Hallowe'en Post

Nothing to do with cooking, but I left buying pumpkins too late this year and had to go on a pumpkin hunt! I finally found two little ones in a green grocers and carved them while watching The Lost Boys.. festive, right?

Here's how they turned out!

Emily! :) x

10 Minute Tasty Superfood Dinner

I'm not sure how healthy this actually is, but based on how much I love it, how quick it is, and that a few of the ingredients are healthy- i've talked myself into believing that its the healthiest thing that has ever existed!

The bacon (i know, not healthy) adds saltiness, whilst the lemon cuts through it with a sharp addition and the tomatoes bring sweetness. The kale reduces a lot so you eat more good stuff without realising and.. cheese is just awesome. It's a balanced meal that includes two of your 5-a-day, protein, fibre and calcium. You should definitely try this whether you agree that its healthy or not. You can choose which cheese to use, I've tried this with mozzarella, brie and camembert. Camembert is my favourite, but always with parmesan sprinkled on top!

Butterscotch Cookies

So here's another recipe with my new favourite ingredient- burnt butter!

A lot of the stuff I bake ends up at work- because there aren't enough people in my house to eat it all- but a friend of mine from work is fussy and doesn't like chocolate so I asked him what I could bake that he would eat and enjoy. He came up with butterscotch cookies.

I tried making butterscotch chips to go in the butterscotch cookies, but they never fully set; when chilled it was like toffee, but when heated it melted again! In the end, I made butterscotch flavour cookies, make a hole in the middle and put a lump of butterscotch in there, then rolled them up and baked them like that. This kind of worked! But, they tasted great either way!

Risotto alla Milanese

The first time I had this wonderful saffron and parmesan risotto was earlier this year when we took my mum on a surprise birthday treat to Milan. Milan is a beautiful city, however, in order to visit this stylish city, you must pack only your best clothes. We spent far too long getting ready and dressed up each day- even if we were just going shopping or sight seeing. Everyone, everywhere, is immaculate. It really puts London to shame!

We saw an opera at the world famous Tetro alla Scala, went to countless art galleries including seeing Da Vinci's Last Supper, saw the incredible Duomo and, of course, we window shopped at all the fancy designer shops. One of the best parts of Milan, however, is the food (no surprises there!) with Gelato cafes on each corner, we ate Italian ice cream for breakfast lunch and dinner, as well as the amazing fresh pasta and breads, then gorged on aperitifs and cocktails in swanky bars in the evenings.

One of the aperitifs we had was Risotto Milanese. It's so simple- with only two main flavours- yet so tasty! It's normally a wonderful bright yellow colour, however my saffron wasn't the most expensive, hence the paler colouring. I recommend using a high quality extra strong parmesan and good quality saffron- powdered if possible in this recipe to get the true Italian flavours.