RECIPE – “Perfect” Arancini balls

Why is it perfect? Because I used “perfect” ingredients:

• Leftovers of Heston Blumenthal’s perfect risotto
• Leftovers of Heston Blumenthal’s perfect spaghetti Bolognese

Crispy & tasty & a lovely leftover food.

RECIPE – Garlic Prawn Pate

Looks & tastes good, a lovely starter for a dinner party.

RECIPES – Halloween goodness

Halloween is a brilliant holiday, with so much creative potential – food & otherwise.

A bit of pazzaz is needed on this night of nights so here’s a list of some of my Halloween recipe ideas.

The devil is in the detail, I like to have signs for the dishes up before I bring them out because the guests are then thinking about say eyeballs and expecting eyeballs. Hence, eyeball-y items will come out looking much more like eyeballs in their mind – the power of suggesting thinking.

Some Halloween recipes ideas include:

RECIPE – Onion Soup

A french classic that only takes a handful of ingredients & is very easy to cook.

Top it off with some fresh baguette – grilled with some Gruyère cheese – mmm…

RECIPE – Ploughman’s lunch

Not so much a recipe per se, but the stacking together of ingredients on a plate to make a cold lunch.

The famed English Ploughman’s Lunch – one of the best things to go with a pint.

The end combination is up to you, but usually involves crusty bread, cheese, pickled items, meats, etc.

Very quick to put together and extremely satisfying.

My Ploughman’s Lunch

RECIPE – Goat’s cheese & cranberry on sourdough

Very simple but amazingly tasty.

You won’t believe the flavour combination until you try it – I highly recommend you try it.

RECIPE – Xiao Long Bao (Chinese soup dumplings)

Having never made dumplings before (nor done much Chinese cooking), I decided, if I’m only going to make dumplings once in my life, I might as well go for the holy grail.

So how about a dumpling with meat/prawn filling & soup inside?

There were a few firsts for me, first time making dumplings, first time using a wok & first time using a bamboo steamer.

Mmm… tasty

The question is: how do you get soup inside your dumpling?

RECIPE – Bagelicious – home made bagels

Some things you look at and go…nah, too hard. I thought bagels would be a pain to make, what with the boiling & the ovenising, etc.

Turns out, it’s a breeze – took me a little bit of time but it was well worth the effort. Try it, if you’ve got a lazy Saturday/Sunday to spare.

I really love Montreal style bagels – but this is a recipe for normal bagels – I may try Montreal bagels a different time.

Ingredients:

– 4 cups flour (I used half wholemeal & half plain but just use what you have on hand – I also decided to sift flour)

– 1 tablespoon sugar

– 1 teaspoon salt

– 1 tablespoon oil (I had olive oil around, but I’m sure vegetable oil would be fine too)

– 2 teaspoons instant dried yeast

– warm water (start with 1 cup & see if you need more, wholemeal is a bit thirstier so I ended up using 1.75 cups approx)

– optional topping (sesame seeds, poppy seeds, whatever)