Heaven in a courgette ball

 On my twenty seventh birthday I made very good friends with a new, most amazing food. Had it of not been for the owner of the taverna who insisted I must eat them, as it was my birthday after all, then I may never have discovered this gastronomic delight. I shudder at the thought. I should have known when I sat down to eat at a restaurant boasting this – the Gastronomic Anchor of the Gods – that I was onto a winner.

The delight I discovered was the courgette ball. Granted the name is unlikely to leave you quaking with anticipation but really, these were amazing. They are basically fritters of grated courgette mixed with herbs, some egg and often some feta cheese. These are then formed into balls, dusted with flour and fried. They are a soft, slightly spicy mouth sensation and I am officially addicted. The only problem with this is that I live in England and the courgette balls living in Agios Nikolos in the Peleponnese. Fail.

Last time I was in Greece I was launched into a one woman mission to make the perfect fluffy Moussaka topping (two eggs whipped into a creamy bechamel sauce should you be interested!) and I fear my latest trip is going to set me off on a similar obsession. What I did learn from my courgette ball sampling is that variety is the order of the day, that and lots of garlic. Some people added mint, some added what seemed like grated butternut squash, others a sprinkling of feta. As you may have gathered I did A LOT of courgette ball tasting! Now I am back home I am going to try out a basic recipe and then get creative until I have the perfect courgette balls at which point I will, of course, share my findings – you're gonna love me! ;)

Fare ye well blog readers!

As much as I love you I am delighted to say I am off on holiday! See you in a week and meanwhile here is a wee postcard for you from the fabulous http://www.nataliedee.com/

The mighty courgette

As well as eating lots of food I also love growing it. This season has been tricky due to what I call 'The Great Slug Infestation of 2011'. It has been a one woman crusade against what seems to be an army of slugs. I have won the battle of the lettuces but sadly not of the French beans who died valiantly in the early season after being mercilessly munched in the course of one evening.

What has been doing well, and is just started to produce, is my courgette plants. These are really so easy to grow (everything in my garden is because I am a very lazy gardener and just like to leave plants to do their thing!). I always get mine as baby plants because you only need three or four plants to keep you in abundant courgettes all summer. When courgette plants flower they produce these gorgeous orange flowers that remind me of Asiatic lilies which incidentally were the flowers I carried on my wedding day three years ago today!

When you do get a crop of courgettes from your garden they are so easy to use. They are much less watery than the kind you get in the supermarket and have a much stronger flavour. This makes them great for things like courgette fritters where the high water content is a problem and needs to be drained off when using shop bought varieties. I cook my home grown courgettes very simply by frying up some garlic and chilli in a saucepan, adding a tin of tomatoes and letting it simmer away while I fry 1cm cubes of the courgettes in a frying pan until lightly golden brown. I then mix the two together and serve with pasta and some parmesan. Delicious!

One last courgette tip, cut your courgettes off your plants when they are no more than 5 inches long. They are more flavoursome and it is healthier for the plant as if you leave them to grow to shop size the productivity of the plant will be significantly reduced and you may end up with a giant marrow. Fun for you but very sapping for the poor plant!

Happy courgette growing!

Lady Grey and Lavender Biscuits

The weather may not be quite the glorious summer we hoped for just now but the garden is enjoying the rain, and never fear, you can create that summer feeling inside with this week's Tea of the Week - Lady Grey, and its delightful accompaniment, lavender biscuits. You'll feel quite the laydeee, or man, whatever..!

This combo is dedicated to a very dear friend and fellow Windsorian @ladytaylorgray who came to my house recently requesting a lavender biscuit recipe. If you have a lavender bush at home it is likely to be growing like there is no tomorrow just now and let's be honest there are only so many lavender bags a girl can make. These biscuits are a great use for your excess lavender, are very yummy and so easy to make like so!

150g butter

90g caster sugar

225g plain flour

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon fresh lavender leaves, chopped up.

1 teaspoon of lavender flowers removed from the stalk

Preheat your oven to 160ºC and line two baking trays with parchment. Cream the butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy and then mix in the flour, egg yolk and lavender leaves until the mixture comes together into a big ball. On a floured work surface knead the dough until it is smooth and then roll into a sausage shape that is a couple of inches across. Chop your sausage into between 15-18 disks (just under a cm in width) and place on your baking trays. Put a lavender flower on the top of each biscuit and pop them in the over for 20 – 25mins depending on your oven speed. They won't go brown (a bit like shortbread) but should be firm to the touch. Leave them on the tray to cool for five minutes before moving onto a cooling rack. Pour yourself a cup of tea, savour your biscuits and make it summer inside even if it's tipping it down!

These really do go great with Lady Grey, which is black tea with oil of bergamot and lemon and orange peel. Lady Grey is a Twinnings Trademark tea so the only place to get it is from http://www.twinings.co.uk/ or if you are in London pop into their shop on The Strand. It is amazing and they let you try before you buy. There are also some other variations and with my lavender biscuits I enjoyed a cup of Empress Grey for good ol' M&S which contains white tea instead of black. It is delightfully refreshing with just a nice zing of citrus.

Summer has arrived!

Tea of the Week – Teapigs Rooibos Crème Caramel

I nearly fell off my chair in shock when on telling my husband about my new blog he suggested doing 'Tea of the Week'. Either he is finally coming around to my way of thinking or all those hours of making weird and wonderful teas in various strainer/teapots/mugs/tea cups has worn him down into submission. Either way, here we are with Tea of the Week!

I count myself as somewhat of a tea connoisseur and recently had to drag my husband around various homeware stores looking for some boxes suitable for organising my many varieties of tea (you're starting to feel sorry for him aren't you...!) Teapigs is one of my all time favourite tea makers so I had to start with them and what better than the mighty Rooibos Crème Caramel!

What it is? Rooibos is red bush tea which is only grown in South Africa. I first tried it in South Africa and have been hooked ever since. What Teapigs have done (geniuses that they are) is add pieces of caramel that slowly melt into the tea as it brews. This leaves you with a creamy, slightly sweet and definitely crème caramel-esk treat. And it is good for you as rooibos is a natural antioxidant and caffeine free! Don't go expecting to be drinking liquid crème caramel but for an interesting brew, this tea is really great.

How do you drink it? I drink all my tea black because I'm just that hardcore but this would be lovely with milk.

Where can I get it?! A good place to look out for Teapigs is at local food festivals, they often do some great deals and you can taste lots of teas from their range. Alternatively you can trust me that it is amazing and buy online at http://www.teapigs.co.uk/. Teapigs also do a taster range where you can buy a couple of teabags to try for a pound which is a good way to see if you'll like them. You could also come to my pad and I'll brew you up a cup ;)

Do leave a comment if you've tried it or have any other rooibos recommendations.

Grazing

The whole idea of dieting has always horrified me because I love food so much. It's not even fatty food that I hanker after it's ALL food of many varieties. I couldn't bring myself to become one of these people who stands in the supermarket isle staring at the back of packets of health food to see if they can eat it. A dusty cracker is not food. This combined with the fact that most diets seem to make ludicrous suggestions like 'have a salad or some soup for dinner' means that I have never dared take one on. I have, however, began to discover that each number on your age can easily correlate with an extra inch on the waistline. A worrying trend indeed.

So imagine my surprise and delight on reading an article in Zest on grazing. When I say grazing I don't mean standing in a field chewing on grass with some black and white, horned buddies. I mean snacking on healthy treats in between meals. This doesn't have to mean an aforementioned dusty cracker as I discovered when I came across http://www.graze.com/. Here you get all sorts of yummy treats with lots of good heart boosting properties and stuffed with vitamins and all delivered to your door or work place. Today I have been tucking into Vanilla Seeds and they are absolutely delicious. Even better I have managed to avoid the triple chocolate chip cookies that are in my kitchen cupboard.

The theory with grazing is that by eating every few hours when you are hungry you avoid reaching the ravenous state before meals that drives you to eat enormous portions of whatever it is you have whipped up (or worse picked up on the way home!) It also regulates your blood sugar and keeps you fuelled up with energy. You are also more likely to get all the nutrients your body needs if you eat a greater variety of foods throughout the day. This is what really does it for me, a diet that means you get to eat more things! Perfect!

Sugar craft for (very lovely) dummies

I have always been a fan of cupcakes. Not just because they are amazing when stuffed into one's mouth but also because they are little mini works of art. There is nothing like spending an afternoon crafting them to perfection while singing along to the radio at the top of your voice to really restore the soul (if not the neighbours sanity). Luckily if you have driven your neighbours mental in the baking stage they will love you at the eating stage. Cupcakes are just meant to be given away and let’s be honest, we all love a bit of oohing and ahhing over our culinary creations.

In an effort to become a cupcake baker extraordinaire I went off for a lesson with the lovely Jo Taylor of Just Iced Cupcakes. At this session (don’t worry Jo I won’t give all your secrets away) and in my subsequent sugar crafting adventures (and misadventures!) I have discovered a few helpful things for the budding sugar crafter. I’m not saying I will make you into a professional baker but I can at least give you some hints and tips on creating gorgeous homemade cupcakes cheaply and as fast as you can sing though a Glee album.

To get sugar crafting there are only really a few things that you need.

1. Some sugar paste. Obviously. Though not quite so easy if, like me, you are a cake decorating novice. There are loads and loads of varieties on the scene and no one likes to look like a cake dunce or end up with piles of sugar paste that they don’t know what to do with. So what you need is flower paste as it dries hard and is good for detailed work. A word of warning, this can dry out fast so you’re best to decide on a colour scheme for your cupcakes and just get a couple of colours or get a white pack and some food colouring (paste food colouring is good) and make up your own colours. I defiantly favour this now as you can get much richer colours – hot pink roses anyone?!
2. A teeny tiny rolling pin. Quite frankly these are so cute you should own one anyway just for the sheer fun of it. These are basically smooth plastic rods that you use to roll out the sugar paste. You could also do with a non stick board to roll onto but if you don’t want to get this till later you can use icing sugar on your worktop to prevent the paste sticking but this does dilute the colour of your sugar paste a bit.
3. Some cutters. You don’t have to have these, I will show you how to make roses without any equipment at all, but they are really cute. This is where sugar crafting gets very fun indeed and be warned it is easy to go a little crazy and own a whole menagerie of cutter animals.
4. Some glitter. Again, this isn’t essential but oh so lovely. I would put glitter on my macaroni if I could get away with it.

And that is really it! There are some great stockists online and with this basic kit you can see if you like it before you start buying all sorts of kit you might not use.

Some good retailers to check out are:

http://www.cakescookiesandcraftsshop.co.uk/

http://www.squires-shop.com/

http://www.cakecraftshop.co.uk/

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/

Next time in cupcake school (much better than regualr school isn't it?!), how to make sugar roses. These really do cause people to collapse in awe of your domestic goddess skills, so well worth a try!