Recently Enjoyed.

We have been spending a lot of time recently enjoying our new gas cooker. It may not seem like much to most, but I have had electric cookers my entire life so an upgrade to gas is pretty exciting. What better way to get to know a new cooker than to do a tonne of baking? Bread, pasties, pies and pizzas. We have baked through our internet less days (which are now over, thank god).

That pizza, by the way, was the best tasting pizza I have ever ever eaten. A pizza without caramelised onions is no longer a pizza in my eyes The tart is rhubarb and apple! I have never cooked rhubarb before, which is weird seeing as I live in the Rhubarb Triangle. Pasties are so much fun to make and were even better cold the next day at work. Bread; well you all know how much I love baking bread. 

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Home-Made Tortillas.

There is nothing quite as satisfying as eating a meal where you have made the whole thing from scratch. We eat so much Mexican food but it has never really crossed my mind to make our own tortillas before. Then I saw this post by the wonderful Drea and ran to show Dixon. We'd never seen a tortilla press before and now we wanted one!! When Dixons birthday came around, it was the perfect opportunity to tracked one down.

I was pretty excited for Dixon to start using it. So, last Saturday night we decided to have fajitas for tea. He made the dough perfectly. Rolled up a small ball, placed it in the center of the disc, pressed down and the handle snapped clean off!* I was gutted. How does metal snap? I've no idea how it happened. What a bummer.

We went  ahead and made the tortillas with a rolling pin, it just wasn't as much fun as using this authentic looking press, you know? They probably weren't as thin as they could be, or as round. They were delicious though. We will definitely be doing them again. And I'm busy tracking down another press.

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* The very nice people at Sous chef where I ordered the press from replaced the broken one. Fingers crossed it will be a regular in our kitchen for years to come.

Spring Rolling.

Yesterday I made Spring Rolls. They're so simple and tasty I can't believe I haven't made them before. I really wanted to pack them full of carrots but the guy at the market didn't put them in our bag! I didn't realise until we got home. Boo. I'm still pretty happy with how they turned out. I have a few sheets left, I'll definitely be making more soon. Maybe bigger ones for a work-lunch.

I used yellow pepper, onion, mushroom all chopped into thin strips and garlic and chilli chopped fine. I fried these all together for a minute or two with ginger and black pepper. I added a few splashes of teriyaki sauce at the end, and once that liquid had evaporated the filling was done.  

The actual spring roll sheets were really easy to use. I was expecting to tear a few, but I only ruined one. You can eat them raw but I decided to lightly fry them. I love crispy spring rolls. I served them with a boat load of my favourite soy sauce. They were spicy, crunchy and amazing.

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A little adventure in bageling.

You poach bagels before you bake them!? Who knew! I didn't have much involvement in making these other than the finishing (and eating), Dixon did everything. Mine are the ones topped in flax seed, Dixons are jalapeno and cheese (which smelt so good, i was pretty jealous). I was pretty impressed with how they turned out, they smelt and tasted great! We'll definitely be making them again, and trying out some different varieties (sundried tomatoes please).

The recipe we used is here, if you're interested.