Davina’s cheesy apple savoury scones

A few years ago the television presenter Davina McCall - best known for Big Brother - decided to give up sugar. I was vaguely aware that she had written a cookery book and I am trying to cut down on sugar so had a look on Amazon - and discovered she has written loads of books!

I liked the sound of her book Sugar Free in a Hurry as I don’t have a lot of time to cook these days - between a full time job and parenting a toddler and trying to keep the house in order too (which my husband helps with, but I am the only one who cooks).

 I made these apple and cheese scones from the book, which were really easy to throw together - and fun for my daughter to help make too!

Follow this link to see the recipe.

Personally I couldn’t taste the apple and would add a lot more if I made this again, though would have to experiment with the consistency of the dough to make sure it wasn’t too wet. I also used extra nature cheddar and even then think it could have used a bit more. The scones turned out well though and I would definitely make some sort of savoury scones again using this recipe as a basis and maybe playing around a bit with the different flavours. If you have a really good recipe for savoury scones let me know in the comments!

Easy Chocolate French Toast

This is an indulgent brunch or snack that's easy to whip up- all you need is three slices of bread, some chocolate spread, an egg, and ideally some sugar or sweetener as well!

The idea came from the Slimming Foodie though her recipe also uses peanut butter, which sounds very nice. I just wanted to quickly share what I made and send you back to her website for more detailed instructions and recipe.

Spread two slices of bread with chocolate spread and sandwich together with a third slice so you have three layers.

 

Beat an egg in a small bowl with a dash of vanilla essence and dip both sides of the sandwich so it is coated in egg.

 

Fry the sandwich on both sides for a couple of minutes, then sprinkle one side of the bread with sugar or sweetener, turn and fry for another minute. Sprinkle the other side, then turn and fry that side for a minute.

That’s literally all you need to do – you can cut the crusts off the bread or leave them on. You end up with a toasted sandwich that’s moist and slightly sweet on the outside, with a gooey chocolate middle – fun for an occasional treat!

Chicken Shawarma with Garlic Sauce

 

You may not have heard of shawarma before but you’ve probably eaten something very similar in the past – it’s a lovely (and easy) dish to make yourself at home. A shawarma is a Middle Eastern dish that can use various meats or poultry – usually lamb, chicken, beef or veal – cooked on a spit and shaved, rather like a kebab. It’s then served in a wrap or in a roll and is sometimes topped with houmous.

 

It's also nice served on, rather than inside, a pitta bread for a sit-down lunch. Of course, you don’t have to cook the meat on a spit (unless you want to barbecue) and most people don’t have a kebab rotisserie at home – so you can also cook the meat in the oven. I used this recipe for oven-baked chicken shawarma with garlic sauce from the Easy Peasy Foodie.

 

 

 

 

Like her, I used chicken mini fillets to make the recipe quick, though you do need to allow an hour or two to marinade the chicken in advance. There are a lot of spices to mix but they are pretty much all ones you would probably have in your store cupboard anyway if you like cooking, and once you’ve marinaded the chicken, simply bake in the oven then shred it.

 

 

 

The garlic sauce from this recipe is also easy to make and works really well with the spicy flavour of the chicken. I lightly toasted some pitta breads on the grill and served the chicken and garlic sauce on top – I think this would even work for a pizza topping if you want to make your own pizza! It was delicious and something I’d definitely make again.

 

 

Baked (Jacket) Potato Soup - for Leftover Baked Potatoes

I love eating jacket potatoes, especially in winter, but even in summer they can be a particularly nice lunch with sour cream and chives (or something similar), cooling tuna mayo or homemade coronation chicken.

Baked potatoes are also a great barbecue staple, cooked either on the coals or in the oven, as everyone can have their own and top it with whatever they like; they are great even just with butter. But it's easy to cook too many and have some baked potatoes left - here is a great recipe to use up leftover baked potatoes.

You can make a delicious soup with the potatoes that you can top with anything you like and freeze the soup for another day (or take it in a flask to eat at work).

If you want to make this soup from scratch, there's a quicker way than baking a potato in the oven for an hour or more, which you won't want to do on a hot day. Simply simmer a whole potato in a pan of milk for about 20-25 minutes until the potato is tender.

Mash the potato into the soup, or put the potato into a food processor with some of the milk and pulse, then return to the pan and stir in with the rest of the milk. Season to taste.

If you are using leftover potatoes, chop the potatoes and put into a pan of milk so the potatoes are just covered and bring the milk to simmering point. Remove from the heat allow to cool; put the potatoes and some of the milk into a food processor as before then return to the pan and stir through, and reheat if you are eating this now.

 

Serve the soup in bowls and top with whatever jacket potato toppings you liked - eg cooked diced bacon, sour cream and chive or a sprinkling of grated cheese.

Slimming World Linguine with Crab and Chilli

This dish reminds me of something I would order in an Italian restaurant or better still, eat while on holiday somewhere sunny, ideally with a view of the ocean. It's actually based on a Slimming World recipe for the rather more prosaically named 'crab noodles' and is really quick to throw together.

Cook some linguine or spaghetti according to pack instructions; when is cooked, drain, and add some tinned crab (a small tin will do 1-2 people depending on how generous you want to be with the crab), a few dried red chilli flakes or a pinch of fresh chopped red chilli, some finely chopped red onion, a squeeze of lime juice, and the grated zest of the lime, and some fresh parsley on top. Serve with broccoli or a salad on the side. Delicious!

Fishcake and Poached Egg in a Tarragon Sauce

This dish was inspired by something I saw in a restaurant that made me think 'that's a good idea!'. I like fishcakes but don't have them that often - the idea is often better than the reality. This dish is a bit different, really tasty and very filling, so you only need one fishcake per person and it goes well with some green veg like broccoli on the side.

The fishcake - I used shop-bought ones but you can make your own - is topped with a poached egg; I use Poachies Egg poaching Bags - 20 Bags and they usually turn out really well with runny yolks unless I leave them in the water a little too long as I've gotten distracted!

The sauce is made very easily, from melted butter, a dash of lemon juice, a little fish stock and some chopped dried tarragon. Place the fishcake in a bowl and the poached egg on top, and pour the sauce around the fishcake. Enjoy!

Puff Pastry Cheese, Bacon and Spring Onion Tart

This is an easy meal idea that is great for an informal dinner with friends, as it can be assembled before your guests arrive and then can go in the oven 20 minutes before you want to eat. You can play around with the toppings as well to use whatever you fancy - it's a good way of using up odds and ends in the fridge as well.

Simply take a piece of ready-made puff pastry - around 200g per person should be plenty, and I made each person their own - and roll out on a lightly floured surface into either a circle or square shape (or something in between!). Place onto a lightly oiled baking sheet.

Chop a few rashers of bacon and fry along with some chopped spring onions. When cooked, remove from pan and allow to cool.

Spread the pastry base with garlic and herb-flavoured soft cheese then scatter over the bacon and spring onion. Grate some cheese - Cheddar works well - and sprinkle over the tart. I also added some crumbled blue cheese.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180C for 20 minutes or until the pastry has risen and is golden. Serve with a green salad.

I'm sending this to Cook Blog Share, hosted this week by Easy Peasy Foodie.

WeightWatchers Rosemary and Butterbean Soup

I've been trying to avoid bread and at the very least not taking sandwiches into work for lunch, which at this time of year means soups instead. I am a pretty fussy eater (for those who hadn't figured that out yet!) and often skip over recipes because they have ingredients I don't like. But, I figured, when you are blending everything together in a soup, you don't really know you are eating it, right? Especially if it isn't an ingredient with a strong overpowering taste.

So I decided to make this rosemary and bean soup from an old WeightWatchers recipe book called Simply Autumn. I used butterbeans, though you can also use cannellini or borlotti beans. I added a little plain yogurt at the end to thicken the soup but if you don't do this, it would be vegan - great for anyone doing #veganuary.

According to the WeightWatchers recipe book this has 3 points per portion.

To make two portions, here's what I did:

 

You need:
Fry Light (low-fat cooking spray)
2 cloves garlic with the skins left on
400g tin butter beans or cannellini beans
1/2 an onion, peeled and chopped into wedges
1/2 a lemon, cut in half
1 small handful rosemary
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 pint vegetable stock
2 tbsp. low fat plain yogurt (optional - no longer vegan if you use this)
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 200C. Spray a roasting tin with Fry Light or similar. Put the garlic, butter beans, onion, lemon, rosemary and oregano into the pan, spray with more Fry Light, toss together and roast in the oven for 20 mins.

Take out of the oven and use a fork or wooden spoon to crush the softened garlic and lemon. Remove the garlic skin and lemon peel and discard.

Scrape everything into a blender and add the stock. Liquidize to make a soup; stir in the yogurt if desired and serve.

I'm sending this to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for her veggie soup challenge No Croutons Required.

Lahmacun - Weightwatchers Turkish Pizza

This Turkish pizza is topped with minced lamb and spices - and has no cheese, so it isn't what some people would consider a pizza, but trust me, it's delicious!

 

I found the recipe in an old WeightWatchers magazine - I can't remember how they work out the Points system but they say this has 5 points per serving. It uses a packet pizza base mix and lamb is quite a fatty meat so is not what I would call super-healthy but it obviously does fit into the WeightWatchers plan if you are following that.

To serve 4, you need:
Low fat cooking spray eg Fry Light
145g sachet pizza base mix
1 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
225g lean lamb mince
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 large ripe vine tomato, chopped (I left this out as we don't like tomatoes)
4 tsp sun dried tomato puree (I used regular tomato puree)
4 tbsp. fresh chopped parsley
lemon wedges to serve (optional)

Preheat oven to 200 C. Spray a large baking tray with low fat spray or Fry Light.

Make up the pizza dough according to pack instructions then divide into four and shape into ovals. Or if you want a larger meal make two - but if you are counting WeightWatchers points you will have to double them per person. Place the pizza bases on the baking tray and leave in a warm place for ten minutes.

Heat 1 tsp oil in a frying pan and fry the onion until softened. Add the mince, garlic and cumin and fry for 5 minutes. Add the tomato and fry over a medium heat for another 5 minutes. Season.

Spread the pizza bases with the tomato puree and spread the mince mixture on top.

 Bake in the oven for ten minutes then sprinkle with parsley to serve, and squeeze over a wedge of lemon if desired.

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.

Cauliflower Pizza: gluten-free pizza with a cauliflower base

When I was doing sugar-free September I cut out gluten and so wasn't eating bread or potatoes. I decided to make pizza for lunch one weekend - my husband had a normal homemade pizza base, while I decided to try something I'd kept hearing about - cauliflower pizza.

That's not pizza with cauliflower on top (though I did once share a pizza with a vegetarian many years ago that had nothing but broccoli on top) - but where the pizza base is actually made of cauliflower. Have you heard of cauliflower rice? The pizza base is made in a similar way with the cauliflower riced and then baked in the oven. It tasted surprisingly good - cauliflower normally has quite a strong taste but it is masked somewhat by the pizza toppings.

To serve 2, you need:
1 whole cauliflower
1 egg
30g pepper
pinch of salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Pulse the raw cauliflower in a food processor until you have crumbs that look like rice.

 

Tip into a large frying pan - you don't need to add any oil - and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cauliflower loses some of its moisture.

 

Allow the cauliflower to cool then mix in a large bowl with the egg, cheese and salt and pepper.

Line a flat baking sheet with greaseproof paper and spread out the cauliflower mixture on top. Push down with the back of a spoon so you have a fairly packed down layer. Bake for 30 minutes until the cauliflower has turned golden brown.

If you can, get a spatula under the pizza base and turn it over in one piece and bake on the other side for ten minutes.

Remove from the oven and spread with tomato puree. Top with grated mozzarella and whatever pizza toppings you enjoy, and return to the oven for a few minutes until the cheese has melted.

Why not give it a go if you haven't tried this before?

Goat's Cheese Monte Cristos

When I was at university, my friend Dan made the best late-night post-pub cheese toasties - I've had my own Breville sandwich toaster for several years (the same brand that my parents had when I was a kid, a long time ago) and there is definitely something comforting, if a little greasy, about a toasted cheese sandwich.

I usually add a slice of ham and maybe a smear of mustard to mine, but that's as fancy as it goes. I was looking through a recipe book I have reviewed before called Breakfast for Dinner looking for weekend lunch recipes and came across Monte Cristos - which are effectively cheese toasties but posher.

Apparently this particular recipe originated in the US - it uses turkey and goat's cheese, with hot red pepper jelly for sweetness and spice, though as I didn't have any and didn't want to make it from scratch, I used cranberry jelly instead. You don't need a dedicated sandwich toaster - you make this in a skillet or frying pan, brushing the bread with egg to make an almost eggy-bread texture.

To serve 4, you need:
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 tsp salt
8 slices bread
100g spreadable goat's cheese
1/4 cup hot red pepper jelly - I used cranberry jelly
8 slices roast turkey
2 tbsp. butter

Spread 2 tbsp. goat's cheese onto a slice of bread, then 1 tbsp. jelly. Top with a slice of turkey and another piece of bread to make a sandwich.

Whisk the eggs, milk and salt in a jug and brush over the top of the sandwich.

Melt the butter in the frying pan and place the sandwich in the pan, egg side down. Brush the other side of the sandwich with egg mixture. Cook for 3-4 minutes then turn and cook on the other side, then keep warm wrapped in foil while you repeat with the rest of the sandwiches.

Bacon and Cheese Omelette for Beginners

Can you believe I've never made an omelette before? I don't actually like eating them and it had never really occurred to me to make one, until I was trying to think of something to make my husband for lunch that wasn't a bacon sandwich! I had used several egg yolks in making this chocolate ice cream and couldn't decide what to do with the egg whites as I didn't fancy making meringue. I realised that I could make an egg white omelette - I added an extra egg with the yolk for a bit more colour.

Given I had to google how to make an omelette, I can't be the only person out there who doesn't know how to make one, right? So here's what you do:

Mix the eggs in a bowl with a fork. I'd allow 3 eggs per person. Add some salt and pepper.

Chop up some rashers of bacon and fry, then set aside.

Heat a little butter in another frying pan and pour in the egg mixture; tilt the pan to spread it out evenly.

When the egg is part-cooked, sprinkle with grated cheese and the chopped bacon and continue to cook until the egg is completely set. Turn over and cook on the other side; fold in half onto a plate to serve.

My husband really enjoyed it; I might have to cook him eggs like this again!