Sticky Toffee Pudding

Yes, yes, yes. Possibly one of the best puddings ever and it's so much better homemade. Not only that but it's worringly easy to make, do it once and prepare to become obsessed.

Perfect, tooth-achingly sweet comfort food. Dates and dark brown sugar give this it's butterscotch stickiness with a divine caramel sauce to pour over. I cook them in muffin tins for individual puddings.

You could actually bake a big batch and freeze leftovers (as if!) for a later date.

Ingredients

Makes 6 puddings

125g pitted dates, chopped
½ tsp bicarbonate soda
30g butter
90g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
125g brown sugar
1 egg

Sauce
100ml double cream
75g brown sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup

vanilla ice cream to serve

• Put the dates and 125ml water into a small saucepan, heat until bubbling, take off the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda and butter until melted.
• Meanwhile, whisk the egg in a large bowl, add the date mixture, flour and baking powder and stir until combined.
• Grease six holes in a muffin tray and divide the mixture into them. Bake at 180C for 20mins until a cake tester comes out clean.
• To make the sauce, add all the ingredients to a small pan, bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes.
• To serve, place the pudding on a plate, pierce a few times and drizzle the sauce over. Top with a big scoop of ice cream.

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Root Vegetable Rostis

And yet, the root vegetables keep appearing, every week a pile of muddy parsnips and carrots peeking from the vegetable box. Only this week there was a massive swede coming along for the ride, enough to send you over the edge, I tell you.

So, on Saturday morning, reading cookery books as per usual, I came across a Bill Granger recipe for potato and feta pancakes. I adapted this (a lot), left out the feta and used parsnip, carrot and swede and what a success! The egg binded them perfectly to form sweet little cakes, perfect with baked beans and a fried egg for breakfast. Although I'd eat them wherever you'd normally have potato.
I'm thinking these would be good with a handful of grated cheese thrown into the mix or courgettes and feta in summer.

Ingredients

Serves 4

500g root vegetables, grated. Try potato, parsnip, carrot, swede, turnip, squash or pumpkin
1 onion, grated
2 eggs
45g flour
4 tbsp vegetable oil

• Put the grated vegetables in a colander with a liberal sprinkling of salt and leave for 30mins.
  
• Meanwhile whisk the eggs in a large bowl and add the flour. Add the vegetables to the bowl squeezing out as much water as possible as you go. Stir well and season.
• Heat the vegetable oil in the pan and add about 2 tbsp of mixture to the pan for each rosti, you should get about 8.
  
• Make sure the heat is on medium and leave the rostis to fry for 4-5mins on each side until golden brown.

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Valentine's Day

The combination of the credit crunch and February 14th presented the perfect excuse to buy lots of decadent ingredients, cook up a delicious meal, pop open some bubbly and hunker down for the evening.

The starter was a beef carpaccio salad, inspired by this Jamie Oliver recipe, although we used rocket instead of green beans, the mustardy onion dressing went perfectly and it's actually a fairly cost effective starter as 1 steak was plenty for 2 people.

The main event, another Jamie Oliver recipe, roast monkfish with black olive sauce, we left out the mash and had new potatoes sliced into coins and roasted with plenty of salt, oil and garlic. What a delight, meaty monkfish is fast becoming a favourite especially as a certain someone is allergic to white fish.

And for dessert... lemon cheescake ice cream from the delightful Nigella, cheesecake in frozen form. Read more...

Hungry? www.oxnosh.co.uk

Ok, so I've been a bit absent lately. Not because I haven't been cooking (I'm always cooking, and eating) but because I've been busy promoting www.oxnosh.co.uk.

Let me explain... I met Kat, a fellow foodie in last year of my degree at Oxford in 2007. As we were both spending our days langusihing in the chemistry lab, we often had looong coffee and cake breaks. During one such break, Kat told me about an idea she'd had for a website dedicated to food in Oxford, initially aimed at students, we wanted to get people excited about good food.

With youthful exuberance and in hindsight, naivety, we decided to build the website from scratch ourselves and went on some Dreamweaver courses. If anyone has ever even tried to edit a website before will know, this was a crazy idea. It's literally taken me until now to be any good and that's only at the front end stuff. Thankfully we have techy friends in the right places to do the really complicated database stuff.

So, on we ploughed, we got degrees and proper jobs and at the weekend, tapped away. Having this blog helped as you will notice lots of the same recipes and pictures... All that's left to say now is please take a look, let me know what you think. Although aimed at Oxford residents, we still have information on food isses, healthy eating and plenty of recipes. If you've eaten (and enjoyed) one of my cakes before, then the recipes are all here!

This is very much version 1.0, Kat and I still have our work cut out marketing and adding lots more content, but its such a relief to have it officially launched, much fizzy wine was consumed at the weekend at the excellent Door 74 - if you're ever in Oxford, you must visit!

Ps: I did make this delightful yoghurt cake on Monday's snow day, with black cherry yoghurt that was a month out of date and still fine, makes you wonder what they put in it.... Read more...

Parsnip and Leek Risotto

Running with the idea of cooking parsnips in long thin strips with or without bacon like this recipe, I came up with this risotto, utilising some leeks lurking in the fridge. I'm not normally a fan of risotto, but this was perfect, rich and comforting. I tried to use as much parsnip and leek as possible to give this some redeeming features to go along with the butter and cheese, in reality it means it's not as heavy and stodgy and you'd expect.

Ingredients

Serves 4

6 rashers streaky bacon, finely sliced
a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary, finely chopped
300g leeks, finely sliced
500g parsnips
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
300g arborio risotto rice
125ml white wine
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
50g butter
100g grated parmesan

• Heat a large saucepan and drop in the bacon along with a glug of oil and the thyme. Fry on a high heat for a few mins, add the parsnip and cook for a few mins more until tinged golden.
• Turn the heat down and add the leeks and garlic cook for about 5mins until soft. Pour in the rice, stir well and cook until the grains become translucent.
• Next add the wine and turn up the heat, allow the wine to bubble away until nearly all of it has gone.
• Now add a ladleful of stock, stir gently until nearly all the stock has been absorbed (but not all!), continue to do this until most of the stock has been absorbed and the rice is cooked with a little bite, add a little more stock if necessary to make sure the risott is 'wet' and not stiff.
  
• At this point check the seasoning, add the butter and cheese, stir briefly, pop on a lid and leave for 5mins before serving.

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