SPARE A THOUGHT FOR A COBBLER

Recipe of the week... Root vegetable cobbler!

Time taken: About an hour prepping veg. Then 45 minutes getting it all together. Then half an hour to bake and serve. 2 hours and 15 minutes in total… but it’s so worth it!!

Serves: 4 (or double all the quantities – like I did – if you’re feeding 8 hungry friends)

Ingredients:

For your hotpot… A couple of splashes of olive oil, 2 red onions, ½ a butternut squash, 300g swede, 300g carrots, 2 leeks, 300g parsnips, 200g long-life beetroot, 2 celery stalks, 1 teaspoon caraway seeds, 2 cloves garlic, 3 tablespoons tomato purée, 1 stock cube, 400g can chopped tomatoes, 1 tablespoon vegetable gravy granules

For the cobblers… 175g self-raising flour, ½ a teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, 25g butter, 50g grated Parmesan cheese, 1 large egg, 6 tablespoons milk (plus a little extra for glazing).

Good evening readers,

And with this… we reach the end… of another week.

As I write, curled up on the settee with a glass of red, it’s an extremely cold Friday night in January. We’ve had clear skies all day in Sheffield, with a gorgeous pink sunrise this morning and then a sky full of stars this evening. I hope, readers, that you got to look up today and saw a sensational sky.

I hope, too, that you got to stretch your legs and breathe fresh air. That you laughed, even if you don’t remember why. That you achieved something you set out to do. That you ate delicious food, and spent time in great company. Perhaps you helped someone out, or was it that they helped you? Maybe you understood something you didn’t before, remembered something you’d forgotten, realised something that made you stop in your tracks.

I hope, readers, that today might be a day you will remember. And remember not only as at the days of President Trump’s inauguration… but instead as the day that something far more fun occurred! Do you reckon you will? Think hard! What’s been ace about your day today? Or what could still be ace yet?? There’s time left! Do something memorable with it!

Today, readers, I somehow managed to get an evening doctors appointment (these are as rare and unobtainable as the gold dust found in unicorn tears on a full moon). I was tired and heading into work early but then I saw the incredible pink sunrise and was cheered up. And my phone shuffled me a song I didn’t know I had and have DEFS never listened to before – my new favourite song!

Then, when I was leaving work I found one of my boss’s lost Bluetooth headsets just lying on the floor outside. So he’s missing one less now. And I took a taxi driven by a man named Bash and we didn’t crash (though I worried). Then, this evening, I made it to Friday yoga and held some killlller stretches. And now wine!

You know what… to some, maybe that is not a remarkable day. I’m tired. Full of cold. Have a large workload. Had to pay for a taxi just to make it to a weekday doctors appointment, as the doctors don’t open on weekends. And I work every weekday. I ate soggy cucumber as my eccentric fridge had frozen it. And then when it thawed it wasn’t the same, but was already on its way to my work.

Giving zero shits… I thought my day today was great!! Take this attitude, readers. I hope your day was funtastic, too! Hope you’ve had a terrific week this week – with plentiful, memorable fun times. Any bad times – just dance them off. Find a new song that you can play on repeat and groove around to and reeeeeally appreciate every time you hear it. Own that song.

My jam this week, you ask? It’s ‘Be Right Back, Moving House’ by Ghostpoet. Give it a listen.

And a quote that’s really stuck with me through the week: “When your past calls… don’t answer. It has nothing new to say.” I like that sentiment.

AND… my recipe of the week?? Root vegetable cobbler ahhhh! You’re going to love it, readers. You’re going to love it like a restaurant plate of food. Or like a takeaway in your pyjamas. Or like chocolate – aaaany damn time.

Root vegetable cobbler is the recipe I cooked, on Wednesday night, for a bunch of friends I had over for tea. There were eight of us, in total, to feed. And I’d been at work all day, so didn’t have a lot of time to prep before people arrived. LUCKILY… I had a plan in action and that plan was root vegetable cobbler. I shopped for veg on Saturday; I spend two hours chopping veg on Sunday. I read and reread the recipe while commuting in the week.

You’re cooking for 5+ people? Some are on January health kicks (including you)? One has a serious allergy? All expect a lot from you in the kitchen? And every single one needs further evidence – that vegetarian food is real food? THIS RECIPE IS YOUR LLAMA.

If you have the budget to buy all these veg, the time to source them (go to M&S), the will to prep them, and the strength to spend a focused hour in the kitchen on the night before you start drinking… then this recipe is for you, readers. I’m telling you. And it tastes great! Such a colourful dish. Your friends will be really wowed and rave reviews. Many of your 5-a-day. No presentation skill needed. Very filling. Lots of vitamins… just doooo it.

Feeling brave, readers? Feeling like root vegetables are just what’s been missing from your January health kick?? Here’s how to rustle up one mighty root vegetable cobbler in (I shit you not) just 27 easy steps…

1.     Find something decent on TV and settle in with a hot drink and your largest knife… for some serious veg prep!

2.     Peel your red onions and cut them into wedges.

3.     Peel your butternut squash and dice into bite-sized chunks.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Unless you’re a total squash head and want to go wild and throw it all in, set half your squash aside to use in another recipe.

4.     Peel your swede and dice into bit-sized chunks.

5.     Peel your carrots and thickly slice.

6.     Trim the ends off your leeks and then thickly slice.

7.     Peel your parsnips and – you guessed it – thickly slice.

8.     Cut your beetroot up into quarters.

9.     Trim the ends off your celery stalks and then, yes, thickly slice.

10.  Peel your cloves of garlic and crush them into smithereens.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: This is the end of the veg prep and if you’ve made it this far you’re probably like… I FUCKING HATE VEGETABLES ARRGGGH. So, I recommend taking a little time away from the veg at this point, to get the fury out of your system. Open a window and dance around a while?

11.  When you’re feeling up to it, heat your oven to 200°C.

12.  Look at your pile of vegetables, look at your pots and pans. You need either a giant pan or a large casserole dish – anything that looks big enough to hold all those veg.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: If, like I did, you’ve doubled your quantities and are now dealing with a real shitload of veg, you’re going to need 2 (maybe even 3) veg vessels. And some luck.

13.  Heat a couple of splashes of oil in your pan/dish monster and add the onions, butternut squash, swede, carrots, leeks, parsnips, beetroot, celery, caraway seeds and garlic.

14.  Fry all this over a high heat, stirring throughout, for 5 minutes. Keep it moving.

15.  Boil the kettle meanwhile and make up your veggie stock, by mixing your stock cube with 300ml boiling water.

16.  Then add the purée, stock and chopped tomatoes to the pan/dish.

17.  Stir in the gravy granules and cook, stirring, until the liquid thickens a little.

18.  Bring it all to the boil, put the lid on the pan/dish, and leave to simmer for half an hour.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Take some deep breaths now. Notice how you’re breathing and try to slow that down a little. Pour yourself a cold drink and take a few minutes out of the kitchen.

19.  When you feel well enough to return, it’s time to make the cobblers! First, sift the flour into a mixing bowl, and stir in the pepper and the rosemary.

20.  Use your fingertips to rub in the butter, until the mix resembles crumbs.

21.  Stir in the Parmesan. Inhale its cheesy, foot-like aroma!

22.  In a mug, use a fork to beat together the egg and milk.

23.  Next, gradually add your milky mix to the dry ingredients, and use your fingers or a wooden spoon to bring it all together into a soft dough.

24.  Dust a clean kitchen surface with flour, and roll out your dough til it’s 2cm-ish thick.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Don’t go too thin with your dough! You want to make good chunky cobblers, not flimsy fancy ones. Man cobblers. Sumos! With girth.

25.  Use a glass or a round pastry cutter to stamp out 8 to 9 rounds.

26.  Take the lid off your hotpot and arrange the scones on the top, around the edge of the casserole, and brush the top of each with milk.

27.  Carefully transport into the oven (my tired arms were wobbling!) and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the scones have risen and turned golden. Then serve immediately to your horde of hungry guests, and sit yourself down my dear. The dishes can wait.

Based on a Morrisons recipe found here. 

And BOOM! Readers, that’s how you make a root vegetable cobbler. The one and only. What do you think?? Is anyone going to give this recipe a go? Because it’s got so much good stuff in it! So many wonderful vitamins to power you on, through January! Really, if you think you can do this, then definitely do it, readers! Do it. Root vegetable cobbler is a taste sensation.

Has anyone tried this before, maybe? Or tried cooking this recipe before? Or – if you’ve read my blog and decided to have a go – how did it work out?? Did it go well? Any thoughts you have at all, readers, on the wonderful root vegetable cobbler – share them here! Let me know your recipe reaction / give feedback / any tips to make this even better… fire away!

And have a cracking weekend, readers. Look up at the sky. Dream big.

Veg safely,

Hayley

So yummy I only got a pic of the leftovers!

PUMPKINS WITH PURPOSE.

Recipe of the week... Pumpkin Soup!

Hello readers,

How are you this evening? Are you feeling well? Has it been a good weekend? Did you get to see any friends or family? Launch your Halloween celebrations? Crunch any autumn leaves?

However you’ve spent your weekend, I hope it’s been a really good one, readers. Can you believe it’s almost the end of October?? And the clocks have turned for winter?? It's crazy how time flies!

As I write, we’re two days off November 2016 (which sounds very wintry to say!) and the clocks have gone back an hour so it’s seven in the evening and it’s been dark for hours now. Crazy! Titanic is on TV (*weeps*) and my house is filled with cobwebs as I threw a Halloween party last night!!

I really got into Halloween this year, readers, and I’ve had fun this week party prepping. It’s been quite the project – every lunchtime at work I’ve gone out and picked up something new – booze, shot glasses, jelly, gummy eyeballs, candles… was determined to be the hostess with the mostest!

Finally, it all came together last night. Me n CoolyColey carved some (sort of) frightful pumpkins to light party goers way and I decked out the livingroom with spooky decorations! The guests arrived in some super impressive costumes and we launched a triple assault of Halloween drinking games.

Pierre and Frankie greeting the guests

The house all trimmed up for Halloween

Though I may have put more thought into the house décor than my actually costume (a sign of aging!), and ended up going out as a sort of skeleton/mime/panda, it was great to see everyone. Any excuse for a get together with the friends!

How’s your Halloween, readers? Did you do any partying yourselves this weekend? Or are you saving all the fun for the 31^st tomorrow? Whatever you’ve been up to and whatever you may have planned for tomorrow, I hope you get to see your friends and have a grand old spooky time!

Your guess is as good as mine

Some cracking costumes from the girls though!

Once you’re all partied out, readers, my Recipe of the Week this week is here to provide you with the ultimate solution to your what-to-do-with-the-pumpkin dilemma! If you find Hungover You thinking ‘maybe I’ll just chuck it’… don’t do it!!! That’s one giant vegetable you’ve purchased right there, readers, what a shame it would be to throw it away.

Let’s not be wasteful, readers. I say save that pumpkin til you’ve recovered from the jelly shots and you’re well enough to stand at length. And then do something great with it! Maybe scroll back to my last blog post and check out the recipe I shared for maple roast roots? Pumpkin can definitely be roasted! Get it in the oven!

Don't let your pumpkin go to waste!

Or think of all the things you can buy in the supermarket that come in a pumpkin flavour. There’s pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin ravioli… why not have a crack at making one of these at home? I ate out this week at an Italian and tried a pumpkin risotto from the specials menu… blew my mind! Who know you could put pumpkin in a risotto?? But so good.

Or, if you’re heading into the office this week, why not turn your pumpkin into a delicious soup that you can heat up for your lunch some days? This is what I’ve done! Rolling out a ChefBeHere classic recipe for Pumpkin Soup… which you can find HERE.

This is a really simple recipe, readers, you just need to make sure you have onions and stock cubes in and nip out to the shop for some double cream. There’s very little skill required and it’s quite fun! If you didn’t get all your aggression out, when you were carving the pumpkin earlier this week, well now you get to go to town and hack it into tiny little pieces.

A very straightforward recipe

Go for it, readers! I think homemade soup is in a whole other league to soup from the shop. You know there’s nothing weird in there, and it’s so flavoursome and tasty! You’ll be hard pressed to find a pumpkin in a week or two, once the supermarkets kick them back out, so make the most of your pumpkin… and I hope some of you have a go at transforming it into Pumpkin Soup.

Meanwhile, readers, once I’m done weeping over Jack and Rose I think I might run a bubble bath and have an early night. That’s enough excitement for one weekend. Wishing you all a lovely, calm week ahead… and some scrumptious pumpkin recipes in your belly.

My Pumpkin Soup all Tupperwared ready for work

Soup safely,

Hayley

LEMONY LOVE

Lemon Drizzle Muffins

 

Time taken: An hour

Ingredients: 350g of self-raising flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt, 75g of light brown sugar, a lemon, 75g of butter, 2 eggs, 300ml of milk and 75g of icing sugar.

 

 

 

Hi readers,

We’ve made it through another Monday! Hurray!! Every week, I feel that this shouldn’t be taken for granted. I would like to know if more people die on Mondays than on other days of the week. It can’t be just me that feels like this could actually be true?? Mondays are tough going!

 

Today, I’ve had a rubbish one. There’s a mystery illness brewing within and it’s threatening to take me down. Symptoms: dry throat, feeling hot/cold and I have a bit of a headache. Nothing awful. But I sense a storm brewing. This definitely does not bode well.

 

But I’ve been proactive! I shuffled to the shop this morning for foods full of vitamins. Ate well. Then I holed up inside out of the cold and decided today was to be a restful day. I baked and invited Woody over with the promise of a muffin. He cheered me up!

 

As someone that panics when I’m not doing ten things at once, it’s good to speak to someone who takes a more relaxed approach to how to fill their days… this makes me feel ok about taking a day off uni work. Sort of.

 

And my muffins seem to have made lots of other people feel good! These are Lemon Drizzle Muffins and the recipe for them I found on the shift calendar at work this weekend, of all places. The calendar has a recipe for each month of the year, and this January at the airport we’re being urged to bake Lemon Drizzle Muffins. To which I say… alright!

 

Here’s how you go about baking your very own Lemon Drizzle Muffins. Of course, in ten easy steps…

1. Heat your oven to 200˚C.

2. Line a muffin tray with 12 muffin cases, and melt your butter in a small saucepan.

3. In a large mixing bowl, add your flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

4. Grate the rind of your lemon into the bowl. And mix it all up!

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Don’t throw away your lemon! You need this later on.

5. Add your melted butter, eggs and milk to the bowl, then fold the mix together until it is smooth.

 

 

6. Spoon your mix evenly out into the muffin cases you’ve prepared and transport the tray safely into the oven, to bake for twenty minutes. 

ChefBeHere Top Tip: I filled my cases almost to the top and then some of my muffins rose so much that they overtopped their cases a little, while they baked in the oven. It was dramatic. When the muffins had baked, I had to chop off the overspill bits of muffin and feed them to my flatmates. To avoid this happening: only fill your cases until they’re about two-thirds full.

 

7. Take your muffins out of the oven when they're well-risen and golden brown.

 

8. Sift your icing sugar into a bowl and add the juice of your lemon.

9. Stir this briskly until you have a smooth, lemony mix.

10. Drizzle it over your muffins and serve them up!

Like these babies here

 

And, hey presto, you have before you a wonderful batch of muffins. These are your weapons with which to spread happiness! For you and your loved ones. These muffins are lemony gifts of love. They’re delicious!

 

So, I lost patience somewhat with my sieving and, as a result, the drizzle on my muffins is a little lumpy. Also, I don’t really know why, but my batch of muffins all seem to be very attached to their muffin cases. They don’t come out of them very easily! My flatmates have all been licking out their cases to get the last bits of muffin. And me too!

 

Does anyone out there know how to stop this from happening? It’s no real hardship having a muffin stuck to its case, of course, but you do end up with sticky fingers and crumbs on your nose!

 

If anyone has any suggestions for how to avoid this, please send them over. And do enjoy your muffins, everyone. Ready… set… BAKE!!!

Sift safely,

Hayley