Round Up~ Lets Cook with Apples

Here are all the lovely entries that we received this month for this event.
Thank you to everyone who participated.

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Announcing Event~Lets cook for Halloween

The month of October brings us into Autumn , Its time to look forward to Haloween and Guy Fawkes Night. In this event I am inviting you all to cook on the theme of Halloween. Create any vegetarian recipe themed on Halloween and link them in the linky below.

To Participate:

1. Prepare any vegetarian Halloween themed recipe please link your post using the linky below by entering your Dish Name and Post URL
2. Please link this event announcement with your entry, this is mandatory. (Any entries sent with out the mandatory link will be disqualified.)
3.Use of logo is  not mandatory but it helps to spread the word if you can use it.

4. Multiple entries are allowed, archived are only allowed if reposted and updated with this event link.

4. In the event of problem using linky you can email me the entry at simplysensationalfood@gmail.com

Please use this format:

Your Name: Recipe
Name Recipe URL
Image no larger than 300 pixels.
Event Ends 31st October 2014

An InLinkz Link-up

Friends of Glass ~A cookery session with Cherry Healey and a giveaway

Friends of glass is a movement of people who believe that glass is good for them, for their families and for the environment. There are many good reasons to use glass, it comes in many sizes shapes and styles. Glass, unlike other packaging materials, won’t release unhealthy chemicals and tastes into your food. It is Dishwater safe so you can be sure your storage containers are thoroughly sterilised and don’t harbour smells and harmful bacteria. It is environmentally friendly and glass is recyclable. Glass jars and bottles are perfect for storage, transporting food, for serving drinks at parties or simply using them for decoration. They make perfect pen pots, flower vases, and utensil holders. You can create many gift idea with them too.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by friends of glass to attend a cookery session hosted by Cherry Healey. The cookery class was held at Michel Roux Jr. cactus kitchens cookery school in Battersea. This is the place where Saturday kitchen is filmed.

On arrival we were led to a lovely drawing room for a light breakfast of pastries and coffee and given our aprons. Once breakfast over, we were ushered into the magnificent kitchen for a demonstration of the day’s recipes with Cara the chef and Cherry Healey. The recipes on the menu were Mint Julep, strawberry smoothies, beetroot hummus, Butternut squash, wild mushroon and spinach pie in a jar and Autumn trifle with poached pears . All were recipes were created and served in jars.

During the demonstration we were able to sample the hummus and the smoothies and then we set off to our workstations to get hands on experience of creating the Butternut squash and wild mushroom and spinach pie in a jar and the Autumn trifle with poached pears . Chef Cara and Cherry Healey were very interactive during the cooking session in the cactus kitchen, which made the experience very enjoyable. I had lots of fun especially as all the washing up magically disappeared.

My finished creations : 
Butternut Squash, wild mushroom and spinach pie in a jar and the Autumn Trifle with poached Pears. 

We were able to eat them whilst sipping mint juleps in the drawing room. To our surprise the friends of glass team had judged out trifles and I was really excited to win the 1st prize for my creation a lovely blue glass jar.

I came away from the class with lots of inspiration and ideas about presenting food in glass. You can see a video of our day below

I love glassware and here you can see some recipes that I have created in glass:

Date Milk Shake
Mixed Berry Smoothie

 

Moroccan Salad in a Jar

Peach Frappe

 

I had a lovely time at cactus kitchens and would like to thanks friends of glass for the lovely goody bag they gave me. Not only that but friends of glass have also given me a set of 6 glass jars as a competition prize for one simplyfood reader.

How To Enter

·         Simply complete the Rafflecopter widget below to verify your entries

·         Entries can be via blog comment, Facebook, Twitter etc

·         Please read the rules they form the terms and conditions of this Giveaway

·         Closing date – Sunday 12th October 2014 Open to UK residents only over 18 years old.

How Rafflecopter works:

• You will need to complete the mandatory entry first – usually making a blog comment. You can do this by clicking on leave a comment at the bottom of the post and leaving your reply in the comment box. Please note your comment will not show immediately as it needs to be moderated however rest assured it will appear on the site, so carry on with rest of entries.
• Login to Rafflecopter – click to see what the question is. Make a comment answering the question on the blog.
•  Go back to Rafflecopter and click the green button to tell me you have made a comment, this will unlock all the other options. All entries are checked to see that the mandatory question is answered, if its not all bonus entries will become void. 
• Rafflecopter will tweet, like and follow on your behalf.
• For information on how to find the URL of your tweet click here. 
• For bonus entries you can return to this page and enter the daily bonus entries. 
• If you are still unsure as to how Rafflecopter works please do check out this short video.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filo Apple and Nut Parcels

print recipe

Filo Apple and Nut Parcels

by Nayna Kanabar 22nd September 2014

Flaky sheets of Greek filo filled with apples, nuts and honey and delicately spiced with cinnamon.

Ingredients:

• 3 sheets Filo pastry
• 2 Braeburn Apples
• 2 tablespoons Melted Butter
• 2 tablespoons Coarsely chopped pistachio nuts
• 1 tablespoon Raisins
• 2 tablespoons Flaked Almonds
• 4 tablespoons Honey
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon Lemon juice

Method:

1.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F / 175 degrees C.
2.Remove the core from the apple and keeping the skin on grate the apple coarsely. Transfer the the apples to a large bowl and add the lemon juice and toss together.
3.Reserve quarter of the almonds and pistachio nuts and add the remainder to the the apples.
4.Add the 3 tablespoons honey, raisins and cinnamon to the apple mixture and toss together to combine all the ingredients.
5. Place a sheet of filo pastry on the table and brush some melted butter on it. Add a second sheet of filo and brush butter on it too and finally add the third sheet of filo on top and brush with the remaining butter.
6. Spread the apple mixture onto the filo layers and roll the filo pastry into a swiss roll shape starting to roll from the long edge.
7. Place the filo roll onto a baking tray  and cut the roll into 6 pieces. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes until pastry starts to turn golden brown.
8. Remove the filo parcels from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly.
9. To serve, brush the tops of the filo parcels with the remaining honey and sprinkle with the reserved nuts.
Serve the parcels with some honeyed Greek yoghurt.

Details

Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 40 mins Yield: 6 slices

These parcels can be made using any type of apple and the nuts can be replaced with any of choice such as walnuts, brazilnuts, cashewnuts or hazelnuts. To make the honeyed Greek Yoghurt, stir in 3 tablespoons of honey into natural Greek yoghurt and mix together.

Submitting to:
Lets cook with Apples event by simplyfood.
 Lets cook for Halloween event by simplyfood

Strawberries and Cream hot Quinoa breakfast~ Secret Recipe Challenge 15th Sept 2014

This is my assignment with the Secret Recipe Club.The aim of the club is that you are allocated a blog from which you have to select a recipe and try it and blog about it. 

My assigned blog was Flavour Mosaic, the blog is written By Michelle who describes her self as the occasional cooker, however looking through her blog she has some amazing recipes so I think she is definitely more than just an occasional cooker as she sounds very experienced in cooking. Like me Michele loves spices and she loves playing with spice mixtures in her recipes to me that's what I love too so I shall be dropping by Michele's blog often to try out more of her recipes.

For the challenge I short listed many recipes but since I am trying to change our breakfast habits, I thought the  strawberries and cream hot quinoa breakfast cereal  would be the perfect recipe to prepare and present to my family. I followed the recipe and the only changes I made were that I used strawberry yoghurt instead of natural yoghurt and replaced the cinnamon with cardamom.

Delicious and warm breakfast that's healthy and delectable too.

Ingredients:

60 g / 2 oz Quinoa
150 ml water
129 g low fat strawberry yoghurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of nutmeg 
pinch of cardamom
6 strawberries

Method:

1. Wash the quinoa and drain, add the 150 ml water and bring the quinoa to a slow simmer, reduce the heat to lowest setting and simmer until all the water is absorbed ( approx 10-12 minutes)
2. Wash and keep aside 2 strawberries for garnish and  chop the remaining strawberries into slices.
3.  In a bowl add the strawberry yoghurt, vanilla. nutmeg and cardamom and mix together.
4 To the yoghurt mixture add the cooked quinoa and mix together.
5. Get two serving glasses and spoon some of the creamy quinoa and yoghurt mixture.
6. Add a layer of strawberries and than add another layer of the quinoa and yoghurt mixture on top.
7. Finish off with a layer of strawberries.
9.Garnish with the whole strawberry

NB- You can also serve it as a chilled dessert.

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