I have made a few things from recipes from the All Recipes Website though it did take me a bit of hunting to find how you actually find the recipes:/
There are tabs along the top of the orange/yellow bar which open little sub-windows. Still it is a fantastic resource!
I picked up this strange morrow/squash type thing in a vegitable and flower shop thats connected with Moo Moos a cafe along the Bath road near Cheltenham (it might be part of Cheltenham and it might infact be the Old Bath Road I’m not sure).
Anyway it was like 30p and I was doing a Halloween party and decorating the village hall with a spooky fruit and veg feel. I had no idea what it was and started asking around. It fitted into my hand and had a sort of waxy feel to it. There was no lable on the basket it came from and I asked around – I got some very silly answers – namely ‘pig marrow’ from one of my husbands friends who then confessed he hadn’t got a clue.
Apparently it is a gourd – the sort of thing that used to be hollowed out to make bowls and things in olden times. This would fit with the waxy feel of the skin and the fact that it didn’t go rotten until one of our kitten chewed a corner off of it:/
But if anybody knows anything else about this or anything related please let me know!
Ages ago before we were flooded and I had no kitchen and the like, we were having a loving BBQ with our friend Seth who had come to visit us for the weekend!
Don’t panic its not petrol he’s pouring on the BBQ its just vegatable oil as being a vegitarian BBQ we have issues with no fat dripping down onto the charcoal etc….
We had lots of fun which included using my llechwan (bake stone/piece of cast iron) to cook onions on 🙂 We now do this when ever we have BBQ’s we did it several times this summer, including the end of term Scouts BBQ. However the bake stone takes an age to cool down again – I have been known to accidently leave circluar burn marks in the grass from this – but the fried onions really set the burgers and hotdogs off I have to say and if there’s only on BBQ it gives the veggi burgers some where safe to lurk so they don’t get splashed by meat fat. Also some of the vegitable burgers have a nasty habit of actually falling to pieces on the grills of BBQ’s on the llechwan it doesn’t.
My nan would probably not approve though! Infact I need to do another post on how I came to own this particular bake stone!
For Halloween we had had a two pumpkins and so I scooped all the seeds and fibrous bit in the middle out. I then seperated out all the seeds and laid them on a backing tray. I then put then in the oven at 180 degrees C for about 20 minutes (at least that was the plan I actually forgot about them).
I removed them and they were starting to go a dark brown which gave them a lovely taste. I also ground some sea salt onto them, scooped them all into an oriental style black bowl and put them out as a snack at a birthday party.
You may have noticed that alot of bean hotch potch of various types has been appearing on here recently – this all stemmed from university days and the effort to eat on a budget and being bored of baked beans.
The origonal was baked beans bunged in the wok and pushed around until most of the liquid had gone and the beans were slightly more mushy that normal – value baked beans turned out to be perfect for this. I then found that adding mixed herbs and abit of salt and pepper made a great differnce.
Then at some point I decided to start adding left overs – so cheese and tuna and bacon and chicken and various other things begain to be added – it was then that it became a hotch potch of what ever I happened to have lurking when I made it up. The name stuck.
I always liked to add lee n perrins worchestershire suace to it but when I moved in with my hubby he informed me it contained anchovies and so he couldn’t eat it for the simple reason that he is veggi. So I then turned to tabasco sauce and about 2 years ago discovered you could by fajita seasoning which works well.
My brother makes a version of these baked beans that blows your head off – he calls it Flamey Davies Beans.
Rescently I discovered that there are other typed of bean other than the retched workhorse – Baked Beans. This is a releif as my father will not eat baked beans and so I have had to carfully look around for a version he would eat. The supermarkets currently have a huge cariety of tinned bean and so I have simply gone out and spent £30 on beans, lentils and the like and am happily experiementing.
At some point I will get on to bean salads but for now I will continue recounting how to make various hotch potches!
Hotch potch is a term used in my family to denote a mix and match of things that could be seen as a bit odd or heath robinson or very patchwork and thrown together – not sure if they are real words and don’t really care – enjoy your beans – they are good for you remember! (well it says it all over the tins!).
One of the things that I find great about catering for my scouts halloween parties is that I can just rename things to body parts and suddenly you have spooky food!
Cheesy puff balls can become eyeballs Cheerios = small intestines Onion rings = large intestines Hulled sunflower seeds become flies Squares = dragon scales Any long crispy think becomes witches fingers Bannanas cut in half = bones Red pepper slices = heart sections
The list can go on and on and all you have to do is present it spookily with little labels and the like – I also had feely boxes that contianed things like tinned spagetti and beans, jelly etc… the kids couldn’t see that it was food and you just told them it was troll brains and that sort of thing – they all had a great time and so did I 🙂
My friend Zoe posted this link on Twitter and I had to look through the whole site! The sites called Cake Wrecks and is about professional cakes going horribly and hidiously wronge. There are some amazing photographs and the write ups are halarious!
The site also features pictures of buetifully made cakes and I find myself coming up with lots of idea for cakes that I don’t have the skills to make:/ Its well worth a look.
*1 tin of borlotti beans in water *1 tin of tuna in brine *1 tins of chopped tomatoes *1 cup of red split lentils *1 teaspoons of very lazy chopped garlic *Rosemerry *Goats Cheese
1)Take a medium/large suacepan and empty the beans with their water into it. 2)Then the tuna should be added. 3)Add the chopped tomatoes. 4)Place on a medium heat. 5)Get it steaming but try not to let it boil. 6)Place the lentils into another smaller pan cover in water and bring to the boil. 7)Boil until tender and drain 8)Add the drained lentils to the other pan with the beans and tuna. 9)laddle into the baking dish and grate cheese on top. 10)Place in a medium oven or if still hot until the grill until the cheese melts and starts to brown. 11)Serve
*1 tin of borlotti beans in water *1 tin of tuna in brine *1 tins of chopped tomatoes *1 cup of red split lentils *Large mushrroms *1 teaspoons of very lazy chopped garlic *Rosemerry *Goats Cheese
1)Take a medium/large suacepan and empty the beans with their water into it. 2)Then the tuna should be added. 3)Add the chopped tomatoes. 4)Place on a medium heat. 5)Get it steaming but try not to let it boil. 6)Place the lentils into another smaller pan cover in water and bring to the boil. 7)Boil until tender and drain 8)Add the drained lentils to the other pan with the beans and tuna. 9)laddle into the giant mushroom and grate cheese on top. 10)Place under a medium grill until the cheese melts and starts to brown. 11)Serve
I love getting giant mushrooms and simply filling them with something and grilling them until the cheese I’ve put on top melts.
This is easy to do, versatile, healthy and can look nice if presented nicely with a side salad or some such. I tend to stuff them with rissoto type rice mixes, stuffing desinged for turkey etc…, or bean concotions of various types.
