Smoked Salmon Filo Tart

Going through a 'fat' spell and having remains of a pack of Filo in my fridge I found this  recipe  on london-unattached.com. just what I was looking for

Low Calorie 5-2 Diet Fast Day Smoked Salmon Filo Flan

 

Serves	1-2
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	20 minutes
Total time	30 minutes
Allergy	Egg, Wheat
Meal type	Main Dish
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold, Serve Hot

Ingredients

• 30g Smoked Salmon
• 1 Small Egg
• 20ml Low Fat Creme Fraiche
• 1 Small Tomato
• 4 thin slices Courgette
• 1 sheet Filo Pastry

Directions

Step 1	Pre-heat the oven to 180c. Take the Sheet of Filo Pastry and cut it into rectangles that are roughly the width of your pie or flan dish and about a third longer. Ideally you want three rectangles.
Step 2	Spray your pie dish with quick release or 1 cal. Brush the first strip of pastry with a little creme fraiche thinned with water
Step 3	Place the first strip of pastry across the dish
Step 4	Brush the second strip with thinned creme fraiche and place diagonally across the first strip. Repeat with the third strip and press down very gently
Step 5	Pull up any edges of pastry and crimp to make a rough 'shell
Step 6	Place in the oven for 5 minutes
Step 7	While the pastry is starting to crisp, make the filling by beating together the egg and remaining creme fraiche and stirring through the smoked salmon.
Step 8	Remove the pastry shell from the oven and put a mixed layer of tomato and courgette/zucchini slices in the bottom of the pan (mine took 2 tomato and 2 courgette slices. Then season with a little salt and pepper and repeat.
Step 9	Pour the filling over the vegetable mixture
Step 10	Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes till the pastry is crisp and golden and the filling is risen and set
Step 11	Can be eaten warm or cold.

Salt and Pepper Squid taste explosion

Squid reminds me of delicious meals on balmy evenings sailing in Croatia.  This is nothing like those Fritty Squitty as we used to call them, more like a tasty dish from our local Chinese.
vary the Explosive element by the amount of pepper and chilli (I like mine HOT)

For 2

Two medium sized squid, cleaned. (Or 250g baby squid cleaned, save tentacles but remove beak)
1 tblsp sea salt
1 tblsp black peppercorns (Szechuan if you have them - I use normal)
2 tblsp corn flour
Corn/sunflower/rapeseed oil enough to make 1cm deep in wok or deep frying pan
1 small fresh red chilli (if I haven't got one I sometimes use a dried one - see directions)
2 spring onions
Salad leaves to serve
1 lemon

Wash squid and cut into 1cm wide strips. If using baby squid I cut them in half depending on size, leave tentacles whole.
Cut spring onion into thin slices, and fresh chilli (if using) into very fine slivers and set aside.
Put sea salt and peppercorns into mortar and pestle and bash up until fine
NB if you are using a dried chilli crumble it into the mix now -removing seeds first if you want to reduce the heat)
Add corn flour and stir to mix well.
Tip the whole lot into a poly bag, add squid strips and shake to coat thoroughly.
Heat oil in wok or frypan until hot and nearly smoking (but not quite)
Drop coated squid into hot oil in small batches, cook for 1-2 minutes until crisp and golden (over cooking makes them tougher) drain and keep warm while you cook the remainder

Put salad leaves on plate, with hot squid on top, sprinkle with spring onion and chilli slices.  Serve with lemon to queeze over.

I prefer to fry these in oil that I will throw away afterwards rather than in a deep fryer as the salt and paper mix is quite strong and is hard to get out of the oil.

Baked Pears with Blue Cheese

Link to a nice recipe for baked pears with Stilton.  Lovely photos too.
http://arbuz.com/recipes/baked-pears-with-blue-cheese

Barbara's Rice Cake

This reminded me (I don't know why) of a wartime recipe, maybe because of its old fashioned simplicity, but it was delicious nonetheless.

1/2 lb butter
3oz ground rice
5 oz self raising flour
8oz caster sugar
3 large eggs

Cream butter and sugar together, beat in eggs one at a time.  Fold in flour and rice.
Put in 2lb loaf tin.
Bake at 175* about 1 hour.

Eat.

Panna cotta a wobble to please.

Having just eaten a tasty, but somewhat firm panna cotta from a Mary Berry recipe I fell upon an article from The Guardian's series 'how to make the perfect....'
This is definitely on my to try list.
I might even try MB again but with 50% less gelatine although I had better test it out without visitors!

"My biggest challenge, once I've decided to use a 2:1 ratio of double cream to milk and buttermilk in order to give a rich, but not sickly flavour, is judging the set. It's a delicate balance: too much gelatine and the panna cotta will be unpleasantly chewy, too little, and you've got yourself a sauce. Eventually, after a fair few failures, I achieve that perfect wobble.

Flavourings

The Oxford Companion to Food's entry on panna cotta stresses that, "if a flavouring is used, it should be delicate." Nigel Slater, Denis Cotter and Giorgio Locatelli all choose rose water and vanilla seeds – I like the subtle summery hint of flowers, but, in defiance of modern mores, I'm not so keen on the vanilla, which makes it taste, to my mind, like custard.

Each to their own though – panna cotta is an amenable dessert which will work with anything from caramel to saffron, although a good tip from Locatelli is not to add alcohol-based flavourings, such as rosewater, until the mixture has cooled slightly, or the flavour will evaporate. I prefer to leave my panna cotta plain, and serve it with fresh fruit (late summer berries are a brilliant choice) as a sharp contrast.

Perfect panna cotta


Felicity's perfect panna cotta. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian
Panna cotta is such a simple dish that both the flavour and the texture have to be spot on – there really is nowhere for the cook to hide with this one. Once you've cracked it, though, it's the perfect make-ahead stuff for those (few) occasions when Angel Delight just won't cut the mustard.

Serves 4

2 x 2g leaves gelatine
300ml double cream
115g caster sugar
100ml full-fat milk
50ml buttermilk
Vegetable oil, to grease

1. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water. Pour the cream into a pan, add the sugar and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Bring just to a simmer, and then take off the heat.

2. Squeeze out the gelatine and then stir it into the warm cream mixture to dissolve. Pour through a sieve into a clean bowl and stir in the milk and buttermilk. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if necessary.

3. Grease the inside of 4 espresso cups or small ramekins and divide the mixture between them. Cool and then refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

4. To turn out, put the dishes briefly in boiling water and then invert on to plates. Serve with berries or fruit compote.

Panna cotta – one of the few truly great Italian desserts. What flavourings do you add to yours (any top tips for savoury versions?) and what do you like to eat them with? And will anyone come out in support of the great British blancmange?"

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Lemon Drizzle v.3

Delia Smith's cakes this time.

Ingredients

175g self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

175g spreadable butter

175g golden caster sugar

3 large eggs

grated zest of 3 large lemons

juice of large lemon

40g poppy seeds

For the syrup

juice of 3 large lemons

grated zest of 1 large lemon

50g golden icing sugar, sifted

100g golden granulated sugar

To finish:

1 rounded teaspoon golden granulated sugar mixed with 1 rounded teaspoon poppy seeds

1 rounded teaspoon poppy seeds

Pre-heat the oven to 170°C, gas mark 3

A 20cm loose-based round cake tin, greased and base lined

All in one method:

Start off by sifting the flour and baking powder into a roomy mixing bowl, holding
the sieve quite high to give the flour a good airing as it goes down. Then add the butter, sugar, eggs, lemon zest and juice and finally the poppy seeds.

Now, using an electric hand whisk, mix to a smooth creamy consistency for about one minute.

Spoon the mixture into the tin, levelling it with the back of the spoon, and bake near the centre of the oven for 40 minutes or until the centre feels springy.

When the cake is ready, remove the tin from the oven to a board, then straight away
mix together the syrup ingredients. 

Next stab the cake all over with a skewer and spoon the syrup evenly over the hot cake, then finally sprinkle with the sugar and poppy seed mixture.

After that the cake needs to cool in its tin before it can be removed and stored in an airtight container.

Note: this is equally good made without the poppy seeds if you prefer.

Low Fat Banana Muffins

Haven't tried these yet, so recipe just for reference. Will update or remove depending on results.

I make these banana muffins all the time and the kids love them. I had no idea they were only around 80 calories per muffin.

I fill 24 muffin compartments 2/3rds of the way with the mix. You don't have to use the spices I've added to this recipe. The original recipe doesn't have any spices in it but I love it with cinnamon and nutmeg and sometimes I add pumpkin spice. You can also substitute the eggs with egg beaters if thats your thing and the sugar you can substitute with splenda. My MIL is diabetic and would substitute 1/2 a cup of splenda for 1 cup of sugar since splenda is twice as sweet as sugar. That would also bring your calorie count down. But at only 80 calories per muffin who cares about a couple more calories. You can add a cup of raw oats and a cup of raisins as well. I usually double the recipe and make half without and the other half with the raisins and oats. Kids don't care for the oats or raisins but hubby and I do. But that does increase your calorie count. So run it through the recipe builder to get an accurate count if you add the raisins and oats.

Number of servings 24

Ingredients Calories Carbs Fat Protein
Egg - Large, Grade A, Raw, 2 egg 140 0 8 12
Sugars - Granulated (sucrose), 1 cup 774 200 0 0
Water - Bottled or Tap, 2.6 fl. oz. 0 0 0 0
Bananas - Raw, 3 medium (7" to 7-7/8" long) 315 81 1 4
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter - Light, 2 Tbsp (14g) 90 0 10 0
All-Purpose Flour (32 oz), 1 1/3 cup (30g) 572 114 0 16
Baking Powder, 0.25 tsp 2 1 0 0
Baking soda, 0.5 tsp 0 0 0 0
Spices - Cinnamon, ground, 1 tsp 6 2 0 0
Spices - Nutmeg, ground, 1 tsp 12 1 1 0
Salt - Table , 0.5 teaspoon 0 0 0 0

Total calories: 1911
Calories Per Serving: 80
Edited by fit4lifeUcan2 On October 12, 2012 2:13 PM


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:From myfitness pal.com