A Random Recipe from my Mum's bookshelf

 This month at Belleau Kitchen, Dom has challenged us to make a random recipe from a borrowed book.  I borrowed this Kenneth Lo book from my Mother. Published in 1979, it cost £2.50 when it was new. Actually it only has 80 pages and few of the recipes are illustrated, the photo plates being scattered rather sparsely through the book, so I think recipe books now represent better value for money!

The recipe the book fell open at was one I know she has cooked several times (but never for me!) - Red Cooked Beef with Star Anise. I love the combination of beef and star anise so was  very happy with this choice.

The recipe used  a whopping 4lb of braising steak - as there are only two of us, I used less  than a quarter of that amount, but just halved the  quantities of carrots and sauce ingredients or the slow cooking could have left it dry. The only other change I made was out of necessity - I was shopping on a Monday when the local butcher is closed,  so instead of buying my beef in a single piece I  had to get diced beef from the supermarket.

It's a very simple dish and can be prepared well in advance and left to cook slowly. That's  quite unfamiliar territory for me when it comes to Chinese cooking. Having lived in Hong Kong, I'm used to a  frenzy of last minute activity as I stir fry everything. I did introduce a bit of stir frying though, as I made a side dish of stir fried Chinese leaves with onion and ginger, with a few peanuts added for crunch.

The verdict? The recipe may be an Oldie, but it's definitely a Goodie. Fragrant, delicious and simple enough for a midweek supper. And I hope my Mum isn't in  a hurry to get her book back, I have lots more dishes to try first! 

A round of applause!

This week's challenge at CAS-ual Fridays is "A round  of applause" - a project incorporating at least one circle ans celebrates  an accomplishment.

Here is my card - I really MUST learn more about lighting. There's actually a lot of depth to it, so the star is set back behind the aperture, but even with the card turned partly sideways it doesn't show properly. I know I need to sort out a way of lighting it from the side to cast a shadow and give it depth, but I've just not had enough practise at this card photography lark to understand the techniques yet!

Less is More #102 - sport and exercise

This week it's a One Layer Challenge at Less is More and when I saw that the theme was sport and exercise I thought I wouldn't be joining in. I have nothing in my collection that fits the theme, and although I can see several great submissions  that use digis,  I'm not really into using them.

Then I remembered a box of unmounted rubber gathering dust in the spare room. It was a grab bag I bought from an American website about 10 years ago, and the contents are just plain weird! A few of them are X-rated, and over the years I've made jokey cards for friends with them, but most of them are just thrown in the box and ignored. Maybe there would be something sport or exercise related in there?

I had a good rummage and the nearest I could find was this quirky image of the Mona Lisa practising her yoga. Well, yoga's a form of exercise, isn't it? I wanted some words that implied relaxing. I thought about "Leonardo says..... relax" but decided it was too obscure, then  about something based in the "Keep calm and......" poster, but felt that was done to death last year, so finally came up with

Calm down,dear, it's only a birthday.

Which UK readers will know is  a parody of a famous car insurance advert from a few years ago.

I used the computer to generate the message on the card, then stamped and coloured the image. I thought she really HAD to be wearing bright red slippers ...... so now you all know the secret of  why the Mona Lisa is smiling - until now, only SHE knew about those red slippers!

Meal Planning Monday 14th January

I've been planning to join in with Meal Planning Monday since FOREVER. Well, since I started this blog last spring, which is much the same thing. And today there is a shiny new badge and everything over at At Home With Mrs M so it seem the perfect day to get started.

We're trying to eat at least one vegetarian  main meal a week as one of our New Year Resolutions, and so  far we are averaging two a week, so I've included two in my plan. My husband likes cooking but doesn't get much chance during the week - by the time he gets home from work he is far too tired, as one of the symptoms of his fibromyalgia is extreme exhaustion. So I've left one meal unplanned, for him to decide what he feels like cooking on the day. I've put it into Saturday's slot, but the weekend meals may get switched around at short notice.

As I'm diabetic, I don't plan desserts. There are always fruit and cheese in the house, and my husband is still finishing the Christmas choccies, but there were some oranges in the fruit box this week so I might make an orange sugar-free jelly with orange segments in it for a refreshing change to eat after a couple of dinners.

So here we go with my first Meal Planning Monday:

Monday  red  bean and rosemary risotto adapted from a recipe on Taste the Goode Life  - the blog of the lovely Shirley Goode who some of you might remember from her superb budget-stretching books and TV shows in the 1980s.  Adapted because the tin I thought contained Borlotti beans actually is yet another tin of red kidney beans. I seem to buy them obsessively! Anyway, with this we'll have some salad from the garden and a fennel, orange and chicory salad.

Tuesday roast lamb - I have a piece of butterflied  leg in the fridge - with roast potatoes, glazed (using Sweet Success syrup) turnips and brussels tops if there are any left in the garden, otherwise cabbage.

Wednesday red cooked beef with star anise from an ancient Kenneth Lo book, with a stir fry of Chinese leaves and carrots.

Thursday Chickpea patties with beetroot raita from Nigel Slater's Tender volume 1 served with sweet potato wedges and any salads we have left.

Friday Beef Rendang with Sayur Lodeh and rice. Two favourite dishes from our years of living in Asia. I'll tell you more about them after the event.

Saturday left open for Mark to decide what to cook

Sunday  it depends what we have left in the fridge and whether we've been shopping, but I have some chorizo in the freezer that's earmarked for a sort-of-paella, so unless there's a change of plan, that's what we'll have.

Spring is in the air?

It will soon be spring. The shops are full of the scent of hot cross buns, the Cadburys Creme Eggs are on sale, bulbs are starting to peep through the ground and as a crafter my thoughts should be turning towards Valentines Day, Chinese New Year and Easter.

With that in mind, today I have made an Autumn themed card and a Christmas card. Well, I had a lovely new set of Spellbinders leaf cutting and embossing dies, bought with a gift card my daughter Mellow Mummy gave me for Christmas, so I had to try them out didn't I?

 

 

I love the way the embossing on the shapes turns them from simple diecut shapes into much more dimensional  ones, especially on the fir cones. The slightly pearlised card I used for them helps to highlight the embossing.

This week's challenge at Make My Monday is Dry Embossing,  while at Addicted to Clean and Simple the challenge is Embossing  so I am entering my cards into both challenges.

Does anyone else think back to the TV series of  a few years ago "The Restaurant" with Raymond Blanc saying "I  am putting you into zee challange" every time they type the word "challenge"? No? Oh dear, it's just me then.....

Tranquility

I didn't set out to make a sympathy card. I normally only make them when they are urgently needed, which means I have a few standard  quick and easy designs up my sleeve ready to create for a grieving friend. I don't like to keep them  in stock "just in case" because it feels as if I'm just waiting for something bad to happen.

And when I  set out to make a card for this week's challenge at Addicted to Stamps, where the theme is  Nature, I didn't set out to use my bare tree and branch stamps. I had something with butterflies and flowers in mind.

But maybe it's the grey miserable weather today, or maybe it's the time of year,  something drew me to these stamps  and  I decided to create a scene from them. And when it was finished, it looked perfect for a sympathy card, stark and yet tranquil at the same time.

I tore paper masks for the hills and reflections, sponging inks over the positive and negative masks and reversing  them and sponging more lightly for the reflection. Another torn mask made the island and I used a brayer for the tree reflection. With hindsight, I have cluttered  the foreground up with rather too many bare branches as the reflection doesn't really show  up.

All the stamps are unmounted ones I have had in my collection for many years, so I'm afraid I can't remember their makes.

 

I am submitting this to the challenge at Addicted to Stamps

and as it was seeing Zoe's beautiful card with the inked background and black silhouettes that put me in the mood to try this, I'm also submitting it to The Cupboard Trilogy 

Italian Polenta Bread

In my recent post What's in the Basket  I mentioned that I have some promotional bread baking booklets from Allinsons which I use over and over again. One of my favourites is the recipe for Italian  Polenta Sticks. You can find the recipe on the Baking Mad Website if you don't have the booklet.

The recipe is a basic bread dough recipe but with around half a cup of the flour replaced with polenta, or fine cornmeal, and with 50g of pine nuts added to the dough.

I generally prepare it on the "dough" setting of my bread maker then shape it by hand and bake it in the oven. The polenta and pine nuts  are just enough to give it an interesting flavour and texture without being enough to swamp anything it accompanies. I think it would be lovely toasted and spread with a little pesto and topped with chopped tomatoes, but it never hangs around for long enough in our house to get stale enough to toast!