The final part in the sandwich section - for now anyway - let's look at sweet sarnies, if savoury isn't your thing. From the banana sandwich (use a little lemon juice when mashing to keep the banana from going brown) brought bang up to date with ice cream and drizzled chocolate sauce on lightly toasted brioche - could be easily used as an after dinner treat - to jam and peanut butter.
Try a little cinnamon toast, pinch of cinnamon and sugar on toast and comforting too!
Try apple and cream on toast. Stew the apple with nutmeg and cinnamon and a tablespoon of sugar with water on the hob until it goes mushy, add a little cream then dollop on toast.
Monday, February 05, 2007
P.S.
Feel free to add your own suggestions, if I missed out your favourite add it or if you particularly liked a recipe tell me how it went and whether it was a worthwhile effort! Feedback in any form is a welcome word.
Start Simple: Sandwiches (part 2)
So.. you've worked out what to use as the basis, but what to put on the top?
Let's start with some savoury bites..it needn't be complicated cookery just tasty. Simple savoury fillings include:
Cheese (Preferably grated if using a hard cheese. Hard cheeses such as red leicester or cheddar make for mouthwatering melts. Soft cheeses are subtle and lend themselves well to summer fare). Add chutneys, pickles or mustard for a bite of excitement. Adding sliced meats such as ham make it a bit more - but choose good ham, either breaded or not, but low on the fat strata (the chew factor). Hot or cold, on crumpets, in croissants, in classic bread or on crackers. Smoked salmon and cream cheese or cucumber with soft cheese either would be welcome at wimbledon. Add tomato if wished or a touch of salad cream & lettuce for something a little lighter. Mozzarella & ham in croissants or baguettes or paninis make for something warming and quick and effective.
Meat (Preferably with a low fat strata for the chew factor and fullsomeness). So many to choose from - be it processed or not. Try roast beef and red onion/onion with mustard. Ham, lettuce and tomato. Bacon, lettuce & tomato (with salad cream or mayo). Try turkey and the trimmings. Pork and stuffing with apple sauce (highly recommended). Chicken and stuffing and salad cream. Chicken mayonaisse with salad on thick bread is TDF, add sweetcorn for something quirky. Even humble corned beef with a little mustard makes for a simple comfort snack. For a fullsome breakfast sandwich worthy of a buff builder - try chopped sausage (get a good one!!! Pork and an alternate flavouring are interesting) lengthways, tomato ketchup, fried egg and bacon on thick sliced bread. Salami, pepperoni, tomato..interesting combo.
Fish. You may know the tuna sandwich. It may or may not inspire sandwich confidence but add some salad, some mayonaisse and you might just go hmmm. Try it with cheese, melted on a muffin with a hint of mustard even. Or you may just be a prawn person..check it out with salad in a baguette and thousand island dressing - tastetastic.
Even the egg sandwich can be overhawled. Chop it in a salad sandwich, add it with mayo, bung it with bacon, top with chicken - and you won't know which came first.
Try adding your favourite sides to sandwiches and see what happens. Cooked chopped mushrooms with a hint of garlic on toast doesn't taste too bad.
Be exotic and put houmus and salad and aubergine in a pitta bread for something a little different. Challenge yourself with cooked peppers and roast beef, fajita style in a wrap. Or maybe you might want a chicken cajun style and with onion and smokey bbq flavouring?
For a interesting option what about mock crab (cooked mashed boiled egg and chopped tomato) even try real crabmeat if you want!
Then there's the Pate's - many with alternate flavourings to simple chicken.
The ultimate chip butty might make someone's day - lightly deep fried chips (either made from potatoes or bought from the shop!) thoroughly drained then between thick sliced bread covered with the sauce of choice.
Iceberg lettuce and gem lettuce make for the the best salad filler - crisp, cool and fresh. Wet lettuce is no good.
Adding toasted seasame seeds to wraps and pittas make for a crunchy accoutrement.
I think though, for my sandwich choice, I'd have a Pork and apple sauce submarine roll. Easy to do - either using sliced pork slices or select pork cuts, homemade apple sauce (peel, core and slice the apples - bramley or cooking - put in a pan with a shot or two of cold water, and castor sugar, boil and reduce, leave to cool and ta-da!), mayonaisse and lettuce. Lightly butter the sides of 3/4 halved submarine roll, add the mayonaisse drizzled along the remaining fold, put two or three slices of gem lettuce - fresh - in, add the pork and a dollop or two of apple sauce. Yummy.
And don't forget - sandwiches need not have lids, like mini pizza bases covered with tomato puree and the topping of your choice then toasted under the grill. Delicisio.
A savoury sandwich not what you want? How about a sweet one? See Start Simple: Sandwiches (part 3)
Let's start with some savoury bites..it needn't be complicated cookery just tasty. Simple savoury fillings include:
Cheese (Preferably grated if using a hard cheese. Hard cheeses such as red leicester or cheddar make for mouthwatering melts. Soft cheeses are subtle and lend themselves well to summer fare). Add chutneys, pickles or mustard for a bite of excitement. Adding sliced meats such as ham make it a bit more - but choose good ham, either breaded or not, but low on the fat strata (the chew factor). Hot or cold, on crumpets, in croissants, in classic bread or on crackers. Smoked salmon and cream cheese or cucumber with soft cheese either would be welcome at wimbledon. Add tomato if wished or a touch of salad cream & lettuce for something a little lighter. Mozzarella & ham in croissants or baguettes or paninis make for something warming and quick and effective.
Meat (Preferably with a low fat strata for the chew factor and fullsomeness). So many to choose from - be it processed or not. Try roast beef and red onion/onion with mustard. Ham, lettuce and tomato. Bacon, lettuce & tomato (with salad cream or mayo). Try turkey and the trimmings. Pork and stuffing with apple sauce (highly recommended). Chicken and stuffing and salad cream. Chicken mayonaisse with salad on thick bread is TDF, add sweetcorn for something quirky. Even humble corned beef with a little mustard makes for a simple comfort snack. For a fullsome breakfast sandwich worthy of a buff builder - try chopped sausage (get a good one!!! Pork and an alternate flavouring are interesting) lengthways, tomato ketchup, fried egg and bacon on thick sliced bread. Salami, pepperoni, tomato..interesting combo.
Fish. You may know the tuna sandwich. It may or may not inspire sandwich confidence but add some salad, some mayonaisse and you might just go hmmm. Try it with cheese, melted on a muffin with a hint of mustard even. Or you may just be a prawn person..check it out with salad in a baguette and thousand island dressing - tastetastic.
Even the egg sandwich can be overhawled. Chop it in a salad sandwich, add it with mayo, bung it with bacon, top with chicken - and you won't know which came first.
Try adding your favourite sides to sandwiches and see what happens. Cooked chopped mushrooms with a hint of garlic on toast doesn't taste too bad.
Be exotic and put houmus and salad and aubergine in a pitta bread for something a little different. Challenge yourself with cooked peppers and roast beef, fajita style in a wrap. Or maybe you might want a chicken cajun style and with onion and smokey bbq flavouring?
For a interesting option what about mock crab (cooked mashed boiled egg and chopped tomato) even try real crabmeat if you want!
Then there's the Pate's - many with alternate flavourings to simple chicken.
The ultimate chip butty might make someone's day - lightly deep fried chips (either made from potatoes or bought from the shop!) thoroughly drained then between thick sliced bread covered with the sauce of choice.
Iceberg lettuce and gem lettuce make for the the best salad filler - crisp, cool and fresh. Wet lettuce is no good.
Adding toasted seasame seeds to wraps and pittas make for a crunchy accoutrement.
I think though, for my sandwich choice, I'd have a Pork and apple sauce submarine roll. Easy to do - either using sliced pork slices or select pork cuts, homemade apple sauce (peel, core and slice the apples - bramley or cooking - put in a pan with a shot or two of cold water, and castor sugar, boil and reduce, leave to cool and ta-da!), mayonaisse and lettuce. Lightly butter the sides of 3/4 halved submarine roll, add the mayonaisse drizzled along the remaining fold, put two or three slices of gem lettuce - fresh - in, add the pork and a dollop or two of apple sauce. Yummy.
And don't forget - sandwiches need not have lids, like mini pizza bases covered with tomato puree and the topping of your choice then toasted under the grill. Delicisio.
A savoury sandwich not what you want? How about a sweet one? See Start Simple: Sandwiches (part 3)
Start Simple: Sandwiches (part 1)
Often overlooked, mostly underrated. When preparing something exotic seems oh so tiresome and time consuming try the humble sandwich. I mean, if high street chains can create baguettes which - let's face it - lack the wow factor, seem damp, understuffed (some can be so stingy on the filling) anything you create by hand can only be an improvement.
Sandwiches - yes, the simple sandwich, can be used in a variety of ways (all of them end with eating); for lunch, for tea, for breakfast, for schooldays, workdays, holidays and salad tea fillers (basically, a tea which consists of sandwiches, nibbles and salad). Snack packs, gifts packs, picnics and parties. Don't serve up the same egg mayo, tuna mayo and chicken try and be a little bit avant garde. Even if its just a case of adding a lettuce leaf; let's make them a little bit better, you know?
The key to a sumptuous sandwich - decadent, tea time-ish and remind you of croquet, garden parties and prim white frocks - is the bread. Do not scrimp on the bread. In further posts I'll tell you how to make mmmm-mmm-mm bread from scratch, but for now let me introduce you to the types you can try and experiment with, and some flavours which sound far fetched but taste so good.
Baguettes: Often the most exotic a sandwich sees, these sticks of bread for the perfect sarnie should be crusty on the outside, firm to touch, thick around the middle and tapering to the ends. The thickness of the baguettes affects the quality of the sandwich on the inside (too thin and you'll just be eating crust). Try and get them fresh and they're really quite cheap. The cutting of the baguette shouldn't be overlooked either - mitre it in the middle for an off the shoulder look; cut straight for an even balance; cut up into chunks for bite size picnic/party sarnies. Sounds silly, but food should be fun to look at first and thats going to get the taste buds going before the first bite.
Paninis: These flatbreads have cropped up from the continent and make for tasty toasties, not too bad untoasted but still thats not where they're talents lie. Like a flattened baguette in essence. Aim for a firm touch and cuttable depth. Again, fresh first and foremost for choice - as with all breads. Cutting ain't so much an issue, down the middle and mitred or straight across; cutting down the middle to halve the panini is the worst bit I find, trying to get an even distribution top and tail, the key is to let the knife work not you. Use a decent breadknife with a sharp serrated edge, hold it firm between thumb and forefinger, let the knife sit along the edge and scrap back nd forth with an even pressure. Once you've broken the surface the urge is to push down and get to the end - no, don't! take you time and keep that pressure even.
Bagels: These donut looking breads are simply superb toasted or raw. Often with a variety of flavours from sweet to savoury they are sandwich versatility. Again, fresh please! With a firm touch, decent thickness and sun kissed colouring hopefully. Follow the panini halving cutting instructions for an even keel. Serve in crescents for portions worth filling.
Croissants: Frisky french crescents or elongated lending themselves to sweet or savoury fillings, aim fresh again - they just taste nicer when fresh, less stale (and that goes for all breads) - try and get them bulky in the middle, decent taper to the ends, with a nice lobster looking segmentation to the make up. Careful with halving or you could end up with an uneven top and tail. And don't forget the colouring indicators of the crust factor the lighter the colour the softer the depth of the crust.
Pittas: These flatbreads make for interesting filled sandwiches. Hot or cold, they work really well - simply split into a pocket (sounds hard, but simple - the aim is to get the knife inside the pitta and separate the top and tail layer). You can get snack sized, full sized, wholegrain or plain. Try and get fresh, less stale, soft touch with a hint of golden colouring, don't get them too cracked to start with - it'll make toasting them worse.
Bread: The basic. Loaves, buns, rolls, fresh baked or factory farmed, sliced or unsliced. Oh the questions, the questions - ultimately, it all depends on what you want your bread to do. For quick snack options in bulk: factory farmed or sliced fresh. For parties and pack lunches or picnics: buns or rolls for the effect. Triangle bread slices for true garden party decadence (and troupe them upright together for a simple touch of class) or half them for quick don't-care-ness. Either way, the thickness, the quality of the bread itself will help or hinder the simple sandwich. Fresh baked often has a denser texture and more air pockets which can be disconcerting to the novice fresher; factory farmed is usually lighter in texture, less pocketed and softer to touch with a significantly dwarfed crust, touched up at the top to get that dark noticeable crust. Fresh baked has a more haphazard approach to crusting - uneven colouring; in fact, individual. I'm not a crust person (I don't want more curly hair - I have to straighten the stuff already) so to me, the cincher is the crust question, and I like soft touch. Basically, I'm a factory farmed girl but it's all individual really. Cost isn't much of an issue - unless its an economic downturn in which case breads a good indicator!
Those were the main types, but what are the main tastes? Well, here's a brief list of flavours to tantalise and explore: Wholegrain, white, cinnamon, onion, tomato, cheese, peppered, olive, plain..not exhaustive but a few to try. Choose carefully depending on what you want in them - are your sandwiches sweet? in which case an onion bagel ain't first choice. Or are they savoury? In which case I'd be loathe to choose cinnamon first.
Then again you may want to explore other sandwich like bread basis substitutes:
Scones, muffins, pikelets, crumpets, brioche, hot cross buns, teacakes, wraps, pizza bases.And let's not think sandwiches need be just bread or yeast based. I'm lumping in crackers into the sandwich sector - anything you can put anything on, sandwich need not be closed but can be open too! The possibilities then are endless. In which case, now you know what you can use as the beginning bit what can we put on them? See Start Simple: Sandwiches (part 2) for some suggestive suggestions.
Sandwiches - yes, the simple sandwich, can be used in a variety of ways (all of them end with eating); for lunch, for tea, for breakfast, for schooldays, workdays, holidays and salad tea fillers (basically, a tea which consists of sandwiches, nibbles and salad). Snack packs, gifts packs, picnics and parties. Don't serve up the same egg mayo, tuna mayo and chicken try and be a little bit avant garde. Even if its just a case of adding a lettuce leaf; let's make them a little bit better, you know?
The key to a sumptuous sandwich - decadent, tea time-ish and remind you of croquet, garden parties and prim white frocks - is the bread. Do not scrimp on the bread. In further posts I'll tell you how to make mmmm-mmm-mm bread from scratch, but for now let me introduce you to the types you can try and experiment with, and some flavours which sound far fetched but taste so good.
Baguettes: Often the most exotic a sandwich sees, these sticks of bread for the perfect sarnie should be crusty on the outside, firm to touch, thick around the middle and tapering to the ends. The thickness of the baguettes affects the quality of the sandwich on the inside (too thin and you'll just be eating crust). Try and get them fresh and they're really quite cheap. The cutting of the baguette shouldn't be overlooked either - mitre it in the middle for an off the shoulder look; cut straight for an even balance; cut up into chunks for bite size picnic/party sarnies. Sounds silly, but food should be fun to look at first and thats going to get the taste buds going before the first bite.
Paninis: These flatbreads have cropped up from the continent and make for tasty toasties, not too bad untoasted but still thats not where they're talents lie. Like a flattened baguette in essence. Aim for a firm touch and cuttable depth. Again, fresh first and foremost for choice - as with all breads. Cutting ain't so much an issue, down the middle and mitred or straight across; cutting down the middle to halve the panini is the worst bit I find, trying to get an even distribution top and tail, the key is to let the knife work not you. Use a decent breadknife with a sharp serrated edge, hold it firm between thumb and forefinger, let the knife sit along the edge and scrap back nd forth with an even pressure. Once you've broken the surface the urge is to push down and get to the end - no, don't! take you time and keep that pressure even.
Bagels: These donut looking breads are simply superb toasted or raw. Often with a variety of flavours from sweet to savoury they are sandwich versatility. Again, fresh please! With a firm touch, decent thickness and sun kissed colouring hopefully. Follow the panini halving cutting instructions for an even keel. Serve in crescents for portions worth filling.
Croissants: Frisky french crescents or elongated lending themselves to sweet or savoury fillings, aim fresh again - they just taste nicer when fresh, less stale (and that goes for all breads) - try and get them bulky in the middle, decent taper to the ends, with a nice lobster looking segmentation to the make up. Careful with halving or you could end up with an uneven top and tail. And don't forget the colouring indicators of the crust factor the lighter the colour the softer the depth of the crust.
Pittas: These flatbreads make for interesting filled sandwiches. Hot or cold, they work really well - simply split into a pocket (sounds hard, but simple - the aim is to get the knife inside the pitta and separate the top and tail layer). You can get snack sized, full sized, wholegrain or plain. Try and get fresh, less stale, soft touch with a hint of golden colouring, don't get them too cracked to start with - it'll make toasting them worse.
Bread: The basic. Loaves, buns, rolls, fresh baked or factory farmed, sliced or unsliced. Oh the questions, the questions - ultimately, it all depends on what you want your bread to do. For quick snack options in bulk: factory farmed or sliced fresh. For parties and pack lunches or picnics: buns or rolls for the effect. Triangle bread slices for true garden party decadence (and troupe them upright together for a simple touch of class) or half them for quick don't-care-ness. Either way, the thickness, the quality of the bread itself will help or hinder the simple sandwich. Fresh baked often has a denser texture and more air pockets which can be disconcerting to the novice fresher; factory farmed is usually lighter in texture, less pocketed and softer to touch with a significantly dwarfed crust, touched up at the top to get that dark noticeable crust. Fresh baked has a more haphazard approach to crusting - uneven colouring; in fact, individual. I'm not a crust person (I don't want more curly hair - I have to straighten the stuff already) so to me, the cincher is the crust question, and I like soft touch. Basically, I'm a factory farmed girl but it's all individual really. Cost isn't much of an issue - unless its an economic downturn in which case breads a good indicator!
Those were the main types, but what are the main tastes? Well, here's a brief list of flavours to tantalise and explore: Wholegrain, white, cinnamon, onion, tomato, cheese, peppered, olive, plain..not exhaustive but a few to try. Choose carefully depending on what you want in them - are your sandwiches sweet? in which case an onion bagel ain't first choice. Or are they savoury? In which case I'd be loathe to choose cinnamon first.
Then again you may want to explore other sandwich like bread basis substitutes:
Scones, muffins, pikelets, crumpets, brioche, hot cross buns, teacakes, wraps, pizza bases.And let's not think sandwiches need be just bread or yeast based. I'm lumping in crackers into the sandwich sector - anything you can put anything on, sandwich need not be closed but can be open too! The possibilities then are endless. In which case, now you know what you can use as the beginning bit what can we put on them? See Start Simple: Sandwiches (part 2) for some suggestive suggestions.
Introduction
Hey there...in this blog you'll find food. Or rather food suggestions. As the welcome says, for everyone. Recipes that have been played with over time to make interesting and exciting eating. And they're all easy (I do like to cook, but I prefer to eat it), many fast to prepare (work, anyone?) and varied.
From starters and soups - so quick and tasty you'll want to make them into a main meal; nibbles and baking - comfort food for the comfort minded; main meals - for all occasion, and for all people; and desserts - delicious, moreish and decadent.
Just print off, dip in, cook up and serve.
From starters and soups - so quick and tasty you'll want to make them into a main meal; nibbles and baking - comfort food for the comfort minded; main meals - for all occasion, and for all people; and desserts - delicious, moreish and decadent.
Just print off, dip in, cook up and serve.
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