Mediterranean Soup

Roasted Med-Veg Soup

I always try to have the very best intentions and cut down (I wish I could cut out!) on bread. So I often try to make soup for my lunch at work. It’s more filling, and it’s so much healthier to have a bowl of blended veg than bread and pork (also trying to cut down on meat)!

Vegetables about to be roasted. 

 Ingredients:

1 X Onion                                        600 ml vegetable stock

1 X Red Pepper                                400g tinned tomatoes

1 X Yellow Pepper                          2 tsp Balsamic Vinegar

1 X Courgette                                    Pinch of Rock Salt

½ Aubergine                                 Cracked Black Pepper

3 Clove of Garlic                          1 tsp. Smoked Paprika

1 tsp. Basil                                          Tomato Puree

Start by pre-heating the oven to 180 degrees.

Chop all of the vegetables.

Place in the baking tray with your seasoning, balsamic vinegar and a good glug of olive oil. Leave to cook for about half an hour.

Once out of the oven, place on the hob in a saucepan. Add the tomatoes and the vegetable stock. Bring to the boil, and then allow to simmer whilst covered.

It should be ready in about 20 mins.

What I think:

A lovely rich red, full flavoured soup. I normally end up getting out my blender to thicken soups up, but for this one I decided to allow the vegetables to stay nice and chunky. It looks wonderful, and it’s really nice to feel the textures of the veg.

Will be making again as it is very filling and tasty

Oh Calzone, you delicious pizza pie.

Calzone for dinner!

Is there much better than a calzone? It’s like a pizza, and a pie- a pizza pie! Yummy! With this in mind, the Boyfriend and I set out to make some.

Ingredients

Half a Chorizo                      Half a large onion/ 1 small onion

1 X Red Pepper                    1 X Green Pepper

60g Mushrooms                    Garlic cloves X 2

1 X 400g tin of tomatoes       Tomato puree

Handful of spinach                Grated Mozzarella

Rosemary                              Basil

Pesto                                     Salt and Pepper

Pizza base mix (it’s not considered cheating when you need to knead anything for a good 10-15 mins!)

Above Image: Calzone mix cooking
Bottom Image: Calzone waiting to go in the oven.

How To:

Start by pre-heating the oven to 180 degrees.

Make the pizza base dough (all the instructions are on the side of the box. If not, mix flour with yeast until you get a dough like consistency. Roll out on a floured surface, and knead for 10 mins). I added in some rosemary and basil to add flavour to my base, and make it a wee bit prettier! Roll it out, and leave to rest on a pizza base tray for about 10 mins.

To make your sauce use your tin of tomatoes, and handful of herbs and tomato puree and crushed garlic cloves. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer away whilst everything else is cooking.

In a pan heat Onions in olive oil. After they brown add in peppers & chorizo (these both need time to soften).  Give to just under 5 mins and add in your mushrooms. Allow this all to stay cooking for another 10 mins.

In the last minute, add in your spinach. Then get 1/3 of your tomato sauce mixture and stir in to your calzone filling. Do this whilst on a low heat.

(You are holding the other 2/3 of the tomato mix to use as a tasty dip later! Mmmm)

Get your base and spread a good slather of pesto on half of the base.  Then carefully place your filling in the middle (The tip here is to not go too mental, if it is overfilled, it will leak out whilst cooking. You don’t want that!). Sprinkle a generous portion of mozzarella cheese over the mix, and then fold over the pizza base. Get a fork and press down along the edges to keep everything inside (just like a pasty!), and then brush over with a little milk. Sprinkle some more herbs over the calzone, place in the oven for 15-20 mins until base is hard and golden!

The finished piece! So delicious. 

Summer salad

Avocado, Melon, Lime & Chicken Salad.

There has been a little bit of sunshine recently, which has called for some lighter meals. Being such a big fan of avocado, I try to include it wherever I can, and thought that it would work well as a chicken salad, and what do you know? It did!

Ingredients:

4 X Boneless Chicken Things, chopped

1 x Lime

2 X Avocado, chopped

A pinch of Paprika, chilli, cumin

10 X Cherry Tomatoes, halved

¼ cantaloupe Melon, sliced

Spinach leaves (2 handfuls per dish)

This is so easy to make. Start my cooking your chicken things in a little bit of olive oil. Season with all three spices, and then squeeze the lime juice all over the chicken.

Prepare the salad of spinach, avocado, melon and tomatoes. Then add chicken.

That’s all there is to it! Super easy, Super colourful, Supper yummy!

Eating out in Edinburgh

Eating out in Edinburgh

A sea foodie dream.

LA FAVORITA

The best thing about Edinburgh has to be the big collection of amazing restaurant’s dotted across the city. On Saturday night The Boyfriend and I jumped into the car and set off to Leith Walk- an affordable part of town with restaurants, take-outs and worldwide food stores to suit all the corners of the Earth.

La Favorita is an Italian restaurant, with incredible food and very attentive, friendly staff.  They make homemade desserts, handmade pizzas, and have an impressive array of pastas, meat & fish dishes, and risottos.

The menu is rather large, with an assortment of mouth-watering dishes throughout. The portions themselves are rather large; lucky for us we had a table where we could see a lot of dishes going out and realized that bruschetta, as a starter would work best between the two of us. So glad we did that as there is no way I could have managed a whole dish for just a starter! But oh my! It was wonderful. A beautiful selection of seafood on white bread accompanied with a little salad and some olives.

Gluten Free King Prawn & Scallop Pizza.

 Due to the huge menu the boyfriend and I spent ages to make a decision on our main meal, and still hadn’t decided what to have until we had finished the starter, ooops! After a lot of dithering between pizza- pasta, pizza- pasta we decided to treat ourselves to huge pizzas.  Again, there was a huge selection that all sounded delicious! Boyfriend chose a pizza with slices of steak on it (I kid you not!). It looked sensational! He was even asked how he would like the steak cooked, very impressed!  I went for a ‘blue mare’ (I think that was it’s name!) gluten free pizza, which was covered in mozzarella, king prawns and scallops. It was wonderful! There was a lemony zest to the pizza that gave it a lovely fresh feeling. The gluten free base was not anything I had tried before, but something that did really interest me. It didn’t have as much crunch as a regular pizza base, but I think overall the taste from it was better. The pizzas were huge too, I was shocked at how much pizza I could get for £11-£12! 

Close up of Boyfriends steaky pizza!

Overall this has to be one of my favorite restaurants in Edinburgh, and one of the most affordable! The meal that left us absolutely stuffed came in at under £30. Pretty good value when you also factor in the fact that we got out left over pizza (in my case half of it!) put into a pizza box for the next days lunch! I can’t wait to return and try their pasta dishes, I had a look at some other people were eating and they looked so good! Another thing I am desperate to try are there desserts! They all looked so authentic and delicious! But If I could only manage half of my main I don’t think there was any real chance of a dessert! I was very impressed by everything here, the restaurant was clean, had a vibrant buzz about the place and the staff were so nice, Super friendly, and smiley and not in a way that seemed false at all. The service was fast, polite and it felt like a treat to be there! All over 10/10!