Portobello Mushroom and Halloumi Burger

I have a confession to make. I used to be a vegetarian.

For a whole 2 and a half years of my life, in fact. Now, I love all sorts of meat, things I would never have tried before, and yes, I do tend to feel slightly bad about that fact.

But the great thing about being a vegetarian was that it taught me that not every dish has to have meat in it. These portobello and halloumi burgers are my favourite example of this. I first came across them in Nando's, which is a chicken centric restaurant. Chicken is its USP... and yet they provided some of the best vegetarian options of any restaurant I have come across. Well, actually, I only ever tried this one because once I'd tried it once I started finding excuses to go to Nando's more often than I ever did as an omnivore. It seemed a shame to try anything else, knowing how much I liked this (I try not to do this in restaurants, but this is an exception. It is THAT good).

Um, anyway. I finally got around to recreating it at home for my Mum, for Mother's day, as she is still a vegetarian. The 'boys' got standard, boring old Aberdeen Angus beefburgers (funny how I'd never even heard of it a few years ago, now it seems incredibly common...) and Mum and I wolfed down portobello and halloumi burgers that were easily as good as the ones from Nando's (just goes to show that there are some recipes that don't need fancy prep, the ingredients just work so well they practically cook themselves), aided by my first ever home-made bread rolls and tomato salsa, plus potato wedges and sugar snap peas.

I was pretty chuffed, actually. It was all ready at the same time, it was all cooked through, and every scrap got eaten, despite the fact people had been sneaking fudge all afternoon. That's a success, in my books.

Portobello Mushroom and Halloumi Burger


I used the cooking technique from this recipe on FoodFrom4, but kept the garnish to cool tomato salsa, which was nice and simple and let the mushroom and halloumi combination really shine. I know some people take this 'burger' to a whole new level and dispense with the bread entirely, replacing it with the mushrooms! Personally, I prefer it with the bread, because I think the textures are a nice contrast to each other and the texture and feel you get is much like that of a meat burger, though I understand that not all vegetarians want this (I was an ethical vegetarian, not a taste/texture/ethical/health one like my Mum). 

1 bread roll 
1 large portobello mushroom
~30g halloumi
Tomato Salsa
Salt and pepper


1. Heat the oven to 200C (fan).

2. Peel the mushrooms and de-stalk.

3. Place on a baking tray, drizzle (liberally) with olive oil, then season with salt and pepper.

4. Place in oven for about 15-20 minutes - closer to the latter, in my case. My brother was very concerned that they appeared very black when they came out but I pointed out that a) that was how they were meant to be and b) he wasn't eating them anyway. They tasted great, so I stand by my argument.

5. Brush the halloumi slice with olive oil and grill on each side. The original recipe says until browned but I didn't leave it that long, just until it was developing a sort of hardish crust and threatening to fall through the grill bars...

Tomato and Egg Toast - the student version

My lunches tend to be fairly boring - porridge, actually. I can live on the stuff because I think it's delicious beyond belief, very warming, and fills you up far more than it should for the calories. But even I recognise that you can have too much of a good thing, and I had a loaf of bread to use up and a pasta sauce tub waving at me from the fridge. Erp.  You know us students, we live on pasta (supposedly)... I actually only had it this week because Tesco had a really nice sauce and some posh Cappellini on offer. I'd say using a nice simple tomato and basil sauce like I did, not one of the creamy cheesy ones, works better, but I can't vouch for this so just experiment with your leftovers. Alternatively, making your own sauce really isn't that difficult!

Anyway, there are far more complicated versions of this recipe around, but I'd call this the student version. The toast becomes soaked in the sauce and the egg is a really nice contrast in flavour and texture. Every time I have some pasta on the menu, this is now definitely going to be lunch the next day. I think I might even have to start having pasta more often...

Some more complicated versions can be found here, at "Smitten Kitchen", and here, at "A Pastry Affair". They both springboarded off the same recipe, then I springboarded off theirs. One of the main differences is that they both poached the eggs - I fried mine in Fry Light, so not too unhealthy, but mainly because poaching isn't something I've yet tried. The other variation is that they made their sauce... I was using leftovers.

Another nice variation - or perhaps the original! - is Shakshuka, which is definitely on the cards sometime.

Please excuse the truly terrible photo, I had enough battery left to turn the camera on and immediately take the photo wherever it happened to be pointing... I never knew eggs were so reflective!

Tomato and Egg Toast for pasta-guzzling students

Leftover pasta sauce (around about 125g, or enough to generously drizzle over 2 pieces of toast)
1 egg
2 slices bread

1. Fry an egg.
2. Warm up your pasta sauce in the microwave or on the hob.
3. Cook and lightly butter the toast.
4. Pour the pasta sauce over the toast.
5. Flop the egg on the top.

If you need more instructions than that (in fact, if you needed the instructions at all), just get thee to a kitchen...

Scone-athon Part 1: Hickory Smoked Nuts & Seeds Scones

Other Scone-athon posts
Part 2: Nutella Scones

Part 3: Plain Scones

It's quite rare at the moment that I bake just for me. In fact, I don't think I've baked just for me in my life (I don't count pancakes, they're cooking, not baking). So today, when my free Graze box turned up (a full review of this to follow once I've eaten the other bits) and I discovered they'd sent me Hickory smoked nuts and seeds, something I wasn't that enamoured with on its own, I decided to make it better by baking it into something on a small scale. This was MY free graze box and I was going to eat it all myself.

A savoury quick bread? Hmm, the pot seemed a bit small. Then I realised, after the success of cinnamon toast earlier this week, that my breakfast routine did still need some shaking up. I wanted scones.

I'm going to let you in on a secret. I've joined the daring bakers. I couldn't do last months because I signed up too late but I get my first challenge tomorrow (which my boyfriend and family know all too well because I've been reminding them every day for the past week. I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight... I'm more excited about this than I was about xmas). But while waiting, I've been going through the past challenges and I came across Audax from Audax Artifax's extremely exhaustive scone recipe. This is a treatise on how to make PERFECT scones. Cheaply. And the recipe could easily be halved. Thank you very much, Audax!

So I made 3 scones, and, like Audax promised, they were great. I can't wait to try this recipe as standard jam and cream scones, and I think that it could even be put to use for cricket teas instead of buying the Tesco value ones in bulk - I think it would work out ALMOST cheaper and taste infinitely better. I calculated that this cost me approximately 30p to make 3 scones. Let me repeat that. THIRTY. PENCE. 10p a scone. And that was using real butter (we'd probably cheat and use the hard stork for cricket scones) and we'd buy flour in bulk, which I didn't, I can only buy 500g bags because that's all our Tesco's sells and its all I can manage to cart the mile I walk home (carrying a 5 litre bottle of water one day, plus all my other shopping, was not fun). After scaling it up to 64 scones, using good quality flour and butter, I worked out it would cost 6 point 3 pence a scone. That really isn't bad at all... but sadly Tesco value manage to undercut us at 4 and a half pence per scone. Really, though, is there any comparison?

Anyway, I had decided to make the scones. Now, I've finally proved that I have food on the brain far too much. Midway through my IM conversation with my boyfriend, I proceeded to reel off NINE foodie puns. All entirely based on the scone recipe I'd just written out. Though in fairness he started it.


Me: right, lecture written up.... it's scone time
Boyfriend: so you will soon be... scone?
Me: yes, but not scone for good
Boyfriend: but you'll be scone for a good raisin
Me: and i'll be breadcrumbin' back
Me: i shall return sift-ly
Boyfriend: oh dear
Me: i butter not take long....
Me: yours was better
Me: I knead to practice my puns
Me: they're a bit half-baked
Boyfriend: damnit
Boyfriend: just thought that
Me: i should stop milking it.....
Boyfriend: ugh
Me: i bet your eyes are starting to glaze over
Me: ...... dough.
Me: anyway, i'm going to go before the pun god smites me

All in all, this took me about 10 minutes to make, and I washed up while they cooked. Mine didn't rise quite as much as Audax's, but I'm going to have so much fun practising that I really don't care this time round ;) They're certainly not super dense, and really I rolled it out a bit thinner than I should have (well, patted, I'm a student, I don't have a rolling pin), sooo... it was to be expected. I think I also kneaded them very slightly too much, so will cut back on that next time. Finally, Audax recommends frozen grated butter. This would be fine, apart from my lack of 2 important things. 1) A grater. 2) A freezer. So I just used the hard butter straight out of the fridge and diced it.

Mine cooked in 8 minutes flat, and smelled gorgeous. Then, in the interests of having one to photograph, I supposed I ought to break one open, butter half of it, and  photograph it. The only problem was that I got distracted and buttered both halves (though it was the smallest of the three). Obviously I couldn't then waste the buttered half. My camera had a Lazarus moment and lasted long enough for me to get some shots, and it's sunnier here today so I could use the natural light better. 

With butter on, delicious. I think it's going to be bloody awesome with some Nutella on for breakfast tomorrow! (Update: it was. It certainly was. *drools*)

In closing, I decided to try some of the nuts while they were being chopped up to pop in... and then realised that Graze knew me better than I knew myself because they were actually really nice. Whoops. Good call, guys... still, they work well in scones too.

Audax's Awesome Scone recipe, with nuts and seeds

You can find the original HERE, for those who aren't daring bakers (it's also available in the private forum). Here I've provide my scaled down recipe with a shortened method. I would highly recommend reading Audax's, though, as he put a huge amount of effort into getting perfect scones and I learned so much from reading it.

Makes 2-3 wedges or 4 round scones.

70g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

15g butter (preferably frozen and grated, alternatively just out of the fridge and diced)

60ml milk

1/2 tbsp milk to glaze, or flour to dust

~35g Mixed nuts and seeds (I used Hickory smoked cashews, almonds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds from a Graze box)

1. Preheat oven to 240 degrees c.

2. Triple sift the dry ingredients from a height.

3. Rub butter into dry until resembled beach sand (see Audax's recipe if you want a different texture). Stir in the nuts.

4. Add nearly all the liquid and stir until a sticky dough is just formed. Add the rest if needed.

5. Turn the dough onto floured board and knead softly 4 or 5 times.

6. Roll/pat out to 2cm thick. Will have to do this twice if doing circles.

7. Use knife to form squares or wedges (you could use a cutter to form 4 scones. I don't own cutters. Again, student.)

8. Place on baking tray and flour or glaze the tops.

9. Bake for 10 minutes, checking at 8. They are done when the sides are set.

10. Immediately place on rack to stop cooking process.

Spinach and Feta Frittata

I've had a lifelong semi-dislike of omelettes. I don't quite know what it is, I think the egginess overwhelms me after a while. This situation wasn't helped by being asked, in a university interview, how many people you could feed with an omelette made out of an ostrich egg. I didn't have the faintest idea, not knowing how many people you would feed with a normal one, and since then I've liked omelettes even less. My Nan occasionally makes a Spanish omelette, which I quite like, but I don't count that...

But, due to some unforseen dental work, my plan to make spinach and feta macaroni cheese again didn't quite materialise and I suddenly found myself with only 1 dinner before I make a visit home for the weekend, and half a block of feta and half a bag of spinach to use up.

After some feverish reworking of my macaroni cheese recipe to try and fit it all in I concluded that it probably wouldn't work all that well. But I needed to use it up.

Here, my friend over at lovefoodthinkcook came to my rescue, extolling the virtues of frittatas. I got to wondering... would spinach and feta work? Also, would I like it?

I actually spent all of today and a good chunk of last night really looking forward to cooking my first frittata/omeletty-thing, which is possibly a little bit sad but hey-ho, I enjoy my cooking a lot now. I most certainly wasn't disappointed! I wolfed it down and have half left for a late lunch tomorrow, and I think this is one of those staple recipes that I will be going back to again and again, especially for using up leftover ingredients. It's a good thing free-range eggs are crazily cheap here in Oxford!

"Oh no, everything needs to be used up!" Spinach and Feta Frittata


My friend over at lovefoodthinkcook has a good overview of the basic frittata recipe here, but I'm the kind of girl that likes a fairly specific recipe, so I followed one by Jamie Oliver here, with a few tweaks that I'll put below.


1 small onion (I only tend to have white ones lying around so used that, original recipe says half a red one)
Fry light* or 1 teaspoon olive oil
150g fresh spinach
4 large eggs
75-100g crumbled feta cheese
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste (I have a cheap 30p shaker from Tesco. It works.)

1. Peel and finely slice the onion.

2. Preheat your grill to high**.

3. Pour enough oil into a small 7 to 8 inch ovenproof non-stick frying pan to very lightly coat the bottom (about 1 teaspoon) and put over a medium heat. If using fry light instead, a few sprays to coat the bottom of the pan works fine.

4. Add the onion and cook until just starting to brown. Add the spinach and toss for a minute or two to heat through, then remove from the heat and allow the vegetables to cool slightly.

5. Beat the eggs in a bowl. Add in the cooled spinach and red onion, followed by the feta (I crumbled it into fairly large chunks) and a good pinch of pepper.

6. Put your pan back on a medium heat and pour in the eggs. Stir around gently with a spatula until you feel the egg start to set at the bottom, then straight away, turn the heat off so the frittata stays half cooked and quite runny.

7. Carefully place your frying pan under the grill for 2 to 3 minutes (this is what the recipe said, I needed 5 plus), or until the frittata is golden and cooked through (check the center with a fork.) Put a plate over the pan and turn over quickly but carefully – the frittata should come right out (I stupidly cut it up in the pan and scratched it... sob). Serve hot or cold.

* If you haven't heard of it, Fry light is basically sunflower oil in spray form. Each spray is only 1 calorie and I have yet to find something I can't fry in it. Makes the frying process a lot healthier - I love it and don't even own any vegetable oil at the moment (something that does occasionally stop me from making certain cakes)


** The original recipe doesn't say grill, it says broiler. I still have no firm idea what that is - I think it's basically an American word for what we Brits call a grill -  just some sort of top down heating doohicky. But don't quote me on that. The grill worked absolutely fine. I guess if you didn't have a grill, if you turned the heat down on the hob after a while then you would cook through...

Spinach, Feta and Pepperoni Pizza

I cracked it!

I love Spinach and Feta. Yum yum yum... but on it's own (well, with some onion and garlic), on top of a pizza, it felt a bit... bland. I know this is a combination that works, because I've had it before, but for me, my homemade version was missing something.

So this time I added some pepperoni. Problem solved! (Except I now have to eat pepperoni sandwiches for the next week, but I don't consider that a big hardship...) It just breaks up the spinach-y flavour a bit. Since leaving my vegetarian ways behind me this summer, I do now put too much meat into things, I think. But here, it helps, it really does.

I've also been experimenting with a new way of cooking onions amalgamated from various readings (see in the recipe for details). Whether it actually makes any difference is debatable, but it takes about the same time and tastes nice. So that works for me.

"Pepperoni makes everything better" pizza (with feta and spinach too, but who cares about them?)


For another one of my topping experiments, go here.


1 Garlic Pizza Bread
Pepperoni
100g feta
150g spinach
1 onion
1 clove garlic


1. Chop the onion and put it in a frying pan with a little oil and some garlic. Fry for about 5 minutes. Then this is what I did - I filled the pan with about an inch of water, and turned it up to max while they simmered, added a bit of sugar, some salt and some pepper, and left it, stirring occasionally, until it boiled dry.
2. Then I chucked in the spinach and stir-fried until it wilted.
3. Pop this mixture on top of your pizza
4. Top with the feta
5. Top that with the pepperoni
6. Pop it in the oven for as long as your garlic bread suggests

p.s. Mine falls apart a lot. It tastes great, but not ideal for eating with your hands (though I did anyway cos I wanted to save on washing up). If anyone can think of a way of preventing this, I'd love to hear it... (and don't say less topping, 90% of it is spinach and onion, I'm on an iron drive...)

"HOW MANY POTATOES?!?!" Shepherd's Pie

I wasn't going to post this recipe but if anyone is using the original cookbook (Nosh for Students by Joy May), I'd highly recommend this correction...

Don't use 6 potatoes. Use 2, maybe 3 at a push. If you have 6 potatoes you will die of potato overload. Seriously.

I appreciate that I am a 7 stone 6 woman with a small appetite. But seriously, 6 potatoes for a 2 serving dish? My potatoes weren't tiny but they certainly weren't massive, and I ended up peeling and cubing 3, and then chucking away half a potatoes worth of cubes because they just wouldn't fit.

But enough ranting. Other than the potato ratio, this was a really nice recipe :) It's quite different from your standard Shepherd's pie, due to the cubed rather than mashed potatoes, but they were nice contrasting textures and the meat flavour after adding the gravy was fabulous. Overall, I love this cookbook; I think I might even do a review of it soon, once I've cooked a few more dishes from it... but it's held my hand through a few little things that I should have known, but didn't (like how long to boil an egg for) and how not to die when deciding how long I can keep eating leftovers for (basically, according to the book, after eating one batch of sausage pasta for 4 days, I am a medical anomaly, or maybe just your standard student).

Before you point it out, I'm quite aware that it looks hideous. My phone camera really isn't up to this (plus I was hungry and it was going cold). I'm looking into the camera situation, ok?

Quick Shepherd's Pie


Originally from "Nosh for Students" by Joy May


250g mince
1/4 pint water
1 tablespoon gravy granules
2/3 medium potatoes
2 teaspoons butter
Grated cheese, to top (~40-60g?)

1. Preheat oven to 200/180 fan/gas mark 6
2. Put the mince and potato in a pan, add the water, bring to the boil, then simmer for 10-15 minutes.
3. Peel and cube the potatoes (into about 1.5cm cubes), boil for 10 minutes in a separate pan, and drain. Add butter and mix.
4. Add the gravy granules and seasoning to the mince.
5. Pop the mince in the bottom of your tin/casserole dish (I've been using a round cake tin simply because it's the best sized thing i have), top with the potatoes, then sprinkle the cheese over.
6. Cook for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned (this is what the book says, I had to go to 25 minutes, turn the oven down to 180, and then left it for another 5 or so).

Waist-friendly Spinach and Ham Macaroni Cheese

One of my favourite meals last term was Heinz macaroni cheese. It wasn't that high in calories, it was creamy, warm and quick.

This isn't quite so quick. But it is still a good student dinner, because you can make this much and reheat it the next day, and I always have ham left over from during the week because I can't make enough blooming sandwiches. Also, it's delicious, beyond my wildest dreams (I dream about food and spend a lot of time thinking about it, planning meals, planning food shopping, reading food blogs, reading cookbooks...), though my food-dar probably isn't set that high :P But om nom nom nom nom.

I had to adapt this one quite heavily from the original because that would have been over 1000 calories a serving! Obviously you can use normal cheese instead (I opted for low fat) and the recommended serving of macaroni (elbow pasta) is 75g, not the 50g I opted for, but it's such a rich dish, with so many other bits in, that the quantities here were plenty for me. It would be lovely with some crusty bread if you did want to bulk it up a bit.

Furthermore, the original recipe did call for more cheese (though cheese was what i scaled the other ingredients too), so if you fancy it a bit cheesier, be my guest. The 40g of cheese I had on the top didn't look like much before I melted it, but it was plenty.


This macaroni cheese won't take all your daily calories in one go (adapted from "The ultimate student cookbook")

100g macaroni
20g butter
1 half onion
1 garlic clove
20g flour
220ml milk
130g low fat cheese
Seasoning
A few slices of ham
About 100g Spinach

Serves 2. 
600 calories per serving. 
Suitable for reheating.

1. Start the macaroni boiling in a pot of salted water for as long as it says on your packet (~5 minutes). Preheat the grill to medium/hot, or you can do this a bit later, you won't need it until the end.
2. Soften the chopped onion and garlic in a pan with the butter for about 5-6 minutes. Then add the spinach and cook until wilted.
3. Add the flour and mix.
4. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. If it goes lumpy, just keep mixing.
5. Bring the sauce to the boil. (Have you been keeping an eye on your macaroni bubbling away?)
6. Add 90g of cheese and turn the temperature back down slightly, stirring until it melts.
7. Season with salt and plenty of pepper (I'm not usually a huge fan of pepper but this works well when peppery). Pop in the chopped ham.
8. Drain the pasta and return to the pan. Pour in the sauce and mix it all together well.
9. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese and pop it under the grill for 5 minutes or so, until golden.

Simple Beef Burgers

Have a few simple tips on making beefburgers.

1. Leave it in the fridge for half an hour plus after you shape the patty.

2. Let it cook for a good few minutes on the first side before flipping it, else it WILL fall apart (this is especially true if you didn't do #1).

Very Simple Burger For One

Half a small pack of mince (125g), preferably full fat (I know, I know, but the final texture's better)

Half an egg

Seasoning

Bread bun

Onion (optional)

1. Whisk the egg up. 

2. Pour half the egg into a container with your beef (or other) mince

3. Mix them together with your hands, season to taste, and form it into a burger shape (patty, if you're being a purist).

4. PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE! Pop it on a plate and cover it with clingfilm, or pop it in a sealed container. Either way, let it cool for between half an hour and 2 hours - I don't know what happens if you cool it for longer but if you don't leave it in there for a while then it is extremely likely to fall apart while cooking it.

5. Place it in the medium heated pan (you probably don't need any extra oil) and leave the first side to cook for a good 4-5 minutes

6. Flip it over to cook on the other side

7. If necessary, turn the heat down and leave it to cook through

8. Assemble and nom.

Delia's Toad in the hole for one

So, since being back at uni I've decided to start cooking for myself. Every day. So I'm currently working through recipes from a variety of different sources, including t'internet: in this case, a youtube video of Delia Smith's "One is Fun".

I must confess I've never seen any Delia before.

But, in it's charming 80's (?) way, I loved it. So have a charming 80's photograph of it.

Ok, my creation isn't quite as beautiful as hers, though the thing she got out wasn't a beauty queen either. Mine's a little too flat, it seems - the pan might have been a bit too big...

But I didn't care when I ate it. Granted, I adore toad in the hole, but I really think this would be a strong contender for standard recipe!

A small amphibian in the proverbial hole in 10 easy steps

This is basically a summary of the video that can be found here.

4/5 chipolatas

1oz plain flour

1 egg

1/2 tsp mixed herbs

1 egg

2tbsp milk

1/2 a large or 1 small onion

1. Fry the chipolatas and half an onion for about 10 minutes

2. Preheat the grill to really hot

3. Sift the plain flour into a bowl
4. Add some salt and pepper, and ½ a tsp of mixed herbs
5. Add the egg
6. Whisk with electric whisk until egg incorporated
7. Add 2 tbsp of milk
8. Whisk until all lumps gone
9. Pour it evenly and between the sausages (the pan must be really hot before you put the batter)

10. Pop the whole lot under the VERY HOT grill for about 10 minutes (you might need to turn it occasionally, mine spun about quite happily in the pan after a while)