Duck burgers, mac and cheese, and cesar salad (as well as a hilarious kitchen disaster)!

Hello, it's been a while since I've posted, but I've been keeping rather busy, to be honest! Been faithfully taking pictures of food I've made and bought to keep you all entertained. Anyway, so the first order of business is for me to rant about this gorgeous duck burger I had at the country show, which is basically like a county fair in America, where they have lots of livestock, and food, and cider, and rides. Didn't go on the rides, but I had food, and took lots of pictures of cows and sheep, etc.

This duck burger, though, was one of the highlights of the day! It was a patty made of duck meat, obviously, with a nice plum sauce on a bun. It was greasy, but in the best kind of way, and tender and all around amazing. I forgot to take a before picture, but here's one when I remembered a few bites in. You try waiting when something smells that amazing!


That night we went pubbing with some friends, "we" meaning Paul and I, and "friends" being Dave, Bero and Gower. We went to the White Heart in Pirbright, which is a pretty quintessential English village (complete with a red telephone booth, pub and duck pond!) and had a delicious but expensive meal. I had a venison cottage pie which was FANTASTIC. It's basically venison (deer meat) in tasty gravy combined with carrots and onions, under a mountain of yummy mashed potatoes.
Paul decided to go American on us and had a burger with bacon and emmental cheese.
A couple nights later, I believe it was Thursday night, June 3, I was asked to make some tea for the family, so I decided I was going to go American on them and make a mac and cheese, but not your traditional goup! I was going to bake it with bread crumbs and instead of just using cheddar, I went half mature cheddar and half mexican cheese which is a delicious rendition of the American "pepper jack." Mother Turner wanted salad, so I was just going to do a plain one with a dijon vinaigrette (which is a Rattner family specialty) but we had been watching Jamie Oliver that morning and he'd made a fantastic ceasar salad, so Paul insisted we make our own rendition of that.

Both recipes were really quick and really simple. For the mac and cheese we boiled 3 cups of macaroni noodles in a large pan and got them to they were well done. While that was happening, in a sauce pan we combined 2 tbsp of butter, 2 tbsp of flour, and 1 cup of milk over low heat and mixed until it got relatively thick. Not sauce thick, but about the consistency of a nice vegetable broth, or light cream. So helpful, I know. It just wasn't too thick. You'll know it when it happens, I think. Anyway, then we took it OFF the heat and mixed in 1.5 cups of mature cheddar and 1.5 cups of the mexicana cheese, both which I had been meticulously grating while the sauce was thickening (you wanna shred it so it melts easier). We added the cheese large handful by large handful, waiting until the first bunch had melted into the mixture before adding the rest. Truthfully you can use any cheese you'd like for this. Think of your favourite cheese and just shred it up and use it. Careful to make sure your favourite cheese melts properly though! Haha.
My lovely sous-chef Paul! <3 Representing for my uni, as well! Sorry dad. Hehe!

After we'd strained the noodles, we mixed them into the sauce so that every noodle was covered (it's a 3 cups noodle to 3 cups of cheese ratio, so you should have no problem with this). Then, since we didn't really have bread crumbs handy, we smashed up a bunch of croutons that we were going to use with the salad and sprinkled them across the top after we'd dumped the mix into a oven-safe casserole. Sorry, that sentence was a bit backwards. Anyway, then we slid it into the oven which had been preheated at 180*C (350*F) and let it cook for about 30-40 minutes. This easily fed the 4 people at the table with lots to spare.
Then we prepared the ceasar salad. Paul chopped up the romaine lettuce leaves and tomatoes, adding some anchovies, chicken, 3 strips of bacon (chopped of course) and loads of parmesan cheese shredded. I made the dressing by putting 125 mL of olive oil in a measuring cup, followed by 50 mL of malt vinegar. Into that I put 3 tbsp of mayonaise (this is in the recipe I used, but you can also use egg for a more traditional dressing), a clove of squished garlic, 1 tsp of dijon mustard, 2 tsp of Worcestershire sauce (pronounced "wohrstershire"), a tbsp of minced canned anchovies (optional, but a classic ingredient which in my opinion made it all the more cesar-y) and a crap load of parmesan cheese, grated. It called for only a tbsp of cheese, but I added a considerable amount more because it added taste, thickness, and was a good substitute for salt since the anchovies are already incredibly salty.
When serving the dressing, however, make sure everyone stirs it before pouring it, though, cos the good stuff kept sinking to the bottom. Maybe too much oil?
Paul's lovely salad.
Plated and looking lovely.
Close up of the fantastic mac and cheese (if I do say so myself).
Who's a member of the Clean Plate Club? All of us were! :D

Anyway, this is a massive post, because lots of stuff happened and I was getting behind, but there was a pretty funny incident last night when I cooked as well. Two of the things my dad has passed down to me that he makes the best of are his recipes for guacamole and a healthy tuna salad. They are family favourites, and I was going to give them a whirl because Sara (Paul's sister) and I are deciding to try and eat a bit more healthily, cos I've been eating FAR too much here.

SO, I went to the store to get my ingredients with the lovely Mother Turner, and first we went to the slightly posh and expensive Waitrose, and... THEY DIDN'T HAVE AVOCADO! I was shocked and appalled, so we headed over to the slightly more modest but lovely Morrisons, which is also where Paul is a supervisor for the Oven Fresh counter. And then, another disappointment. The avocados weren't very ripe. I foolishly bought them anyway, as I was thinking I could still work with them, but it was the biggest rookie mistake of my life.

When I got back home to start cooking, I enlisted the help of Sara to help me mash and chop things for the guacamole. However, the avocados were so unripe, we could barely cut into them! We finally got them out of their peels, which was horrendously difficult and then brought out the hand blender to try and puree them or something. How silly of us, it just cut them into chips which ended up being flung all over the kitchen! We thought maybe add some boiling water? Nope, goop. We strained the mix and thought maybe if we added sour cream and put it in an actual food processeor? Haha, it turned into just little crunchy hard bits of green in a white cream. Ahh, how disappointing, but hilarious none the less. We now have ripening avocados for a later date. It really was funny in a very sad way.

So, we skipped on guacamole, and I set about making my tuna salad. I had chopped some white onion and tomato for the guac., so instead of wasting it, I decided to put it in the tuna mix. On top of that, I chopped carrot, cucumber, red bell pepper, and Sara shredded some lettuce before dumping 2 cans of tuna (drained) into a large bowl with the veg. We tossed that until mixed thoroughly before making my famous dijon vinaigrette, which used to be my dad's recipe. I used olive oil and cider vinegar (which I thought was an appropriate substitute for the red wine vinegar I usually use for it) and had a dollop or so of dijon mustard (grey poupon, very posh, hah!) I don't have exact measurements, but make sure there is about 3 times as much olive oil as there is vinegar and you're fine. I dusted the top of the jar I was using with oregano, and seasoned to taste with salt and pepper, and voila! A minute's work of dressing, which was amazing. I dressed the salad very generously (another thing I got from my dad, a heavy dressing hand) and set it out to serve. It was gone within minutes between 3 people. If there are more people eating, I'd use another can of tuna.

Very light, summery, and very healthy! Plus, afterwards we had a long walk, because I'd snuck in 2 crackers with goat's cheese on it for dessert! Yummm.
Mmm, goat's cheese! Salty and tasty and rich. Purrrfect.

(Oh, and by the way, the recipe for the mac and cheese and cesar dressing came from Raab's Clueless in the Kitchen)

Barbie, Paul's cooking, and Pasta (Cake too!)

This is going to be a fairly long post I believe, as I've gone quite a few days without posting anything and for that I am very sorry! I finally got my camera hooked up to the computer so I can share with you some lovely pictures!

The barbeque was fantastic. Great company of course, and lots and lots of food. And alcohol, I might add, haha! But yes, there were only 6 people and we ended up having 3 full platters of meat, which had chicken legs, sausage, and burgers on them! Needless to say, we couldn't finish it all, but it was fantastic! I ended up eating 2 burgers, 2 sausages and a chicken leg, and that's pretty good for me, as I am very tiny.
That was Sunday night, I believe, and then Paul cooked on Wednesday night because Monday night we went out for pizza at Pizza Express in Woking, which was amazing, and Tuesday night we had dinner with some of his work friends at a Indian buffet place, which was pretty tasty! I should really start taking pictures of my meals out as well. Silly me.

Monday night however, Paul made a pasta with minced meat and cheese, which was very tasty. I chopped some onion and garlic for him and we threw that in a pot with the minced meat with some red wine and chili flakes, boiled pasta in another pan and threw it all together before shredding parmesan and cheddar ontop, when it was then baked in the oven. I threw together a large salad with tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, onions, celery and rocket, and that was basically our meal. It turned out great!


Now tonight was by far the most exciting night for cooking. We had more chicken to use up, so we decided to go with a one-pot Italian chicken dish that was very easy to make! It only took about 25 minutes start to finish! Then, I decided I wanted to try my hand at baking a cake, so I decided I was going to make an almond torte with whipped mocha cream frosting. Doesn't that just SOUND orgasmic? Trust me, it tasted even better.

I decided to tackle the torte first, as we had a few hours to dinner, and the chicken pasta dish wouldn't take long to cook, and should be cooked right before serving, ideally. So, I took a blender and blended 4 eggs together with 175mL (3/4 cup) of regular sugar. Then, I added 250mL (1 cup) of whole almonds. Paul and I had accidentally bought salted ones, so we rinsed them thoroughly and it was better. I blended those in to the eggs and sugar until they were pulverised before adding only 30mL (2 tablespoons) of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder. We blended that together and poured them into 2 8"cake pans to cook. Oh, and the oven had been preheated to about 180*C and the cakes only took about 10-12 minutes to cook until they had risen nicely and were set on the counter until they were cut out and placed on a cooling rack.

While they were cooling, I emptied 375 mL (1.5 cups) of heavy whipping cream into a mixing bowl along with 125mL (1/2 cup) of sugar, 50mL (1/2 cup) of unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 tsp of vanilla and 1tbsp of instant coffee. Being the stubborn girl I am, I decided to hand whisk the mix. This seemed like a daunting task at first, because it took a bit longer to thicken, but the result was FAR more... personal, I should say, and I think it must've made it lighter as well. If you wanna recreate this recipe, you are allowed to use an electric beater, but I just preferred doing it by hand. Gotta give your food some TLC (tender loving care)! After the cakes cooled I frosted them and garnished the with some extra almonds.
We left it like that while we started on the main course. What had happened was I had chopped a large white onion and 8oz of button mushrooms, along with a clove of garlic before hand and after heating about 2tbsp of olive oil in a large pot, I dumped them all in, in the order they were listed before mixing them about. After that, I added 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces into the mix along with a tbsp of Italian herb seasonings and some red chili flakes (which the recipe didn't call for, but I added them anyway). Then after that had been mixed together for about 3 minutes I added 1/2 a cup of chardonnay wine to the mix, stirred for about a minute before adding a can of Italian-style stewed tomatoes, 14oz of chicken broth, and a little bit of water to the pot before dumping 8oz of egg noodles into the pan. That was brought to a boil until the pasta was lovely and the chicken was cooked thoroughly, and then, it was served! :D

Everyone really liked this meal and it was super easy to make. Oh, did I mention we had a LOT of frosting left over even after I'd lathered on the frosting, so Paul and I were FORCED to get spoons and eat it up. This is not recommended as a two person job, maybe get some friends to help, cos my stomach HURTS. But it was an awesome meal, and there was absolutely NOTHING left of it. You could even hear people scraping the last bits of it from the pot, and their plates. No greater compliment to a cook than that!


Oh, by the way, I got the recipe for the torte from Evelyn Raab's Clueless in the Kitchen, and the recipe for the chicken/pasta dish from Cheap.Fast.Good! by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross. All other meals were purely off the top of our heads.

Quick Lunch

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed my first massive post below! This one isn't going to be long, but I did decide to make lunch today for myself and my boyfriend's mother, so I thought I'd share, even if it's not very exciting.

So, today is ridiculously hot outside, and it's a bit overwhelming. However, when you're working outside and using lots of energy like Mother Turner has been doing today, you're going to want something filling, albeit a little light.

Something that I find surprisingly light despite the fact that it has meat and mayo in it is a BLT sandwich. These are stupidly easy to make, and very self explanatory. Just fry up some bacon in a pan, toast some bread, spread it with mayo and add a layer of sliced tomatoes and some lettuce, slap the bacon on it and you're done!

You don't have to be a brilliant chef to do that, for sure. It was very satisfying, and very yummy. Not too heavy either! I was glad. My mother will be proud of me. Hehe!

Tonight I'm heading over to a barbie (barbeque) at a friend's house, so I shall give you all the delicious details of that tomorrow! I'm sure there will be plenty of meat and drink to go around!

Stay hungry!

Hello there!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my new blog!

I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth and I am most definitely a foodie. I am 20 years old and attend Michigan State University, despite the fact that I'm spending nearly all my time here in sunny old England, UK. I'm a psychology major and have no idea what I'll be doing with my life after I graduate, but I'm proud to say that I am in a band called the Narcotics, and I'm also a budding cook! Well, we'll see about that, but I'm certainly working on it!
I always grew up with amazing food. My mother is a fantastic cook and is always making wonderful things to eat. It's quite intimidating trying to cook with someone so talented over your shoulder, but she has taught me some wonderful techniques for which I am very grateful.

Anyway, since I'm over in England with time to spare, I've decided to do some cooking--instead of just eating! So far I've been very pleased with the results.
My mother, being her generous self, had given me some of her own self-canned jars of items like jam and salsa for my boyfriend's family. One of the items was actually a bruschetta mix which was made with tomato, garlic, basil, olive oil, and a few other herbs. I shall ask her sometime for the actual list of ingredients if you'd like, but that's what I noticed off the bat. Anyway, my boyfriend's mum had gone to get some bruschetta bread, which is basically just flat, long sliced Italian bread so that I could use it to make dinner that night.
Given that we were already going to have an Italian starter, and happened to have four boneless chicken breasts in the fridge to work with, I decided to go for something vaguely Italian for the main course as well and decided to make Chicken Parmigiana. That is basically chicken breasts topped with tomato sauce and melted parmesan cheese over that. To start, we put the chicken breasts in the oven which I'm not sure of the preheated time, I'm sorry, but I think it was something like 250*C. Please don't quote me on that, I'll ask my boyfriend for sure, because it was his oven and he had done the preheating. We lay them in a row and put them in to bake a bit.
While we did that we took out a sauce pan and minced some garlic (2 small cloves) and red onion and scraped them into the pan which had been prepped with a sprinkle of olive oil. We added a can of tomato sauce to that when the lot had cooked a bit (careful cos garlic tends to burn quickly) and mixed that together for a while before adding sprinklings of oregano, basil, salt, pepper, crushed and dried chili peppers (which added a FANTASTIC spicy kick to it) and a few capers. We didn't bother to measure any of it, just chucked them in the pan and stirred.

After the chicken was cooked most of the way through, we took it out and poured the hot tomato sauce over top of them. We went to find some parmesan cheese, but to our shock there was none! There was, however, a block of hard white cheddar in the fridge so we grabbed that and grated it over top until there was a nice layer over each breast and popped it back in the oven to melt and finish cooking.
While they were doing that, we began to grill the buschetta bread to make them toasty and pour the canned sauce into a bowl. It was a tiny bit tomatoey to the taste, so we decided to kick it up a notch by mincing another clove of garlic and tossing it in, along with a very VERY small dash of balsamic vinegar (hardly any as its a very overpowering taste). We brought that to the table and while Paul was setting up the table for dinner (after he had chopped up some greens and veggies for a small salad) I pulled the delicious smelling chicken out of the oven. What was awesome about the tomato sauce was that any juices from it had gathered in the bottom of the pan (which was lined, by the way, with a plastic reusable sheet) and had sort of marinated the chicken and left it beautifully moist.

Everyone loved it, and I must say, I was SO proud of the meal.

So proud that I was inspired to get up at silly o'clock the next morning to make myself an omelette! It was stupidly simple to make. I cut up a strip of bacon into small little pieces and tossed them in a pan that had been prepped with a bit of butter. I waited for the grease to come out a bit before throwing in half of a diced white onion. While those were cooking a bit I whisked 2 eggs into a measuring bowl and poured it over the ingredients into a pan. Looking back I should have probably used 3 eggs, but never mind. I then got strips of camembert cheese (a delicious, creamy French cheese) and folded the egg in half so that it was almost like quesadilla. Oh, and I had sprinkled a TINY bit of crushed red/chili pepper into it too. It was deliscious. Creamy, with a tiny bite of the sour-ish cheese and savoury bacon and yummy browned onions. Best start of the morning ever.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings and that they were not a jumble of text on a page. I'll try to post a picture of the meal for you if you'd like! Give me feedback and let me know what you like or would like to see in posts and I will love you forever. Haha! Thanks for reading!

Stay hungry.