My goodness, what a mad mad week it’s been. I wanted to blog, I really did, but I was completely caught up in some work for my job. As in, didn’t go to bed until 1am, and then couldn’t get off to sleep for another half an hour. I was exhausted. All my hard work seems to have paid off though. The thing is, once you start ploughing all your efforts into one thing, everything else starts slipping. The washing basket was overflowing, my eyebrows started to resemble the black forest and my nails should definitely not have been seen by another human being! But today I had one of those really productive days where, due to Mr LTT having a migraine and being laid up in bed, I actually moved swiftly around the house to remedy all these situations AND managed to bleach the sinks and clean down the inside of the microwave which seemed to have got pretty grim! Achievement: unlocked.

Since I last blogged I’ve also watched two episodes of How To cook Like Heston. I first learned about Heston in 2006 when I watched In Search Of Perfection and consequently bought the book. To this day I always make his roast potatoes from that book. Last weekend we made his burgers from the programme as Mr LTT got a Kitchen Aid mincer (and sausage filler) attachment as a Christmas gift from Mummy LTT and this morning I made his boiled eggs. Do leave a comment and let me know what you think of his latest programme.

The diet so far…it’s going ok. I have avoided McDonalds for over two weeks (which is pretty much a miracle in my book!) and I’ve cut out a lot of carbs by eating salads at lunchtime in my beautiful Black & Blum box. Last week I swapped out salad for soup. Before Christmas I was eating a lot of the Yorkshire Provender pea, coriander and mint soup but it was quite high calorie due to having double cream in. I thought I’d have a go at making my own version without the double cream and I’d really pleased with how it came out. The pea flavours are a lot fresher in mine and I didn’t cook all the coriander, just finely chopped it and then added it in once I’d blended it. I also put some ground coriander in too.

For the soup I made my own chicken stock. It’s best to make it the day before and the put it in the fridge overnight once it’s cooled. That way all the fat rises to the top and solidifies, making it easy to scrape it off the top and take a few calories off the stock. Of course, you could use pre-made stock or vegetarian stock too if you wished. The stock was inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Get Ahead gravy but I wanted pure chicken flavours in the soup as I was adding coriander to the soup so I didn’t add any herbs.

Apart from the stock, there’s three other key ingredients… peas:

…coriander:

…and mint:

First we cut up some chicken wings and add to some roughly chopped onion and carrot, season, add a splash of oil and shake to mix it all up. Then we roast it in the oven for an hour.

Once it’s done, tear all the meat off the bones with a couple of forks and add 2 litres of water. Simmer for 30 minutes stirring from time to time. The mixture will go nice and dark.

Strain the stock through a sieve to remove all the meat, bones and veg and leave to cool. Once it’s cooled, pop it in the fridge overnight. Dispose of the solidified fat from the top when you’re ready to use it.

Make the stock up to 1.8 litres and add some more onion, half of the coriander, mint leaves, 2 teaspoons of ground coriander, a handful of peas and season. Cook for 15 minutes, then add the rest of the peas, bring back to the boil and cook for a further 5 minutes. This is the ugliest your soup will ever look!

Take the mixture and blend…then finely chop the rest of the coriander and stir in to the soup.

Serve with a garnish of coriander leaves

{Makes enough for about 8-9 servings}

40 minutes (plus 12 hours unattended in fridge overnight)

Ingredients

For the stock

• 8-10 chicken wings
• 1 large onion
• 2 carrots
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 2 lites of boiling water

For the soup

• 1.5kg of frozen peas
• 100g fresh coriander
• A good handful of fresh mint leaves (a fresh plant from the supermarket herb section is the amount I used)
• 1 onion
• 1½tsp ground coriander
• 2tsp table salt
• ½ tsp ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.
2. Cut the chicken wings into pieces at the joints and cut some of the bones open if your knife is sharp enough. Roughly chop the onion and carrot and add all the ingredients to a roasting tin. Season with salt and pepper and splash with the olive oil. Give it a good toss to mix it all up. Roast for 1 hour, giving it another mix after 30 minutes.
3. Remove from the oven and tear the meat from the bones with a couple of forks. Add the boiling water and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Strain the stock through a sieve and leave to cool, then place in the fridge overnight. Skim the fat off the top.
5. Take 50g of the coriander (including stalks) and place in a large saucepan with the mint leaves. Roughly chop the onion and add that too.
6. Make up the stock to 1.8 litres and pour into the saucepan along with ground coriander and a handful of the peas. Season with the salt and pepper.
7. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the frozen peas and bring back up to the boil – this will take a little while! Simmer for a further 5 minutes.
8. Finely chop the rest of the coriander (including stalks).
9. Blend the soup mix until really smooth. If it’s too thick, add a little more water until you’re happy with the consistency. Put the mixture back in the saucepan and add in the chopped coriander and stir well.
10. Serve with a coriander leaf garnish on the top.

There’s nothing like a bit of colour to brighten up your meal, so when I spotted these purple potatoes in our local supermarket, I just had to buy and photograph them! They taste exactly like normal potatoes and don’t lose their colour when you boil them. Yum yum!

We made the most of the brief summer weekend and had a barbeque, we still had some Keevil & Keevil Steaks left in the freezer, so the men gathered around the barbeque acting like their caveman forefathers, creating fire and chargrilling dead cow on it. Us girls were left the side dish preparations, so we made a traditional potato salad. I’ve longed for potato salad even though the weather is not fit for BBQ’s again. What the hell! I’ve made it again anyway. I wanted to jazz it up a bit this time and loved the idea of adding some fresh flavours to make the salad seem less stodgy. Here’s the result!

Ingredients

• 380g purple potatoes
• 6 tbsp mayonnaise
• 10 mint leaves, finely chopped
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• zest 1 lemon

Instructions

1. Boil the purple potatoes whole, for 15 mins. Drain and leave to cool.
2. Mix the mayonnaise together with the mint, lemon juice and lemon zest. Season with a little salt and pepper.
3. Once the potatoes have cooled, slice into quarters. Mix with the mayonnaise. Serve with a garnish of mint.

Whatto, it must be Pimm’s o’clock! For me, summer is officially marked by the first Pimm’s of the season, usually shared with friends at the Royal Norfolk Show or previously on Southsea Common. I love the refreshing blend of fruits that you put in it: strawberry, cucumber, orange and mint. I’ve been thinking about how best to combine all the flavours into a cupcake and this is the result. The buttercreams all work really well, none of them overpowered each other including the cucumber which I thought would be awful because it’s quite watery. Make it into a “virgin cupcake” (no alcohol) by warming the Pimm’s in a saucepan on the hob for a minute or so. If you wanted to strengthen the flavour of the Pimm’s, then I would suggest using more than specified and reducing it in a saucepan on the hob.

Ingredients

For the cupcake

• My basic cupcake recipe
• 60ml Pimm’s

For all buttercream

• 400g icing sugar
• 250g butter

For the strawberry buttercream

• 8 strawberries
• 1tbsp sugar

For the cucumber buttercream

• 30g cucumber (use skin, but not seeds in centre)
• Small amount of green food colouring

For the orange buttercream

• Juice ½ an orange
• Rind ¼ an orange
• Small amount of orange food colouring

For the mint buttercream

• 8 fresh mint leaves
• Small amount of green food colouring

Instructions

1. Make the cupcakes as per the instructions on the basic cupcake recipe, adding in the Pimm’s at the end of stage 3.
2. Divide up the butter and icing sugar into 4 (100g icing sugar, 62g butter) and put in 4 separate bowls. Mix each until light in colour and fluffy. I recommend using a hand mixer (it saves on arm ache!)
3. Strawberry buttercream: Make the strawberry flavouring by roughly chopping the strawberries and putting in a pan with the sugar over a medium heat stirring often. Once softened, mash gently with the back of a spoon and leave to soften a little more (about 2 minutes). Pass the mixture through a sieve to remove seeds. Leave the mixture to cool, then mix into one portion of the buttercream.
4. Cucumber buttercream: Very finely chop cucumber and mix into one portion of the buttercream. Add a small amount of green food colouring, but keep it quite pale (the mint buttercream should be a stronger green).
5. Orange buttercream: Blend in juice and rind into one portion of the buttercream, then add a small amount of orange food colouring to give a gentle hint of orange to it.
6. Mint buttercream: Very finely chop mint and add to buttercream, then add a small amount of green food colouring, making sure the green is slightly stronger than that of the cucumber version.
7. Piping: I used a piping bag and a large open star piping nozzle to pipe. I put the nozzle in the bag, then placed it in a tall glass, spreading the top of the bag over the top of the glass. You’ll need to put all the buttercream in at once, otherwise all the colours will get mixed up.
8. Using a tablespoon, take a scoop of a one of the buttercream and gently push it to one side of the piping bag. Take another tablespoon and repeat with the next buttercream and so on and so forth. Once you’ve done one “layer” you can repeat again with the four colours – you don’t need to make sure each buttercream goes on the same side as the one before.
9. Pull the bag upright and knock out any air in the bag then twist it at the top to close it. Make your swirls, they’ll come out all tie dye! If you need help with swirls try this basic cupcake swirl tutorial.
10. If you want to add “lemonade” to your Pimm’s cupcakes, garnish with a ¼ slice of lemon.