay at the end! Be prepared to get a bit confused, and queue in at least three queues, but the food is worth it!

Their website doesn't say anything about the new developments, they need to update it, and doesn't have opening times. I know closes at 2pm on a Saturday, closed Sunday and I think open all day during the week.

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Food blogger on a diet - eek!

Inspired by Miss Sue Flay's post I thought I'd write about my own mission to get healthier - eating better and exercising more (well exercising at all). Since I started blogging 4 years (!) ago I have learnt so much about food, how to cook and perfecting the perfect brownie, cake and bread. I still love baking and I am not giving up proper cakes and treats but now is the time to get a bit healthier and not always have a home baked sugary cake in the kitchen.

I've been half heartedly giving exercise a go since about January, when I went to my first Zumba class, which was a good introduction, but in the last few months I joined the gym which has helped me get into a routine, I am going to attempt to get better at running next - wish me luck!

But this is a FOOD blog so I am here to talk about some of the yummy and healthy things I've been enjoying lately.

Lizi's Granola with greek yoghurt, honey and berries

Courgette & pecan bread (sugar and butter, apart from the peanut butter, free)

Food Doctor Granola (no sugar unlike Lizi's) with banana, sunflower seeds, apricots

Shashouska, quinoa and an egg

Healthier pizza, swap mozzarella with ricotta, swap tomato sauce for hidden vegetable sauce. More tomatoes and capers for flavour, teeny shaving of parmesan.

Broadening my tea tastes!  

Chopped salad, houmous, pitta, sunbites - good if you really want crisps!

More granola, pretty breakfast!

 Amazing lunch at the Shelford Deli - lots of local and fresh produce (blog post coming soon)

Haul of veggies from the market

I seem to mainly take pictures of breakfast, one of the main things about changing my diet has been eating a proper  breakfast instead of grabbing a chocolate bar on the way out or leaving it til lunch and then eating too many unhealthy things. 

I don't have any tips yet because I am still learning myself but I think keeping loads of fruit and healthy snacks around and banishing biscuits, chocolate and crisps from the house really helps you not reach for unhealthy things when you are peckish. Also working lots of veggies in to your meals as sides really helps you eat less carbs and get your vitamins - a simple salad or some steamed or roasted veggies. We've been enjoying coleslaw made with low fat yoghurt and dijon, roasted butternut squash, chilli spiked broccoli and fresh summer tomatoes dressed with a teeny bit of oil and plenty of herbs. 

I have by no means banished treats from my diet - I do still have a piece of cake if I am having a coffee with friends, or the odd piece of chocolate. But I am trying to moderate and be mindful of how often I am having a treat, which is helping me keep an eye on things.

Am hoping to include some of my favourite healthy recipes on the blog soon, along with the usual things too. I'll leave you with some of my new favourite healthy blogs:

Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish

Not Just Apples

Oh She Glows

Where Are My Knees?

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Tomato Bruschetta

So who else, whilst watching Celebrity Masterchef this week, thought - who boils tomatoes for bruschetta and removes the skins? I always thought the idea was to use fresh tomatoes?

Anyway, despite that, I really fancied some nice basil and olive oil spiked tomatoes after watching it. Here is a confession - my tomatoes which should have been some locally grown fresh summer tomatoes were actually from Tesco. Sorry, are my blogger credentials ruined?

Anyway, I used some cherry tomatoes which are sweeter than the normal sized ones and gave them some help with decent olive oil and basil from my garden. So I think I win a bit more because I grew the basil myself? I finely chopped and then crushed into a paste with the knife some garlic and added that, with plenty of seasoning.

Instead of the traditional ciabatta I used some pizza dough I had in the fridge to make pizza fritta. This is a pretty unhealthy but awesome way of making pizza, I got the recipe from Jamie Oliver's 'Jamie at Home' book. Basically you fry it in olive oil on both sides til it fluffs up - then add toppings and grill to melt the cheese. For this I just topped with tomatoes and served it up.

This was a perfect indulgent but light lunch and the extra flavourings from basil and garlic pimped up (sorry been reading too much Joliver) some ordinary tomatoes. I will try it with some 'proper' local tomatoes soon, I'm sure it will be amazing!

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Exploring China & Sichuan Salmon

One of my favourite programmes at the moment is Exploring China, I wrote about catching up on it in my food programmes post recently and I am really glad I found out about it, it is a brilliant series. I've learnt a lot about Chinese cooking from it and am keen to try some new recipes from the series.

The programme in Sichuan was very interesting, having seen many Sichuan restaurants popping up in London and even one in Cambridge, I was keen to know about the province a bit more and also how to use the infamous Sichaun Pepper.

I liked the idea of creating a Sichuan pepper spiced hot oil to pour over the dish to finish it off so I tried it on a fillet of salmon. Not a traditional thing to use with Sichuan cuisine as they don't use much seafood, but it was delicious and diet friendly (more on the dreaded diet soon). A warning: the photo is pretty unphotogenic but it tasted delicious!

I poached the salmon fillet in vegetable stock (you could use fish stock if you had some) for about 10 minutes on a medium low heat. Meanwhile I fried finely chopped garlic, a teaspoon of chilli bean paste, finely chopped ginger and about 10 Sichuan peppercorns crushed up. When the salmon was ready I poured the fragrant hot oil over it. I had it with a cabbage and carrot salad spiked with rice vinegar, sesame oil and sesame seeds. A perfect light dinner with tons of flavour.

You can find (very few of) the recipes on the BBC Website, I wish there were a few more there but I suppose they want me to buy the book! Exploring China is on Sundays at 8pm, the next episode will be in Taiwan and Canton.

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