English muffins

I have a new toy.

A Le Creuset griddle - ridged on one side and flat on the other. What a very fine piece of equipment. The flat side was what I used to make these. I'd been waiting for an excuse to make this recipe for a few months.

With so much going on, I ran out of time, so as these were for breakfast for the wedding party the morning after the big day, I finished the last ones at the house after we had served the wedding breakfast. We also left them bacon to go in the middle, as well as a few other essential breakfast items.

I might try making crumpets on the griddle next......

3

Breakfast muffins

Contrary to what you may have heard 6:30am on a Sunday does exist. That's what time these muffins went in the oven for a breakfast delivery this morning.

• Double chocolate
• Apple and cinnamon
• Blueberry (and orange)
  

Muffin

Nuffin

I came accross this recipe on Joanna's Food when I wasn't specifically looking for it, but bookmarked it for this morning. I did add the orange zest for the blueberry ones, though as I didn't have yogurt I used crème fraîche. No sugar - with the bluberries you don't need it. For the chocolate ones I missed out the blueberries and added a couple of teaspoons of cocoa and some white and dark chocolate pellets. For the apple ones, 2 diced golden delicious apples and a teaspooon of cinnamon - though that could have been 2 tsp really.


It has been bookmarked for anyone else who wants to try it on the virtual recipe drawer that is Bookmarked Recipes - where anyone from anywhere can blog about a recipe they had bookmarked from a cook book, food magazine, food blog, food website, from TV etc, make it and submit it to a weekly roundup.

4

Bookmarked Recipes 39

Here’s this week's round up of Bookmarked Recipes and this week we have some more great recipes from some more great bloggers. This week’s round up is being hosted by James at The Cotswold Food Year


First up is Gloria of Cook Book Cuisine who has shared one of her best dinners: Sautéed chicken and baby bella mushrooms served over garlic spinach. Originally from the I'm Running To Eat blog who in turn got it from Dinners From A Year And Beyond. She guarantees you'll like it too - let her know how it turns out.
Christine from Kit's Chow has made these delicious sweet and sour shallots with raisins, fennel seeds & chilli from the Tesco foodie magazine. This recipe was found whilst searching for recipes with fennel seeds, after inspriation from Ivy's choice of spices for think spice. Ideal for roasts or cold meats, or a traditional ploughman's.


Two's company, but three's even better when it comes to mac n' cheese for Chris at Mele Cotte who gives us her three cheese bake with three different cheeses. What better thing to do on a cold and rainy day than leaf through the Southern Living magazine where this version of the all time favourite came from. Chris is hosting Bookmarked Recipes next week - details of how to submit your recipes can be seen below.


Next up is the first of two chicken recipes. This one from Jin Hooi Morris at Smell And Taste Are My Memory is for sesame chicken, which was the first thing to cook after a week of having to stay out of the kitchen due to extreme hot weather down under (this, posted on the day the UK ground to a halt in the snow!). From an original post from Kitchen Snippets, this dish is easy to put together, and certain to please.


Our other chicken recipe comes from Arika at My Yummy life who has made Asian glazed chicken wings. These wings of fire, originally from Foodie With Family blog, made the ideal superbowl snack. Bet they would be good on the BBQ in the summer too.


After two chicken recipes it must be time for something sweet, how about muffins?

Holler from Tinned Tomatoes has been making magic muffins - buttermilk, beetroot and apple muffins to be precise. Originally from The Great Big Veg Challenge blog it seems like a great new way to use beetroot, when you're not adding them to chocolate cakes of course. Thanks too for bringing the veg challenge blog to our attention - there's so much good stuff to try there!


Happy Cook at My Kitchen Tresures gives us our other muffin recipe. List your top three muffin flavours, and then put them all into one muffin, and you have Mocha, walnut choco chip muffins. If you're not craving them by the time you've read 'Moacha' and 'walnut' you're not human. Happy cook baked these after seeing the recipe on Passionate For Baking, and her daughter's friend can't wait to be invited round the next time they are cooked - what better praise can there be?


Finally, my own contribution this week is a recipe for hazelnut shortbread. My grandmother's friend had a secret ingredient, which I think makes the best shortbread, and, although we lost her original in a couple of moves, I found this one in my old college text book - Practical Cookery by Ceserani, Kinton & Foskett, now bookmarked for next time. Showed here with coffee crème brûlée.


Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers. Next week’s round up will be hosted by Chris from Mele Cotte - the little blog that feeds a huge appetite for cooking......

That's it for this week. Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....

1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it - include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible) - include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post - include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post - include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information: - Your name - The name of your blog - The URL of your blog - The permalink for your entry - A photo of your entry - A note of where you got your recipe from

3

Chanterelle Mushrooms

Close the doors, close the windows, take the phone off the hook and switch the mobile off. The preparation of wild mushrooms is time you need just for yourself. These finest of ingredients need respect as mentioned earlier, and the moment you spend with them should not be wasted. Chantarelle mushrooms either raw or sauteed are undoubtedly the finest.

0

Exotic mushrooms

One of the first things I learned at Claridges was "Flavour!" which came next to Seasoning ("more salt!"). To get the best flavour you have to start with sourcing the best quality ingredients. There are many mushrooms available from common (and rather bland) button mushrooms to the most expensive and rare ceps and girolles. The exotic mushrooms we use for our fillet of beef dish come from a farm in Leicestershire.

These ones are:

1. Yellow oyster
2. Buna-Shimeji
3. Shiro-Shimeji
4. Enoki (the thin straw like mushrooms - common in Japanese cookery)
5. Grey oyster

The best ingredients have to have care in the preparation. Preparing mushrooms for such numbers at Claridges would be an afternoon job. We would wash them in luke warm water (cold water damages them), dry them on cloths to remove most of the excess water, then place them on trays underneath the hot lamps of the serving pass (on lowest setting). Now I cater for smaller numbers I have more time to spend on preparation, and prefer to brush any dirt off the mushrooms as below with a pastry brush specially kept for this task. Washing mushrooms is all very well, but with such delicate mushrooms as these it can destroy the texture.



These wild mushrooms also work brilliantly for breakfast or brunch cooked in a little cream and served on top of muffins as shown in an earlier entry.

Ref also: Chanterelle mushrooms: http://www.thecotswoldfoodyear.com/2007/12/chanterelle-mushrooms.html

0