Pinoy Hubby

Are you feeling Christmassy yet? I don't know about you but I always seem to do more baking around Christmas time, as I'm making edible gifts for friends, and there are some things that just seem right to make at this time of year. Last year I made mince pies, chocolate orange trifle , vegan tiramisu, Viennese apple strudel , chocolate truffles , eggnog cheesecake , candy cane chocolate hearts, peppermint bark and so much more. Hopefully you already have one or two things in mind which will fit with this month's letter, chosen at random... N   Now, while nuts are pretty festive, Ros and I have decided that this time N can stand for Noel as well, so you can enter any Christmas bakes, regardless of the name or ingredients - but please no more than TWO 'Christmas without an N' recipes, and of course as many proper 'N' posts as you like! Otherwise we will just get swamped with Christmas related stuff I think...   There's also not much point ending the lin...

Monday Leftover beef from Sunday for me (had to defrost two pieces and the other half didn't like it) and a burger for him to cheer him up after a few things went wrong at the weekend! Tuesday fish and veg for me, gammon for him Wednesday At cake decorating course Thursday butternut squash stew from freezer for me, sausage and mash for him Friday chicken kiev and chips Saturday lunch: proper Welsh rarebit (must remember to buy crusty bread...) Dinner: Thai green curry with monkfish for me and chicken for him, followed by sticky mango rice Sunday lunch: bacon sandwich most likely Dinner: roast chicken

This is a great - and not actually that difficult - cake to make for anyone who likes race cars, Formula 1 and so on - whether that's your toddler nephew or your grandfather. I made this cake for my dad's 60th birthday as my sister and I were giving him a driving experience in various cars including a Ferrari around Thruxton racetrack so it seemed quite appropriate! You can use any type of cake for this - it needs to be fairly robust so something like a dense chocolate cake or a madeira cake is good. Whatever you make, I recommend an 8 or 9 inch round cake. If yours has risen like mine did, slice off some of the dome so the top is flat. Slice the cake through the middle and fill, if desired. Using a serrated knife, slice away the sides of the cake as shown, so you have a circle and then a long bit sticking out. You can draw a template on greaseproof paper and use that to cut around if you prefer. Keep the offcuts. Add part of the offcuts to the end to lengthen the bonnet of the...

I was a little daunted when I came to look for a recipe from Abu Dhabi for the next round of Formula 1 Foods, but luckily happened across the website of Time Out Abu Dhabi which had a recipe feature. I really liked the idea of the sticky date cake with caramel sauce, but it sounded a bit too similar to the Christmas pudding I recently made, and didn’t think I could get hold of hammour (a type of fish I’d never heard of) and while there are almost certainly places in London that stock camel milk (since you can get pretty much anything here) I didn’t want to go on an Apprentice-style mission to track it down.    Instead, my eye was caught by a recipe for grilled lamb chops with pomegranate sauce , which sounded very nice – plus I had lamb in the freezer and a bottle of pomegranate syrup in the cupboard!      If you don’t have pomegranate syrup or molasses – though I’m pretty sure I bought it from Sainsburys rather than a specialist shop – the recipe does give inst...

Did you see the Martian? It’s a great film – one I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy, as my fiancé said it was based on a science fiction book he’d read and enjoyed but was quite technical – but it was really very good. Matt Damon is excellent and quite possibly in line for an Oscar nomination and the storyline – which at times often involves little more than ‘man trying to grow potatoes’ – is fascinating. We were pretty busy the weekend it came out; in fact I’d been away in Wiltshire and Hampshire for the weekend, but we don’t really get time to go to the cinema during the week so when my fiancé picked me up from the train station on Sunday evening we spontaneously decided to see the film that evening. There was no time to cook dinner at home and not really enough time for a restaurant – we prefer to go to the cinema in Epsom and by the time we got there had less than an hour before the film. We thought that dinner might have to be McDonald’s – which actually we would both quite enjoy,...

I was given a pack of Jus-Rol shortcrust pastry and another of puff pastry to take home after attending an event recently and decided to use them - both of them - to make a pie. I've never used more than one type of pastry before but thought that the shortcrust would work well on the bottom, and the puff pastry on the top to make a lattice. So this is more of an idea than a recipe post, but it worked pretty well so I want to share. Take an ovenproof dish - I used a small pyrex dish that was enough for two servings - and line the bottom with rolled out shortcrust pastry. Line with greaseproof paper (I forgot this part but it makes it much easier) then fill with ceramic baking beans, or uncooked rice, and bake blind in the oven for 15 mins. Meanwhile I poached some smoked haddock in milk I also had a packet of salmon flakes (cooked) which I bought as they were reduced in the supermarket, and I decided to throw these in as well. When the base of the pastry is cooked, spoon in the fis...

The most recent Formula 1 Grand Prix took place in Brazil, though perhaps it wasn't quite the right time of year for bloggers to be inspired by Brazilian food or cocktails - I have to admit, images that spring to mind involve sunshine and beaches and it's very cold here in the UK today! But there is plenty more to Brazilian cuisine than just that, as I found when I discovered this condensed milk cake or bolo de leite condensado. Unfortunately it took a lot longer to bake than the recipe suggested and I didn't like the texture - I wasn't sure if it wasn't quite cooked through or if it was just the mixture but I wasn't very keen on it. Next time I might stick to steak! Suelle from Mainly Baking made this banana, chocolate and brazil nut loaf, though she says she thinks it has too much chocolate so the flavour combination doesn't really work. You can never have too much chocolate in my book! The final Grand Prix of the season comes from Abu Dhabi - which I ha...

Often we go to my mother in law's on a Saturday night we have a takeaway from her favourite Thai place and we both always order the same thing - Pad Thai. I've never actually made one before but was given more confidence from doing a Thai cooking course recently, even though we made different dishes. And when I was sent a wok to review by Ozeri it seemed the perfect thing to cook. I followed Felicity Cloake's recipe in the Guardian for the perfect Pad Thai though I wasn't as fussy about the type of noodles and used straight-to-wok ones. I found fish paste, tamarind paste and pam sugar in Sainsburys though I had to do without the dried shrimp; I didn't think it mattered as I was using prawns in the Pad Thai. I decided to leave out the Chinese chives as well as I had no idea what they were or where to get them (Chinatown, I imagine) but what was really annoying was that the shop I went to was all out of beansprouts.  I didn't want to put this meal off and make i...

There were lots of changes to last week's meal plan as I had to work late on several nights so this week I will try and do a lot of the things I was going to do last week! Monday Thai meal I was going to make last Sunday but didn't Tuesday salmon and veg for me, chicken tikka portions for him or spaghetti Bolognese Wednesday out at a cake decorating class so will take a sandwich Thursday sausage and mash Friday chicken pie Saturday Lunch: soup and fresh bread Dinner: monkfish in lemon butter sauce for me, chicken for him Sunday Lunch:   TBA, I know my fiancé will want a bacon sandwich if I give him the choice but I'm not that keen Dinner : beef in red onion gravy from this recipe

Leaving Nashville, we drove the few hours to Memphis, where we were spending the next three days.    River Inn of Harbor Town   Harbor Town is a posh, quiet area just outside central Memphis only a few minutes from the Arkansas state line (which we crossed just so we could say we had been!). The houses around here are lovely and look quite expensive, and the town square has a few upmarket shops and a hairdresser.   The hotel is very nice (and not cheap) with pretty large rooms and friendly receptionists, who helped us when we realised we were supposed to have confirmed a sightseeing ticket but hadn’t. There’s a small downstairs lounge and the bar area is very small too, though the downstairs restaurant (Paulette’s, where we didn’t eat dinner but was used for breakfast) was nice. There’s a piano in the lounge and a pianist in the evenings, and they bring you a little decanter of port along with chocolates at night. The rooftop terrace restaurant is very good...