Home-made Cheez-Its

Oh, Cheez-Its. You are my absolute favourite snack and I always look forward to devouring you when I visit Virginia. However, you insist on being completely unavailable here in the United Kingdom. Okay, that's not fair. You are available but only at exorbitant prices and in very inconveniently located speciality shops. Therefore, it was time to replace you.

I'd seen mention of home-made Cheez-Its around the internet on previous journeys down the rabbit hole that is late-night recipe hunting but I always thought it would be far too much effort for a snack. Especially one I probably shouldn't be eating anyway. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find the ingredient list is remarkably short - only five items and one of them is water!

So, I bit the bullet, hauled myself down to my local shop and got to work. Warning: this recipe would be mighty irritating if you didn't have a food processor. With one, the dough comes together in minutes. And by using the parchment paper to roll out the dough, the clean up is equally simple since you aren't scattering flour all over your counter tops. Some of the recipes I saw added a bit of milk, which seemed to help bring the dough together. I liked this idea so I went ahead and added it into the recipe. However, I didn't have any milk so I substituted cold water and they end result was perfectly fine. Overall, I highly recommend this recipe even if you live in a place where Cheez-Its are readily available.

Recipe via www.cookingalamel.com

Prep Time: 3 min
Cook Time: 20 min
Makes: approx 75 crackers

Ingredients:

1 1/2 - 2 cups (180g) cheddar cheese, grated
3/4 cup (100g) self rising flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp butter
1 tsp water
Sea salt for scattering (optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375F/176C.

In the bowl of a food processor, add all the ingredients except the water. Pulse at 5 second intervals until the mixture has the consistency of coarse grain. At this point, add the water and pulse until the dough forms a ball. (I had to make it into an actual ball by hand since my mixer didn't have enough space for it to happen inside it)

Divide the dough in half and roll out one half between two sheets of parchment paper. Using a knife or a pastry cutter, cut out your shapes and move to a baking sheet. Using a skewer or fork, poke each of the crackers so that the steam can escape and they won't poof up entirely. Sprinkle on a bit of sea salt and bake for 8-9 minutes until the edges are browned and the crackers have risen. Enjoy! 

Kale and Blue Cheese Pasta

Recently, while grabbing some groceries in a post-work stupor, I picked up the little Autumn foods magazine they have in the Waitrose checkout line. I had a quick flip and thought the recipes seemed simple enough so I took it home and had a proper read through. One of the main benefits that instantly stood out with that their recipes seem to try and use quantities that they have in store. For example, this recipe called for 200g of kale... and conveniently, they sell kale in 200g bags. While I'm all for trying to use up leftover ingredients in other tasty dishes, sometimes it's just nice to have exactly what you need.

This recipe was ridiculously quick and easy - the only time consuming bit was chopping up the celery (which took all of two minutes). I noticed I had a sad-looking half of a red onion wallowing in the bowels of the fridge so I tossed that in with the celery. What I really liked was that this could easily be done as a one pot meal if you wanted (after draining the pasta and kale, use the original pot to sauté the celery). All in all, I'd give this recipe a seven out of ten for tastiness - it was maybe a bit bland so next time I think I'll try a different blue cheese. Cambozola was the recommended option in the recipe but I think I'd prefer a nice Gorgonzola dolci. 

Recipe via www.waitrose.com

Prep Time: 5 min

Cook Time: 10 min

Serves: 2

Ingredients: 

200g pasta (I used Elicoidali as recommended but any pasta would work)

200g kale torn into bite size pieces, hard stems removed 

3 stalks of celery, finely chopped
1/2 a red onion, finely chopped

75g blue cheese, crumbled
salt
pepper

Method: 

Boil salted water in a large pot and add the pasta. Cook to packet instructions and add the kale in the last two minutes. Before draining, reserve a cup of cooking water.

Meanwhile, sauté the celery and onion over medium high heat until softened. Add to the pasta and kale.

Finally, stir in the blue cheese and add a little of the pasta water to help it melt. Stir over a low heat until the blue cheese has melted and become incorporated.

Enjoy! 

A Taste of Seville: Salmorejo

As it has been quite a while since my last post, it should be no surprise that this recipe is a throw back to slightly warmer times... Specifically, the lovely girls weekend I spent in Seville with three fabulous friends. 

Ladies in line for the cathedral

On our first night, we'd all arrived at different times with myself and Nicola arriving last around ten that evening. Naturally, we quickly dropped our things off at the flat and headed out to enjoy a little tapas restaurant down the street. This soup was one of our first dishes and became an instant group favorite.

The one and only photo I managed to snap of our lovely little flat! 

A quick note on Seville: it's fabulous! We rented a flat via Friendly Rentals, a website similar to Airbnb. It was the perfect size with a bedroom and a mezzanine with two twin beds. Split between the four of us, it ended up being only twenty-five pounds a night. This was fantastic as it left plenty of cash for more important things... FOOD. 

NOMS!

As evidenced by the photo above, I wasted no time in getting properly stuck into the lovely tapas and Andalusian dishes. While many restaurants offer the usual tapas options, such as chorizo al vino or croquetas de jamon, there are also many local specialities to chose from. The recipe in this post is one of those dishes and would have been my favorite meal from our trip if we hadn't lucked into trying the dish above - a phenomenal rice and duck dish that was the unanimous winner. Served in a little restaurant down the street from our rented flat, it was one of several wonderful dishes. We took turns and each chose a dish to share which led to a nice variety of options. A chorizo and manchego starter, a spanish version of salmon tartare, fresh and light sautéed octopus and finally, the duck. I've been searching the internet for a similar recipe and promise to share if I find it! 

Plaza de Espana

What made this trip such a lovely adventure was the simplicity: we neglected to plan out any of our days and just went along with whatever we felt like doing. This meant that while we wandered the halls of more cultural sites such as the Catedral de Sevilla, Alcazar de Sevilla and the Plaza de Espana, there was also plenty of time for shopping, meandering and sunbathing. Perfection.  

Purple passport posse

Additionally, this trip was the first outing for my brand new Italian passport. It felt so strange to finally get to go through passport control with my friends instead of having to go through the "all other passports" line alone. Final verdict: Seville was lovely - easy to navigate, delicious and thoroughly enjoyable. Now... back to the soup! 

Blended soup ready to chill in the refrigerator 

I've never been a major fan of tomato soup but this was perfect and completely made me a convert. Very similar to gazpacho, this soup is served cold with a drizzle of olive oil and some crispy bits of bacon scattered on top. Heavenly. And, even better, it's so simple to create that you can throw it together in minutes. By grating the tomatoes, you avoid having to blanch them to remove the skins since the grating process will separate the skins for you. 

Ready to eat!

Recipe via www.foodandwine.com

Prep Time: 10 min

Cook Time: N/A

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients: 

2lbs tomatoes, grated and skins discarded. 

1 baguette, cubed into small pieces 

2 garlic cloves, chopped
Dash of vinegar

1/4-1/2 cup olive oil

Bacon lardons, fried until crisp

Method: 

Starting with the tomatoes, cut each one in half and then grate the cut side over a coarse grater. Discard the skins as you go along before mixing all of the tomato pulp in a bowl. Add in the baguette and allow the bread to soak up the tomato juices before adding the mixture to a blender. The bread should be softened by this point.

Pulse gentle to combine the tomato and bread mixture further before adding the garlic and vinegar. Continue pulsing until the mixture is thoroughly combined. Allow the blender to run on a low setting while drizzling in the olive oil until your soup has a light color and smooth consistency. Move to the refrigerator to cool while you fry the bacon.

Finally, ladle into bowls and drizzle with olive oil before topping with the bacon lardons. Enjoy!