This day I love.......: recipe

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We love Fish and Chip Friday in our house, it is our weekly treat and one the girls really look forward to. In fact I am pretty certain if you were to ask the ultimate question 'Daddy or Chips?' both girls would answer chips. Now that Christmas and the festive period is out the way, we are getting back into our normal routine and back to our traditions, like Fish and Chip Friday.

It is nice getting back into a routine again and getting back to normal, but with it comes the girls after school clubs and the need to make quick and easy dinner. When McCain got in touch with their back to normal campaign, I instantly knew I wanted to be involved.

I thought this a great opportunity to share our simple fish cakes that are quick, easy and fun to do with the children and are great when accompanied by McCain Chips, particularly their Crispy Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients

To make Fish cakes:

1x tin tuna

1x tin Salmon

3x eggs

125g Mozzarella [shredded]

3x chopped spring onion

Oats

Plus McCain chips

Method

1. Pre heat the oven for your McCain Chips

2. Mix together in a bowl all ingredients for Fish cakes. The oats are only needed if the mixture is not thick enough.

3. If Mixture does not stick together, then add oats a few at a time until the mixture is thick and can stick together

4. When over is hot enough add McCain Chips.

5. Add oil to a Frying pan, and ensure pan is hot.

6.When pan is hot, spoon fish cake mixture into pan [in balls] to make individual fish cakes.

7. Fry for a few minutes before turning over

8. When golden on both sides fish cakes are ready. They should only take a few minutes

9. Remove cooked McCain chips from oven.

10. Serve Fish cakes and Chips together, and Enjoy

You can add a variety of ingredients into the fish cakes to alter the taste, different fish, peas or even chopped spinach or kale. If the mixture is too thick add another egg and use oats to re thicken. The fish cakes can also be made to different sizes to suit different sized tummies!

“I am a member of the Mumsnet Bloggers Network Research Panel, a group of parent bloggers who have volunteered to review products, services, events and brands for Mumsnet. I have not paid for the product or to attend an event. I have editorial control and retain full editorial integrity. [I have received a voucher as a token of thanks for this post]”.

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Did you know that there are more than 27,000 internet searches in the UK each month for 'gluten free diet' that is a lot of people going gluten free and a lot of inspiration to be found.

Tilda rice would like to match this need and have created six gluten free recipes to show how cooking with naturally gluten free basmati rice can be delicious, healthy and easy to do. I have been getting creative and trying not only the gluten free ideas from Tilda but also looking at other ways to use Tilda rice.

The six recipes from Tilda are

• Lamb and quince meatballs with Basmati and Wild (using Tilda Wholegrain Basmati & Wild Rice)

• Spicy rice and Vegetable bake (using Tilda’s Pure Basmati Rice)

• Chicken with apricots and tamarind on herby rice (using Tilda Wholegrain Basmati Rice)

• Warm chickpea and feta quinoa and rice salad (using Tilda Steamed Brown Basmati & Quinoa)

• Salmon on broad bean rice (using Tilda Steamed Pure Basmati Rice)

• Chicken, hazelnut and prune salad (using Tilda Steamed Brown Basmati Rice)

I was keen to try the Brown Basmati rice and Quinoa, as am currently a huge fan of Quinoa. I warmed the rice as per the instructions and mixed with feta cheese, spinach, cucumber, chick peas and pepper. I had made a garlic and ginger dressing which I added on to the rice and squeezed in some fresh lime juice.

The result was delicious and perfect for lunch time, easy to make.

One of my favourite dishes to make is a chicken chick pea curry. By frying chicken with onion then adding chili powder, cumin and garlic to the pan to add favour before adding chick peas and spinach. It makes a wonderful curry dish and perfect for serving over rice.

Sun dried tomato basmati has a great tomato flavour to it and it perfect with some mixed baby leaves, spinach, red peppers and cucumber. It is great for both a lunch and a light dinner.

Tilda rice is also perfect as a side dish with a stew, one of my favourites is a celery stew. It has lots of tasty flavour and really refreshing and filling.

Tilda is a perfect accompaniment or amazing within the dish and can be quick and easy to cook thanks to the handy microwave packets.

Tilda provided me with some samples in exchange for this post. All words are my own opinion.

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I love a challenge and the lovely people over at Jus Rol decided to set me a spring themed challenge. They wanted me to take some of their Jus Rol pastry and create a spring inspired recipe. I began to think.

When I think of spring I think of chickens (possibly due to Easter, who knows), blossom, spring sunshine and the colour green. I wanted to use these inspirations in my recipe and came up with the following

Ingredients

250g natural yoghurt

1/2 teaspoon saffron

1/2 teaspoon sugar

500g chicken

1 sheet of Jus a Rol short crust pastry

Selection of green beans and vegetables : I used trimmed beans, magnetout, sugar snap and baby corn

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 180c

2. Grind the sugar and saffron together to make a powder and stir into the natural yoghurt. Put mixture to one side

3. Brown the chicken in a frying pan, once cooked add the vegetables to the pan for 2-3 minutes.

4. Place a sheet of banking paper onto a baking sheet and roll out the shortcrust Jus rol pastry on top.

5 spoon the chicken and veg mixture onto the top of the pastry leaving around 2cm at the edges.

6. Using your fingers turn up the edges of the pastry and pinch to form an edge.

7. Bake in the oven for 25minutes, or until edges of pastry are turning golden brown.

8. Remove from the oven and pour over the saffron yoghurt mixutre.

9. Place back into the oven for a further 5 minutes

10. Serve and enjoy.

I used chicken as my meat as from my original thought process on spring. The green beans and veg are from the initial thought of green. I thought the dish would be a little dry without a sauce or topping so created the yoghurt and saffron topping to add some flavour. The smell of saffron reminds me of the blossom which I also associated with spring. The whole dish has a wonderful yellow glow and warmth which is similar to the spring sun.

The whole dish is simple to create and thanks to jus rol ready to roll pastry everything was quick and simple. The saffron adds s beautiful delicate flavour to the dish and for me is light enough to remind me of spring.

I was sent vouchers from Jus Rol to purchase the pastry used in this post.

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I love cricket. It is one of my favourite sports to watch and to play. I love the logic and the tactics behind it, as well as the skill involved. The cricket world cup is on at the moment, 14 of the worlds best cricket teams are competing in Australia and New Zealand. Of course I am wanting England to win but feel it highly unlikely at the moment, my money is on either Australia or India.

With the challenge of the World cup well under way, I was set my own challenge by Betfair. I was challenged to create a recipe inspired by one of the teams taking part in the world cup. I have to admit this challenge had me a little stumped. First I had to pick a team, do I go with England who I would love to win, Australia or India who I think will win or someone else.

I had a couple of ideas but I knew I had to include a few things. First I wanted a food item to represent stumps, a second to represent a bat and third I wanted to include pomegranates. Now the pomegranate thing might seem strange, and I shall apologies in advance if this should offend anyone, but I could not not include the reference. A term occasionally used by some Australia and New Zealand for a British person is Pommy. I have heard its use in cricket matches as affectionate abuse, a way if you like to wind up the England team before a match. More often than not it is light hearted banter but the fact the world cup is taking place in Australia and New Zealand and my will for the England team to win meant I had to include it.

I began therefore by looking at where the pomegranate originates, Iran. Doesn't help me as they are not in the world cup. I then started thinking of ideas of things to do with the pomegranate, food wise. I decided to make a marinade and perhaps cook some chicken in it.

I made a marinade using 1/2 pint pomegranate juice to 1/2 cup sugar. I poured the mixture over the chicken and it smelled amazing. The sauce was a sweet shiny red colour, and it reminded me of the shiny red of the new cricket ball. The marinade reminded me of Caribbean chicken, and that is when I picked my team West Indies.

I checked to see if pomegranate had a connection to Caribbean and was pleased it did. I then set about choosing my ingredients to represent a bat and stumps. I decided that corn and sweet potato would work well and they both have a Caribbean inspired flavour to them, I had a Howzat moment.

Here is my 'Sweet six' West Indies inspired cricket recipe

Ingredients

Pomegranate juice 1/2 Pint

Sugar 1/2 cup

6 pieces of chicken

4 corn on the cobs

6 sweet potatoes

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 200c

2. Peel sweet potatoes, and cut into stumps.

3. Mix Pomegranate juice and sugar together to make a marinade.

4. Place chicken in a roasting tin and pour over marinade.

5. Par boil the sweet potato stumps and then place in a separate roasting tin, drizzle with oil.

6. Put the chicken into the oven for 10 minutes, then place the sweet potato into the oven. Cook both for 25 minutes or until juices run clear on chicken and sweet potatoes are cooked through.

7. Bring a pan of water to boil and place in sweetcorn, cook until desired texture. approx 10 minutes