Cheesy Broccoli Soup

I've made broccoli and stilton soup before but not used Cheddar in it. I decided to try another recipe from 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' - I went through a bit of a phase of using this book a few months back - and like many of the recipes in this book, it called for velveeta cheese. You can't get this in the UK and after reading a description online I decided that Cheddar was relatively close in flavour and texture.

Unusually, as broccoli soup is often vegetarian, and based on pretty much just broccoli and vegetable stock, this soup uses canned chicken soup as a base! It did taste really nice and though not as low calorie as the broccoli soup I would normally make it was very filling and would make a good lunch at this time of year - something you could take to work as well as enjoy at home.

To serve 4, you need:
4 cups water
2 cups potato, peeled and diced
1 chicken stock cube
I cup onion, peeled and diced
1 head broccoli, chopped
400ml can cream of chicken soup
300g Cheddar, grated

Heat the water, potato, stock cube, onion and broccoli in a large pan until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the soup and Cheddar and heat through, stirring occasionally, until the cheese has melted.

Cheesy Broccoli Bites

I found this recipe for broccoli bites in a book called America's Most Wanted Recipes, which aims to recreate dishes from popular US restaurant chains. This one comes from Bennigan;'s, which I've never heard of, despite having visited 21 US states over the years.

This is broccoli, but not as you know it! I guess this is one way to get people to eat their vegetables... it's mixed with bacon, cheese, onion, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried! So it's really not very healthy, but it is still broccoli I guess... and it tastes amazing! I made these to go with pasta and they worked really well; the recipe suggests to serve them with a honey mustard dressing.

The recipe said to use  Monterey Jack and Colby cheese, neither of which I could get hold of, so I used cheddar. It also called for a 16 ounce box of frozen chopped broccoli, thawed and drained. You can of course get frozen broccoli here but I wanted to use fresh so I cooked it in a pan of boiling water then chopped it up. So this is what I did:

To serve 4, you need;
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup cheddar, grated

 

 

1 head broccoli, cooked and chopped
5 tbsp. bacon bits or pancetta
1 tbsp. finely diced onion
2 tbsp. plain flour
about 100g breadcrumbs
oil for frying

Mix the cheddar, broccoli, bacon, onion and flour in a bowl and refrigerate for an hour. Heat an inch of oil in a large frying pan. Meanwhile form the broccoli mixture into balls, roll in the beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs and fry each one in the hot oil. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot.

Santa Fe Chicken

After a few road trips around the US I bought a cookery book called 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' - it contains copycat recipes based on dishes served at some of the biggest restaurant chains across the US.

I hadn't used the book in a while so a couple of weeks ago went through and picked out several recipes to try. This one, called Santa Fe Chicken, is apparently based on something served at Applebee's, a restaurant chain I've heard of but never actually been to. Still it sounded like a nice recipe I wanted to try!

It's one of those recipes where exact quantities aren't required and you play it by ear, at least I did.

First butterfly a chicken breast to open it out flat and cut a thick slice of cheese - one per chicken breast. The recipe said to use Monterey Jack cheese but I couldn't find that in the supermarket. I think this would be nice with any kind of cheese but the internet tells me Monterey Jack is a mild white cheese and that Cheddar is a close cousin.

Wrap the flattened chicken breast around each piece of cheese and secure with a cocktail stick.

Mix breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, cumin and pepper. Dip the chicken in a shallow bowl of melted butter and then roll in the breadcrumb mixture.

 

 

Bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

 

Serve with a cheese sauce and top with chopped red and green peppers - though I left these out as my husband and I don't like them!

 

Cheddar and Mustard Loaf

 

I wanted to make some bread to have alongside a barbecue at home so had a look in my Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking. This is the book that came out to accompany the series before last that was won by Nancy.

There's a whole section on bread, and I hadn't made any of the recipes from the book, so decided to have a go at the cheddar and mustard loaf. It turned out really well, even though it was left to prove for a lot longer than intended as we went round to my mother-in-law's part way through and didn't get back until late!

To make one large loaf, you need:
150g mature Cheddar, grated
500g strong white bread flour
5g salt
7g fast-action dried yeast
2.5 tbsp. Dijon mustard
300ml lukewarm milk


Mix the cheese with 1 tbsp. of the flour in a small bowl - this will stop the cheese sticking together in clumps. Put aside until later.

Put the flower, salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Add the mustard and milk and mix together, either by hand or in the slowest setting in your mixer.

Either turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, or if you are using something like a Kitchenaid, continue to mix on the slowest speed setting for 3 minutes. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave to rest for 5 minutes, then add the cheese and knead again for the same length of time.

Return the dough to the bowl if necessary and cover with clingfilm. Leave to rise at normal room temperature for an hour until doubled in size (personally I'd advise a warm room or a warm place as I left mine at room temperature and it didn't increase in size that much).

Then roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle. Roll up from the short end and tuck the seam under. Place in a greased loaf tin- I couldn't find mine and my dough was far too long anyway so I put it on a flat baking tray.

Put a large plastic bag over the tin and secure the ends so the dough has space to rise inside the bag. Leave again at room temperature for an hour until doubled in size.

Towards the end of the rising time preheat the oven to 190C/ Gas 5. Brush milk over the top of the loaf and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes until golden brown.

Cool on a rack before slicing. We had a lot more bread than we needed for our barbecue and it kept for several more days which was good. You can definitely taste the cheese and mustard in it!

Bacon and Cheddar Scrolls

I've started doing my shopping in Sainsbury's a lot more - there's a large store only a few minutes' drive from my house, but as I'm still a relative novice when it comes to driving, I only go first thing or I struggle to get into the spaces in their car park! I recently picked up a copy of Sainsbury's magazine at the till and found lots of recipes inside that I wanted to make. As my fiancé loves bacon and would eat a bacon sandwich for lunch every Saturday and Sunday every week if he could, I get rather bored of it (so he gets a bacon sandwich every few weeks). As soon as I saw this recipe for 'bacon and cheddar scrolls' I knew it would be a winner with both of us as it was something different but still within the bacon category!

This recipe makes quite a few (I can't remember exactly how many) so to serve two people I would halve the quantity.

400g wholemeal bread flour
100g white bread flour
7g yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
50g melted butter
1 tbsp light brown sugar
300 ml lukewarm water

For the filling:
4tbso grainy mustard
8 cooked rashers streaky bacon, crumbled or sliced
100g grated mature Cheddar cheese
3 spring onions, trimmed and sliced

In a large bowl, mix the flour and yeast. In another bowl,  mix the melted butter, water and sugar. Fold in the flour.

Knead for ten minutes if doing by hand; otherwise about five minutes in a stand-mixer (I was very glad of my Kitchenaid at this point!). Grease a large bowl and put the ball of dough inside. Cover with clingfilm and leave in a warm place for about two hours to prove until doubled in size.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle on a lightly-floured surface and spread with the filling.

Roll up from the long edge like a Swiss roll and slice into rounds.

Lay each slice on its side on a greased and lined baking tray, cover with a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place to prove until doubled in size. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200 C and bake the rolls for 20-25 minutes. Best served warm as part of a breakfast or brunch, but you could also leave these to go cold and take them on a picnic.

I'm sending this to Bready Steady Go, hosted by Lucy at BakingQueen74.

Posh Cheese on Toast

 

 Cheese on toast is a quick and easy snack but sometimes seems a little bit plain. I found a recipe online which inspired what I am calling 'posh' cheese on toast.

To serve one person as a substantial lunch, you need two pieces of bread; pop them in the toaster just before the cheese mixture is ready.

Thinly slice half a leek and sweat it in some butter.

Add 1 tbsp plain flour and stir in then pour in about 150ml milk and stir until blended. Bring to the boil then simmer until the mixture has started to thicken. Add a handful of grated cheddar and half a teaspoon of English mustard powder.

When the mixture has thickened, add a few lumps of soft goat's cheese and stir in until melted.

Pile the cheese mixture onto the toast and serve.

I really liked the texture of having almost a very thick sauce on my toast and the taste was excellent.

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World who has an innovative blog challenge based on the World Cup. England are playing tonight - literally right now, I've got one eye on the TV and one eye on my laptop (OK, I'm not much of a football fan)! I guess this recipe is arguably more of a Welsh rarebit but it uses English mustard and to me, cheese on toast reminds me very much of my childhood in Wiltshire.

I'm also sending this to Eat Your Greens, a new blog challenge hosted by Shaheen at Allotment2Kitchen. This month you can send in anything using a green veg.

Extra Veg, hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy and Helen at Fuss Free Flavours, is a good challenge for me to enter with this cheese on toast as well, as it sneaks in a portion of veg which you barely notice, it's so yummy!

Cheesy Cod Gratin with Crushed Potatoes

White fish can sometimes seem a little boring - much as I love it, when cooked at home I think fish like cod and plaice needs a flavoured sauce, or a coating, or herbs - something to liven it up really. These cod gratins aren't the most healthy, as they do use cheese and cream, but they are perfect for a dinner party. You could make one big dish but I like these individual portions.

The recipe is inspired by one for individual cod gratins from Leith's Easy Dinner Parties. To serve two, you need:

2 pieces cod fillet

20g butter

1 leek, sliced

80ml dry white wine

150ml fish stock

50ml double cream

2 tsp wholegrain mustard

2 tsp chopped parsley or dill

70g grated cheddar

Preheat oven to 180C. Put the wine and stock in a small pan and bring to the boil and simmer until reduced by half. Add the cream and mustard and remove from the heat.

Cut the fish into cubes. In another pan, melt the butter and sweat the sliced leeks for a few minutes then mix the fish, leeks and creamy sauce in individual gratin dishes.

Sprinkle the cheese over the top and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

I served these with crushed potatoes - parboil some new potatoes and crush with the back of a fork so they still retain their shape but are squashed and split open. Spray with Fry Light or drizzle with oil and bake in the oven for about half an hour.

The potatoes went really well with the finished cod gratins, which tasted delicious. I'm not normally a fan of leeks but these were lovely.

As leeks are in season, I'm sending this to Simple and In Season, hosted by Ren Behan.

The theme for this month's Four Seasons Food is "something fishy", so I'm sending this to Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux.

National Spam Appreciation Week - Spam and Mushroom Filled Pancakes

Spam, spam, spammity spam - I'm not really a Monty Python fan and I wasn't sure I remembered ever having eaten Spam either, though according to my mother we had it a lot when I was a child!

March 3rd sees the start of National Spam Appreciation Week and it seemed a good time to reintroduce my tastebuds to the chopped pork and ham that is Spam. The name apparently comes from the description of spiced pork and ham. Did you know that it was invented during a meat crisis- but rather than when meat was scarce, it was when there was too much meat? There was an excess of pork which would not keep for long, and the head of Hormel Food Company in Minnesota had the idea of grinding up the pork, mixing it with ham and cooking it to create a long-life meat product. This was all the way back in 1937 and Spam has been around ever since. It is widely associated with war time when meat was more scarce - and also famous due to the Monty Python sketch and Spamalot musical.


I think people who turn their nose up at canned meat should also ask themselves whether they have ever eaten corned beef, as that's not much different  - and that was another staple of my childhood. I buy tinned ham occasionally as I think it works really well in pasta bakes, and I found that the Spam had a similar taste and texture.

I was sent three packs of Spam to try out - it's also interesting that it now comes in plastic tubs, so you don't need a tin opener - making it ideal to take on camping trips or picnics. I had a look at the Spam website where there are loads of recipes, and chose to make these Spam and Mushroom Filled Pancakes (or "Spamcakes"!). I made them for lunch with my parents and we all really enjoyed them. I made it slightly differently to the directions, as time was ticking on and I didn't want to wait the extra 20 minutes to cook the pancakes in the oven at the end, and so rather than sprinkle the cheese over the top I incorporated it into the sauce, which was delicious. I also doubled the quantity of the pancake mixture given, but I did make quite large, thick pancakes, so that part is up to you!

To serve three/four, you need:

For the pancakes:
200g plain flour
pinch of salt
3 eggs
500ml milk
Oil or Fry Light for frying

For the filling:
340g can of Spam chopped pork and ham, diced
1 small onion, finely chopped
115g mushrooms, sliced
50g butter
40g plain flour
300ml milk
100ml single cream
60g grated cheddar

I started on the filling first, as it took a little longer and the pancakes were quite quick,though I would also recommend making the pancake batter and allowing it to stand while you make the filling.

Fry the onion and mushrooms in a small frying pan. Meanwhile melt the butter in a small pan and stir in the flour to make a roux. Beat in a little of the milk and then gradually add the rest of the milk and the single cream. Stir in the grated cheddar and heat the sauce until melted then stir in the onion, mushrooms and diced Spam. Heat until the sauce has thickened.

For the pancakes, make a well in the flour in a bowl and break in the eggs; beat in a little of the milk to make a paste then the rest of the milk and the salt. Heat some oil or Fry Light in a frying pan, pour in a thin layer of pancake batter and cook on both sides until browned. Keep the pancakes warm either in the oven or under a layer of foil.

When the filling has thickened, spoon onto each pancake.

I rolled the pancakes but I think they would have looked nicer folded in half to make a semicircle. Either way, they tasted delicious!

Cheese-stuffed meatballs

These cheese-stuffed meatballs are really simple and tasty and are a good way of jazzing up spaghetti bolognese if it's a dish you make a lot or you have someone who isn't that keen on pasta (strangely enough there are people like that out there!). Somehow the idea of a cheese-stuffed meatball is so much better than spaghetti bolognese even though there's not all that much difference!

I made these to use up some freshly minced beef I made after buying chuck steak from the local butcher and trying out my Kitchenaid mincer attachment. You can mix the mince with whatever you like such as finely diced onion, garlic, oregano and other herbs and a little salt. Then cut cubes of hard cheese - I've used cheddar here, but you could also try halloumi. Form the mince into a ball around the cheese.

Roll into balls and place in the fridge for about half an hour to firm up.

When ready to cook, heat a frying pan and spray with Fry Light or a little oil and fry the meatballs on all sides until browned.

In the meantime cook some spaghetti according to the packet instructions. You can also make a tomato sauce from scratch if you have time, but here I just used passata as I didn't want to compete too much with the flavour of the meatballs.

As you can see, when you cut into the meatballs, the cheese is softened but still intact; it hasn't oozed out or melted into the meat. These went down very well with my boyfriend!

In fact because I made these for my boyfriend as I knew he would love it (more than spag bol) and because I love him (awww)  I'm sending this to Cheese Please, hosted by Fromage Homage, which has a theme this month of cheesy romance.

I'm also sending this to Pasta Please, as the challenge this month focuses on spaghetti and these meatballs go perfectly with spaghetti. The challenge is hosted this month by a blogger I haven't come across before, called Feeding Boys and a Firefighter, on behalf of Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.