A romantic new year's eve dinner for two

My boyfriend and I decided to stay in on new year's eve and I wanted to cook us a romantic dinner. The menu I chose was: herbed bacon and egg souffle; steak in a stilton sauce with boulangere potato stack; tiramisu. I thought I'd combine all the recipes into one blog post: enjoy!

Herbed cheese and bacon souffles

This recipe is adapted from the Slimming World recipe book Extra Easy Entertaining

Serves 2

You need:
Fry Light spray oil or similar
two rashers lean bacon, chopped
1 spring onion, chopped
pinch of chilli flakes
2 eggs, separated
chopped fresh parsley
dried dill
40g grated parmesan
pinch of mustard powder
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180C or 160 C fan. Place a roasting pan one third full of hot water in the oven.

Fry the bacon and spring onion and add a pinch of dried chilli flakes.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff

In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the bacon and spring onion mixture and the herbs, along with three quarters of the parmesan. Add the mustard powder and season.

Fold the mixture into the egg whites, using a metal spoon.

Spray the insides of two ramekin dishes with oil and spoon the mixture into the ramekins. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.

Bake for around 20 minutes until risen. These can be made the day before and heated up on the day.

We had these as a starter on new year's eve; I think they would work really well for breakfast or brunch as well.

I am sending these to Herbs on Saturday, hosted by Bangers and Mash and started by Karen of Lavender and Lovage.

I am also sending this to Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes for her Classic French cooking challenge, as the recipe she has chosen this month is the souffle.

Steak in Stilton Sauce

This was our main course on new year's eve. I didn't follow a recipe, and just fried some rump steak; helpfully, when I went to buy some that day they were reduced from £4 each to £1.79 in Tesco. I added some double cream to the meat juices in the pan (also in the reduced price section - I love going shopping after Christmas!) and then added some Stilton - left over from Christmas. The stilton melted and made a lovely creamy sauce.

As this meal used reduced-price steak and cream, and leftover cheese, I am sending it to Frugal Food Fridays, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Boulangere potato stacks

We had this as a side dish to accompany the steak (I also cooked some broccoli); I took the recipe from my new book Slimming World Extra Easy Entertaining. It was absolutely delicious and I will definitely make this again!

Serves 2
You need:
500g potatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
Fry Light or similar spray oil
tbsp chopped fresh parsley
4 tbsp Quark
2 garlic cloves, crushed or half a tablespoon garlic puree
salt and pepper
25g reduced fat grated cheddar

Peel the potatoes and slice with a mandolin or the wide edge on a grater

Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan, add the potatoes and bring back to the boil

Drain the potatoes and reserve the stock. Put the potatoes into a bowl.

Mix in the quark, herbs and garlic with 6 tbsp of the reserved stock and season. Toss gently with the potatoes.

Spray a muffin tin with oil and press spoonfulls of the potato mixture down into each muffin cup.

Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top- I used more than the recipe suggested but my boyfriend definitely wasn't complaining! Bake for 25-30 mins. I didn't take a picture of these on the plate but if you remove them carefully you have neat little stacks of potato slices. And they taste fantastic!

Tiramisu

I got Nigella's new book Nigellissima for Christmas and adapted this recipe from the book as our new year's eve dessert.

Serves 2
You need:
50ml coffee (eg made up from instant)
1 tbsp coffee or chocolate liqueur
2 sponge fingers
1 egg white
200g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp marsala
1 tsp cocoa powder

Make up the coffee, add the liqueur - I used a chocolate liqueur I bought in Italy last year -  and leave to cool.

Break each sponge finger into four pieces and place in a martini glass.

Pour the coffee mixture over the sponge fingers.

Beat the egg white with an electric whisk. In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone and honey, then add the marsala if using and beat again.

Fold in the egg whites then spoon into the martini glasses.

Sprinkle with cocoa powder or grated chocolate

And serve!

I am sending this to the blog challenge Forever Nigella, hosted this month by Recipe Junkie. Forever Nigella is organised by Sarah at Maison Cupcake. The theme in January is "food to cherish your loved ones", and what better way to spoil my boyfriend than to make him this lovely dessert for our romantic dinner together? (Incidentally, we followed our romantic dinner by spending a romantic evening... playing Xbox. It was actually a lot of fun!)

Chocolate no-bake cheesecake

When I made a peach cheesecake recently I wanted to make a chocolate version for my boyfriend as he doesn't eat peaches. I came across a recipe on the Kraft Philadelphia website for a no-bake chocolate cheesecake using chocolate Philadelphia, and then when I went to the supermarket the next day chocolate Philly was half price.... so I think somebody was telling me to make this recipe!
You need:
about 140g biscuits eg digestive, crushed
30g low fat spread, melted
400g Cadbury's chocolate Philadelphia
250ml creme fraiche
8g powdered gelatine (about three quarters of a sachet) dissolved in 60 ml hot water

At least, those are the ingredients from the recipe, I did end up adapting them slightly to use up what I already had in the house.

First I used my food processor to turn the biscuits into crumbs:

Mix with the melted butter and press into the bottom of a tin. I lined it with greaseproof paper which turned out to be a good move in the end.

Whisk Philadelphia and creme fraiche. I actually used fat-free fromage frais as I had some to use up, and I decided it would be similar enough - but it ended up a little runny and I wonder if this was the problem.

Dissolve the gelatine according to the instructions on the pack. The recipe said to use powdered gelatine but I had sheets; I worked out how much I thought I would need according to the quantities on the packet but as the final dish was a bit too runny, I'm wondering if I didn't use enough. Maybe it was a combination of using fromage frais instead of creme fraiche and not using enough gelatine - next time I'll follow the recipe properly!

Mix the gelatine in with the chocolate mixture, pour over the cheesecake base and leave to set

A bit on the runny side - you had to eat it with a spoon rather than a fork - but otherwise it was pretty good, and very simple to make!

As there was no baking required, I am sending this in to Maison Cupcake's Zero Baking Required Challenge, a new event which she started this month.

Secondly I am sending this to Culinary Vibes' Cook Eat Delicious Desserts blog challenge, as this month's theme is chocolate.
 

Finally I am sending this to Frugal Food Fridays hosted by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours as it ticks several boxes - the ingredients are cheap, even more so as the main ingredient was half price, and no baking means not paying for the electricity for the oven!

Frugal Food Fridays roundup

Helen at Fuss Free Flavours has invited me to guests host her blogging challenge, Frugal Food Fridays this month.

Frugal Food Fridays are all about saving some money, whilst still enjoying great food.
Money saving topics could be:-

• Dishes using cheaper ingredients – cheap cuts of meat or vegetarian
• Meals using leftovers
• Meals using up the ends of packets
• Substitutions of cheaper ingredients
• Packed lunches
• Meals that use less energy to cook
• Pressure cooking
• Slow cooking
• Faster cooking – less oven time for example
• Batch cooking for the freezer
• Sustainable foods
• Food you have grown yourself
• Meals from reduced food in the supermarket

So shall we see what's on the kitchen table this month?

I kicked off the challenge myself with a couple of Jubilee themed bakes, both of which used up leftover ingredients and in fact used up some cake pops that went wrong! I made these corgi cake balls

and also these Jubilee cake balls

Next to the party was Becky from Mint Custard who made this panzanella, a summer supper dish that turns stale pieces of bread and some ripe tomatoes into something really special:

Leftovers always reminds me of bubble and squeak, something my mum used to make - but I've never seen it in an omlette like Debby from Cooking Up a Storm in a Teacup did here. I'm impressed at how many ingredients she's managed to squeeze into this!

Al from Alastair's Miscellany - who happens to be a good friend of mine from university- threw together all the "bits left over in the fridge at the end of the week" which turned into this egg and ham pie. A nice bit of creativity!

I got creative with some leftovers myself with these fishcakes, which I christened "Baltimore style" as they use a seasoning a colleague brought me over from our company's office in Baltimore.

Sayantani of A Homemaker's Diary whipped up this soy chunks curry which she says makes a very satisfying meal when paired with roti

Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes delivered a batch of cheese scones which is a frugal recipe but you wouldn't know from looking at them!

From the intriguingly-named Warteg Gaziantep comes this Fried Sandwich , which looks like a really tasty way of using up slightly stale bread:

This lemon yogurt cake comes from The More Than Occasional Baker, who used up some lemons leftover from another cake and some yogurt she'd bought for another recipe. It looks really moist and citrusy!

This mitha chana dal comes from the Turmeric Kitchen. It's a dish made of split yellow peas, fresh coconut paste and assorted spices and is cooked in a pressure cooker; the combination of flavours sounds delicious

These capsicum omlettes are a great idea, and thrifty too - an egg cooked inside a slice of red pepper! Brought to you by Recipe World.

The wonderfully-named Cookaroo sent us these banana oatmeal wholewheat muffins which uses up a whole host of things sitting in her pantry, including some ripe bananas. They look really yummy!

I'm a big fan of pizza so was excited to see this Sicilian Pizza - Sfincione - from Blue Kitchen Bakes. It's cheap to make, uses up leftover ingredients and looks delicious.

And last but not least we have this biscuit crumb bread from Helen at Fuss Free Flavours - the brains behind Frugal Food Fridays no less. Her tin of crackers fell onto the floor and she used the resulting crumbs in a loaf of bread - what a good idea!

Thanks to everyone who linked up this month - if you're interested in guest hosting Frugal Food Fridays yourself, please contact Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

For July, Frugal Food Fridays is hosted by Blue Kitchen Bakes.