When life gives you lemons...

...make Lemon Shortbread
I followed an extremely easy shortbread recipe from my beloved Canteen cookbook. As always I had to add something extra, in this case I wanted to make lemon shortbread like the ones I remembered my Mum making for my birthday parties when I was a kid.

A pretty successful attempted, although they were probably the thickest shortbread ever! :-)

...make Luscious Lemon Drizzle Cake
A great recipe from Woman's Hour on Radio 4. It was very tasty but a little bit of a 'cooking fail' on my part as my decision to replace icing sugar with caster sugar to make the topping was a foolish as instead of creating a nice runny icing I made a syrup (yeah, I know, it's obvious now I look back on it) which soaked into the cake and although make it extra moist and lemony it also make it tricky to eat. It's a great recipe though and I will so it again, probably!

Tomorrows Lunch

Been back to my cookbooks to make a Tabula Kisir from 'River Cottage Everyday' and cookies from Canteen's 'Great British Food'.  

Tabula Kisir is described as ‘Turkish, herby, spicy, bulghur wheat’. I didn't have bulghur wheat so I substituted it for a box of Quinoa that's been lurking at the back of the cupboard for months making this healthy lunch a super healthy lunch. 

It's a salad made by mixing the cooked Quinoa in a dressing containing tomato puree, dried chilli, cumin, lemon juice, paprika and olive oil. You then mix in roasted walnuts, tomatoes, red onion, parsley, mint and peppers. 

Anyway it tastes yum and makes up for the fact I'll be consuming cookies afterward :-)

Canteen Cookies

After my earlier success with this book I attempted the Sour Cherry, White Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies. I didn't have the hazelnuts :-) so I substituted them for ground almonds (which I love). I think they helped make them even gooier and delicious. I'll definitely be making them again as they were so easy and everyone seemed to love them.

Going Back To My Roots

 Jade bought me the Canteen cookbook for my Birthday. It's packed full with great recipes that reminded me of my childhood.

British food can often get a bad press, it's not glamorous, not exotic but done well it's fantastic. Canteen is an example of unpretentious, good quality and delicious cooking that is worthy of being called Great British Food. If you ever get a chance go as it's excellent value and feels like a home-from-home. It also remains the only place me and Jade sacrificed our wine in favour of finishing our food as it tasted that good.

On a cold, misty night this book inspired me. What better antidote to the winter blues than a proper beef stew with proper suet dumplings. As always I didn't follow the recipe 'to the t'. Instead of red wine I used a bottle of Marston's Pedigree ale, think Canteen would approve :-)

I have to admit that mine didn't look as nice as the picture in the book, but it tasted amazing and the dumpling were far better than any I've ever made before that didn't use suet.