tomatoes

Quick Tomato Salad

Recipes, Uncategorized

Tomato Salad.jpgUse the best of the summer’s tomatoes in this delicious, herby tomato salad. I served mine with lamb fillet marinated in garlic, rosemary & lemon & some buttered new potatoes. But it’s perfect on it’s own, served with some crusty fresh bread to mop up the juices. The perfect simple supper.

Ingredients

  • One or two large tomatoes
  • A handful of cherry tomatoes ( I used red & yellow from my mum’s garden)
  • Handful of flat leaf parsley
  • 2-3 basil leaves (I used purple basil from the garden)
  • A few chives
  • salt & pepper
  • 1 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Method

  1. Chop your tomatoes how ever you please, I sliced mine in big thin slices & halved my cherry tomatoes.
  2. Roughly chop your herbs, and add these to a bowl with the tomatoes
  3. In a cup, lightly whisk your vinegar and olive oil, and season to taste. You can add more oil/vinegar to suit your taste. I like mine quite sharp.
  4. Add this to your tomatoes & herbs and mix together. Add more seasoning if it needs it.
  5. Place into your serving dish & enjoy!

 

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

 

Lentil, Feta & Beetroot Salad

Food, Recipes

Hello lovely readers,

Apologies for the delayed post. This week has been hectic for me and a lot of exciting/scary stuff is happening. I will try and design a recipe card for you all for this recipe if I get the chance over the weekend. But for now I will just type up the recipe here! After my moaning and tears, I secured myself a job at a Sainsbury’s Local for the weekends, fairly ok hours to bring some money in. Funds are running very low, but I’m impressed I’ve managed to last this long on Student Finance, thanks government. I better start saving for Christmas, because X Factor starts this weekend, which only means one thing… it will be Christmas before we know it. Exciting bit of news #1.

Exciting news #2 is that on Wednesday I went for an interview for a digital marketing internship for a foodie website. This was positive, and before even getting the chance to get home, I got a call saying I had been successful. I start on Tuesday, and it will last 3 months. It may give me some useful tips on how to improve my blog, and social media pages to really push this forward. I am excited but super scared about going into something that I know little about. I’m scared about working 7 days a week and the thought of being super tired but it will be worth it in the end, something good for my CV, and to learn new skills in order to progress in the future. I will still try and post to my blog but may struggle with this so please don’t hate me forever if I don’t always get something posted!

This weeks recipe is another healthy, tasty salad dish. A lentil, feta and beetroot salad perfect served with some chicken for a light, nutritious lunch or dinner. Would also be tasty served with some griddled halloumi for a veggie option.

Serves 3-4

Difficulty Easy

Time 20 Minutes

Ingredients

1 x 400g tin puy lentils, drained and rinsed.

100g Feta cheese, diced.

Aprox. 200g cooked beetroot (I used the pre-cooked vacuum packed ones from Sainsbury’s, I used 2 of the 3 in the pack).

2 tbsp Olive oil.

3 tbsp cider vinegar or balsamic – just use what you’ve got.

A sprig of mint leaves, finely chopped.

1/2 Red Pepper, diced.

A handful of good quality cherry tomatoes. I used Pomodorino.

Squeeze of Lemon

Salt & Pepper.

Method

  1. In a jar, or cup whisk together your oil, vinegar, and a squeeze of lemon.

2. In a bowl, add the rinsed lentils, the diced feta, and pepper. Dice the beetroot, and halve the tomatoes and add these to the bowl. Add the mint. Stir your dressing before adding to the bowl. Season to taste, but remember the feta is quite salty so err on the side of caution.

3. Leave in the fridge for about 20 minutes to half an hour to allow the flavours to develop.

4. Pour into a serving dish, and serve to friends and family. So easy can I even call it a recipe?!

Next week (if i’m not flat out by then) will be a not so healthy chocolate truffle recipe. Perfect for gifts to friends, who for me definitely deserved them for listening to my recent wobbles.

Wish me luck for the next week, stay tuned…

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Simple Supper

Food, Recipes

Hi all,

Just a quick,  recipe for you this week which requires minimal effort for a simple, yet tasty midweek meal – gammon with roasted new potatoes, roasted tomatoes and a mustard sauce. The sharp, juicy roasted tomatoes cuts through the creamy mustard sauce, and salty gammon.

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 Gammon Steaks – I used smoked, rindless

700g (aprox.) New Potatoes – I used taste the difference vivaldi, jersey royal would be nice too.

150ml Creme Fraiche

100ml Double Cream

2tsp Whole Grain Mustard

270g pack (aprox.) Cherry Tomatoes on the Vine

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200c/180c fan and put your potatoes in a roasting tray with a drizzle of oil to coat – I used coconut oil, as I find they go lovely and soft on the inside and crispy on the outside but any cooking oil you have will do. Sprinkle with sea salt and roast in the oven for about 45 minutes until soft, and golden. Alternatively, you could boil your new potatoes and serve with a little knob of butter for a lighter alternative.

2. When the potatoes have been in for about 25 minutes, place your tomatoes in another oven proof dish, with a drizzle of oil and a sprinkle of salt and roast these for the remaining 20 minutes.

3. Mix together the creme fraiche, cream and mustard and heat on a low heat until warm in a saucepan. You don’t have to have creme fraiche if you don’t have any – I just had some in the fridge that needed using up! Keep warm until serving.

4. Heat a large frying pan, add a drizzle of oil and fry your gammon steaks for around 8 minutes, until golden and cooked. Alternatively you could grill to avoid using excess oil. At this point cook your asparagus – boil or steam. You could serve this with any veg of your choice. Green beans, or baby carrots would work well too!

5. Plate up – place a puddle of sauce on the plate, add the potatoes, gammon steak and top with the roasted tomatoes and asparagus, or veg of your choosing. Pour over any remaining sauce and enjoy!

Hope you enjoy this speedy, simple supper as much as I did! Stay tuned for next weeks post where I will be showing you a variety of dips to try out! Perfect for summer barbecues!

Enjoy, and stay tuned for next weeks recipe!

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x

Emily Blincoe

Food, Inspiration, Photography

I stumbled across this photographer on one of my favourite sites This Is Colossal. I use this site when looking for inspiration to create work etc. Born in Austin, Texas Blincoe finds “inspiration in faces, shapes, colors, light and quiet little moments. most days you can find me wandering in the tall grass somewhere between austin and nashville with my dog, eleanor. ”

I love all of her work, but particularly her arrangements that she creates with food. She selects her food types and meticulously arranges them by colour. “Blincoe collects every color permutation of tomatoes, oranges, eggs, and even candy and then sorts them into groups and gradients for each image.” This inspired me to take my own images of singular food types in Borough Market, and I hope to take this into the studio, and perhaps do some similar arrangements as Blincoe. The images I have taken in Borough Market, try and capture one singlular food item in each frame, and I feel a series of these would be really successful, and I could experiment in the studio also with these same food types and compare them.

See more of Emily Blincoe’s work here.

A girl with an appetite for all things creative,

Maria x