Sunday bakes - 'Stop eating cake' salad

Wow, so I've missed a couple of weeks, where did the time go!

Good news is that after putting on a bake sale at work we raised £233 for my friend's earthquake efforts. She and her team are making santitation packs for the people who have been displaced by the earthquake. If you're interested in seeing their efforts or donating to the cause you can do that here:http://www.kgnepal.com.np/health-relief

In the meantime, here in the UK, after baking (and eating) an epic amount of cake it's time for salad.

So today we have fennel and radish salad with spiced lentil, which I ate with chicken baked with crushed pineapple.

Ingredients
1 Fennel bulb
7 radishes
handful of dried lentils
cajun spice
Lime juice

Method
Thinly slice the fennel and radishes, save the fennal leaves from the top to garnish the salad. Cover the chopped vegetables in lime juice and set aside to marinade together while you cook the lentils and chicken.
Boil the lentils in salted water, drain and pour onto a baking tray. Cover the lentils in cajun spice and a bit of salt and bake in the oven until they are crispy.
Put the chicken breast onto a piece of foil and cover with crushed pineapple pieces from a can, bring the edges of the foil together but don't totally seal it and put it in the oven for 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Open this up for the last 5 minutes to give the top a chance to brown.
sprinkle the lentils over the salad with the fennel leaves and serve with the chicken.

The best antidote to cake.

Remembering Patan

So a few weeks ago I mentioned a print by an artist, Chitra Merchant, that I have bought it for my living room. 

One of the reasons I loved the print so much was that it reminded me of my last night in Nepal, in Bhaktapur, Patan square, Kathmandu. Today I woke up to the awful news that Kathmandu had been hit by a huge earthquake and one of my favourite places, Patan/Durbar square was effectively gone. The friend we had gone out to visit is still out there and was actually living in Patan at the time the earthquake hit so the pictures of the flattened square really scared me. She was ok, she’s with her family. I know that many many people are have been hurt and killed and still more are missing so all my thoughts are there with them. 

 

Patan was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and now, with who knows what damage done and some heritage lost forever, my photos and memories are all the more important to me. Here are just a few of my favourites, I’m going to keep hoping that we’ve seen the worst of the damage and the death toll doesn’t get any higher.

Sunday bakes - 'Take me back there' tibetan bread

A little while ago a few friends and I went to Nepal to visit someone we used to work with. She moved back to Kathmandu a couple of years ago and about a year after she left we went out there. Nepal is an amazing country and we did some wonderful things, among them was a trek around the Annapurna region up to a mountain town called Ghandruk. On our trek we became accustomed quickly to standard trekking fare, dhal Bhat in the evenings and Tibetan bread with honey in the mornings. It was amazing food, made even better by the lovely people we met and the incredible surroundings.

It took a little while to find a recipe for Tibetan bread, but I adapted one that I found and consulted a dough expert until I found one that works and turns out just as I remember it. 

Ingredients

1.5 cups of self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

½ cup whole milk

2 tsp sugar

Pinch of salt

Methods

Add the milk bit by bit to the flour and mix before adding more. Once all the ingredients have been added, knead the dough in the bowl for ten minutes, cover with cling-film and leave in a warm place for at least 2 hours. The longer you leave this, the better it will fluff up, as long as you keep it covered so it doesn’t dry out.

Pour some un-flavoured oil into a frying pan, so it is at least a cm deep, but more would be better, and heat. Be very careful when using the hot oil, it can spatter and burn you or could cause fires. The oil needs to be hot but not bubbling.

Take a section of dough and pull it out in a circular motion until it is about half a cm thick. Cut 3 lines in the centre of the dough. Place gently into the oil and fry until it is golden brown, then turn onto the other side. The dough should puff up and float on the surface.

Take it carefully out of the oil and serve with honey drizzled over the top, the same way they serve it in the mountains. 

Fancy a drink? Oh sorry, I meant fight

Firstly I would like to start off with a Happy Birthday to my little brother Andrew. Congratulations on living longer than Ian Curtis and River Phoenix.

In other news, I received a present from my friend and ex-team mate, Riz. She returned from Nepal for a brief stint in June and left a gift for me with a mutual friend. The mutual friend promptly forgot about it, only to remember periodically, mention it to me, and then forget again. Just as it was getting to the point where it was starting to look like he was doing it deliberately because he was amused by my curiosity he actually remembered to give it to me this time and left it in my desk drawer at work. So here it is:

So, thank you Riz for the gift and thank you un-named, slightly forgetful friend for delivering it. 

For those of you who haven’t guessed, it’s a bottle-opener. Riz explained this when I emailed to thank her. However, she did also mention that if I choose not to use it as such, alternative uses are:

   A weapon

   An ice-breaker (not a conversational ice-breaker, I checked)

I am a little concerned about her opinion of my new team that she thinks I will need either of these.

But, luckily, I do like it as a bottle opener and plan on putting it to good use this weekend. Thank you again Riz!

If you would like one of your own you can buy one at Yala. I can only recommend it as a bottle-opener, please don’t use it as anything else, including a key.

http://www.yalamandala.com/

It is a lovely shop selling handcrafted Nepalese items, not weapons, and is where my friend Riz now works.