Jordans Country Crisp

It's been a tough old week for us this week.   Daisy's been getting over chicken pox, and Phil's been in hospital with kidney stones.  Thankfully Daisy was allowed back in nursery on Wednesday so I was able to spend the day going to and from hospital to see Phil.  He was allowed home on Thursday but is still quite poorly with it.

Understandably I haven't done much cooking this week.  On Tuesday I made a bolognese, which we had that night and then I had leftovers from it on the Thursday night.  Other than that I've eaten a lot of cereal.

I was sent some Jordans Country Crisp to review, along with three recipes created by Edd Kimber (GBBO winner) I knew it was unlikely I'd get round to doing the recipes, but said I was happy to do a review just of the cereal.  The strawberry crisp is my favourite one, so I was pleased when it arrived.  We don't often have much 'grown up' cereal in the house, or branded for that matter - we shop mostly at Lidl/Aldi, so it was a treat to have some Jordans in.

I think most people will have tried this one over the years, it's a lovely cereal with plenty of strawberry pieces in.

Do you have a favourite Jordans cereal?

Key Lime Pie

Phil had really fancied some Key Lime Pie the other weekend, but the supermarket didn't have any in.  It inspired me to have a go at making it myself.  As I'd not made it before I followed the BBC Good Food recipe to the letter, although I don't have a suitable tin, so made it in a cake tin instead.  That's why mine looks more like a cheesecake.

I really liked the topping, but I wasn't keen on the base.  I'd like to get a proper tin and have another go at doing one, but this time using dark chocolate chip cookies as the base.

Are you a Key Lime Pie fan?

Recent Eats

On Sunday last week I had afternoon tea with friends at Browns in Leeds.  I was too busy chatting to get any pictures. Of course it wasn't to the Betty's standard, but it was a nice attempt.  The only thing lacking really were the sandwiches. I would have rather had a couple more, but for £10 I shouldn't really be complaining.

This week Phil popped into Betty's on his lunch and got me a treat, I've been desperate to try the cycling Tour de France fondant fancies.  They're as good as they look!

I've been trying to do better with my eating this week, I'm still not really that interested in food - I just want to eat sweet things all the time.  We've eaten pasta a few times this week, and on Friday night the only thing I wanted was beans on toast for tea!  I decided that I had to have a "proper" meal on Saturday, so defrosted a joint of pork, rubbed in some garlic and herbs and roasted that.  I made some lower fat dauphinoise - but the sauce split again, not sure where i'm going wrong with this, it's happened the last two times I've made it - possibly me having the oven too hot?  Then I threw on some green beans for some vegetable goodness.

I was sent a Thermoworks Chef Alarm out of the blue a while back.  I use my Thermopen quite a bit so was interested to see what difference this would make.  The alarm is useful, but I don't think I'll use the max/min temperature alarm at all, and the probe is the same as my Thermopen.  I'd say this is more use in a commercial kitchen.  I found that the instructions were missing the temperature guide of the Thermopen, I find that really useful as a guide.  An interesting product, but not one for my home kitchen I think.

If you spotted yesterday's post, you'll know I made some Tiffin this week.  I was also meant to make a Key Lime Pie on Saturday but just ran out of time.  (Watched trashy telly on catch up when I should have been in the kitchen...).  I'll be attempting that on Monday, and making some scones at some point in the week too.

Are you baking anything next week?

Rocky Road Tiffin

I decided last night that I had a hankering for Tiffin, after looking through a few recipes I found this recipe from BBC Good Food for Malteaser Tiffin.  I wanted to add something a little extra to it, so opted to throw in some marshmellows to make it more of a Rocky Road version.

I didn't smash the malteasers too much, but did do a couple with the biscuit mixture, I opted to leave them whole for the biscuity texture.

After leaving Tesco this morning (what possessed me to go to Tesco on a Saturday!) I realised I'd forgotten the grease proof paper I needed to line my dish.  A quick check on twitter told me I could use cling film instead - I think it actually worked better using the cling film.

The finished article is so very, very, very sweet.  A slab the size that I cut is a ridiculous portion for something as sweet at this - I did manage to finish eating it though.....

Next up on my sweet treat making schedule is Key Lime Pie, which I'll be making while Daisy naps on Monday.

Teppan260

***Disclaimer - this meal was complimentary***

I was invited to do a review of the new Teppan260 restaurant located in Millenium Square in Leeds (where Casa Mia was).  We received our starters, mains, desserts and drinks for free.

The concept of the restaurant is that you order the food yourself via Ipad, and it then comes to your table on a hot iron plate, where you finish the cooking.  Teppanyaki without the performance.

To start we ordered Bang, Bang Chicken and the Thai Beef salad.  Both were very nice, although the beef in the salad was lukewarm, we weren't sure if it should have been hot.  It was tasty though.

For our mains we ordered the Sliced Yorkshire Beef with noodles and Chicken Tonkatsu with fried rice.  You pick the main you want, then your rice/noodles and then your chosen sauce.

We found finishing the cooking ourselves quite a novelty, although didn't realise we could take the paper buffers off until half way through our meals!  My chicken was lovely, but Phil's steak was really nice.  I was a bit jealous I hadn't picked that myself.  I didn't think we needed the side salads, although if I'd not had a starter I suppose I probably would have finished the little salad too.

For dessert I had Portuguese Egg Tarts and Phil had Chocolate cake.  Phil's cake was a bit dry, as you'd expect with one that had been out in a cabinet all day - it wasn't awful though, if you like your cake dry (as my Mum does) then it would be just fine.  My egg tarts stole the show though, I loved them.

Will we visit again - yes we will (I always like to go back and pay for a meal after I've done a review), we liked the concept, although were a bit slow at ordering on our Ipad.  We either weren't listening when we were seated (quite likely) or didn't get told - but you aren't meant to order everything at once, you're meant to order each course separately.  So the poor staff had to come and check if we wanted separate courses, and we ended up with Phil's cake coming before our starters!

I did love the ordering by Ipad though.  Ever practical, Phil was wondering how they'd manage if the wifi went down though....

We enjoyed our meals, leaving the restaurant nice and full - but not feeling like we'd pigged out and eaten a million calories.  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone else.  Purely for using the Ipads to order with - I hope that catches on, and starts to happen in bars, no more being crushed in bars would be very welcome.  (Not that I get out to bars very often nowadays!).

I don't think it will replace Wasabi Teppanyaki for us, we went there on our very first date, but it's something different to what's on offer in Leeds at the moment.  (Lots and lots of burgers).

As we're a nosey pair, we observed that the staff had to deal with two tables of tricky customers.  They handled both situations very well, being firm but fair.  I don't know how someone can have the brass neck to eat their entire meal, then suddenly decide it was "terrible", if it really had been terrible they would have sent it back, not merrily ate it and quaffed a load of wine....but that's a gripe for another post.

Thank you to Teppan260 for having us in and to Social Yorkshire for inviting us.

Prashad Indian Vegetarian Cooking book

Prashad is an Indian Vegetarian restaurant in Drighlington.  I haven't been yet, but I've always heard good things from people who have been.  I follow them on twitter and jumped at the chance when they were offering bloggers the opportunity to review their cookbook.  Sadly it's arrival coincided with going off food due to being pregnant.  I'm now 23 weeks pregnant and enjoying food again, so a couple of weeks ago I finally attempted one of the recipes.

As soon as I saw the Paneer and Pea curry I knew that was the recipe I'd try first.  

I found the recipe to be easy to follow, the ingredients weren't off the wall or hard for me to source - or expensive for that matter.  On the whole a very pleasant cooking experience, the result of which was fantastic.  I loved the curry and would definitely make this again.

There's loads of other recipes in there that I need to try, so I'm sure you'll be seeing more mentions of me using this book as time goes by.

Cake and Bake Show Manchester

I was lucky enough to get a press pass and plus one for the Cake and Bake show in Manchester a few weeks ago.  I took my sister in law with me again, who is a much better baker than I am - and a significantly better cake decorator!


We took in some of the demos, had a wander through the cake competition, and then spent a long time looking at the stalls. The entries on the cake competition were of a really high standard - the children's ones were much better than I could have done.  I thought this Jungle Book from the adult competition one was the best.  I can't imagine having the patience to produce anything so detailed!

I have to admit that we were conned by one of the stallholders, we were taken in with the promise of a
tarot and palm reading, then once we'd paid found out it was a computerised thing, which did a scan of our hand, then the tarot cards we picked out were entered into a computer and then some numerology - we then got a massive print out - not quite what we were expecting, and definitely a waste of money!  Serves us right for being gullible though.

Our best deal of the day was by far the Billingtons sugar one, where we got 2 bags of sugar and a lovely tin for a fiver.

I also got a gorgeous garlic chutney - which will be the first one on my list to try and emulate for this year's christmas hampers, and some cheeses from the Cheshire Cheese Company - I got the vintage gold and caramelised onion and rioja, they were absolutely fantastic. I wasn't sure if I'd got a good deal, they did them 4 for £15 for me, but when I had some more when I got home I knew I'd made the right choice.  The vintage gold went very quickly, both me and Phil loving it, but luckily I've had the other one all to myself.

We found there to be more food stalls, and less cake making implement stalls this time, which was disappointing but certainly didn't ruin the experience.  I'd be interested in seeing how the London show compares to Manchester, sadly I won't be going this year - I'll either be very overdue and be banned from travelling, or will have a baby that's less than a few weeks old.  There's always next year though!

Thank you again to Nudge PR for the tickets, the refreshments and the use of the press area - it was very much appreciated by us both.