Thursday 29 March 2012

Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Biscuits

These were delicious.

Being rather fond of chocolate it was about time that I learned how to make my own chocolate biscuits. It's safe to say that Nigella Lawson likes chocolate almost as much as I do. The recipe that I followed was Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, with a few alterations, as follows:

There was a lack of light brown sugar in the cupboard so I used dark muscovado sugar instead, this is a very rich, sticky sugar, apparently ideal for sprinkling on desserts. I did not sprinkle, I used roughly 75g.

The term chocolate chips can be interpreted loosely in my opinion, Nigella covers for this school of thought by referring to them as morsels. I snapped two bars of chocolate into squares, some large, some small and stirred them into the mix before scooping it out onto the baking tray.

Overall this recipe took me under an hour, anything that can be cooked in under an hour is worth your time.
Don't expect neat and tidy looking biscuits from this recipe. They are huge, chunky, amazingly chocolatey and great broken up with some icecream and raspberries. They are not tidy and if this worries you then you're reading the wrong blog.

Wednesday 28 March 2012

Make it Mint

Mint is a new herb to me, being largely associated with the mint source to go with slices of Lamb at my grandma's house. Untill recently I never really understood how it works in a context that doesn't have Lamb on it.

Here's what I know now:

Mint, Coriander, Cashew Nuts and Chili's

  • Take a small handful of fresh mint leaves, and small handful of fresh Coriander leaves and rip them up.
  • Take a large Red Chilli and slice it into thin rings. Get rid of the seeds.
  • Take a small handful of Cashew nuts and toast them up for a minute or so in a pan.

These four ingredients should be smashed together in a pestle and mortar, with a shake of Turmeric or Paprika, though not so far that the nuts become dust.


Now then, this can either be sprinked dry, more less as it is, but it's probably going to be better if you add a little bit of nut oil and a bit of soy sauce to make a paste or dressing.

So I need to put this on some actual food, or eat it off a spoon or what?

Well you can clearly use this as a nice dressing to add to a salad involving leaves, tomato, sliced spring onion and/or couscous and feta. You can call that done, you call that a victory.
 

That's a salad.

Where is Paul and what have you done with him?


Or we can do this properly: get your griddle or frying pan good and hot while you sprinkle some crushed black pepper and rub some oil onto a piece of sirloin or rump (or whatever) Steak - not a huge piece, but certainly as thick as your thumb. This recipe will be equally fine and maybe even better, with a small but again thickish Tuna steak from the Fish Quay.

Once your pan is hot, press the steak onto it. There will be smoke, so if you can open a window, turn on the extractor fan and close the door to any room you don't want to smell like beef, that would be a great idea. If you happen to have some Teriyaki, Hoisin or more soy to hand, you can pour a bit of this onto the streak before you turn it over. It'll make the edges a bit sticky and/or caramelised when you slice it. It'll make a lot more smoke.

After two minues, the steak should be griddled on one side now, turn it over for another two or three minutes. Not much more than that. If you've got good salt, sprinkle some on the cooked side now.

If there is fat around the edges make sure this gets pressed right down into the heat.

After absolutely no more than six minutes in total, get the steak onto a chopping board and leave it for two or three more minutes: if you do this the insides should still be nicely pink, but shouldn't bleed when you slice it into the thinnest strips your sharpest knife willl allow.

Place the strips onto a salad involving leaves, tomato, sliced spring onions. Pour the Mint, Coriander, Turmeric, and Chilli's on top, either dry or as a paste with some oil and soy, like I said.

You have now won.

Monday 26 March 2012

Hello

This is Foody Finds, my little food blog.

I'm going to use this space to tell the world about my adventures in the world of food. 
Exploring recipes, ingredients, places to eat out and anything else food based I think of. There will be photos, recipes to follow, recommendations on what tastes good and so on. There will be the occasional cocktail too, mmm. 

The goal is to talk about local ingredients, independent food shops and home grown goodies as much as possible. I live in Newcastle, a city with a fish quay, allotments, indoor marketplaces, a dozen independent breweries and some fantastic places to eat out. It's ideal. Why aren't we all keeping a food blog here?