Blazing Salads Buckwheat burgers/salsa

So as I mentioned in my previous post, that I got the Blazing Salads cookbook. I decided to make the Buckwheat and vegetable burgers.

So I headed down to Dalkey to Select Stores to find some Buckwheat. Turns out, it is really good for you ' Like other wholefoods such as brown rice and oats, Buckwheat is high in fibre. It is also adept at taking nutrients from the soil, so you'll find an array of useful minerals. It contains high levels of calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, and iron.' -
http://www.independent.ie/health/diet-fitness/real-food-nutty-buckwheat-will-boost-your-nutrition-2115497.html

I wasn't to impressed with how they turned out. You have to boil the buckwheat with some vegetables and then mix it together with brocolli and a small bit of ground up pumkin seeds.The mixture was extremely wet so I put some breadcrumbs in to hold it together. The recipe said to fry them, so I did just that. Again, they were still horribly soggy, so I baked them. That did a better job, still soggy though. I had one left this morning and found that it had hardened up a fair bit over night. I've had these burgers before from the store and they aren't much like what I made.

After I fried them.

After baking them. A lot more crisper.

The recipe also involved some salsa. I had never made salsa before but it turned out well. I will for sure make some again. It was Tomato, onion, chilli and coriander.

And I served it all up in a pitta bread!

Resources

I go to DIT Cathal Brugha Street, which is the school of hospitality, tourism and food. So there is culinary arts students and pastry arts students in the building I also study in. You can always smell amazing things coming from the kitchens and see them in the kitchen. Makes me a little jealous. They also sell a lot of the food they bake for really low prices on a Thursday.

Anyhow, since there's food students, there's so many cookery books in the library. I always go look at them when I'm bored in the library. An easy distraction. I was looking at some of the vegetarian cookbooks yesterday. I found a Blazing salads one. I am dying to go the store on Dury Street. In select stores, Dalkey you can find the salads there along with some burgers. Any how, I took the book out on loan. There's a lot of really good recipes I will for sure be trying out when my exams finish.

The library also has a subscription to the good food magazine, which I love. They break down at the front what pages have vegetarian/vegan recipes and what pages include baking. I have so many photocopies of recipes I have yet to try.

Upside down pictures. DUNNO.

I plan on use my week and half off productively, so hopefully involving some cooking and baking. I really want to try and make a vegan cake just to do it.

College Lunch boxes

Noodles in soy sauce, Sweet chilli and stir fried vegetables.

Homemade Nutloaf and salad.

Falafel salad

Falafel from Lebanese stand in the market with salad and feta.

Homemade bean burger in a salad pitta. I had hummus with this too.

Potato salad

Another Potato salad.

Roasted vegetable bulgar wheat.

A couple cakes

A couple of cakes from the Hummingbird bakery cookbook.


Carrot cake. Great recipe. Was so tasty and moist. My mom ate the majority of it.


Brooklyn blackout cake. I didn't make the chocolate custard that came with the recipe, must chocolate butter cream frosting. I doubled the recipe and made it into a 4 layer cake. Went down very well! It's quite rich.

Breakfast bars.
I wanted to make something pretty carby in the morning but healthy enough at the same time. So, I made flapjacks. I just threw whatever in. They're mainly banana flavor.
Mashed Banana
Softened dates
raisins
orange zest
Honey
Chocolate spread
Peanut butter
.. I think that's about it. I made a big batch and portioned them up. I put a lot of them in the freezer.


I also made another big batch of Bean burgers to bring into college. Again I make loads and then freeze them.
Before I mash it all up.



Nut loaf

Pink raspberry and white chocolate cake/Chocolate cake

While looking at cookbooks in Dubray books last week, I saw a cake on the cover of one of them. It was pink and had white icing on it. I thought immediately it was a raspberry sponge of some sort with white chocolate icing on top. It turned out to just be a red velvet cake but the picture gave me the best idea to make a raspberry sponge with white chocolate icing. So I did just that.
I just added some raspberries into the mixture of a normal sponge cake. I used an electric beater so it broke them up nicely into the mixture.




Andddddd a simple chocolate cake. I always find cocao powder tends to dry cakes out so by adding milk to the mixture it moistens it up loads. Little tip..
Today like every Wednesday I have no college.This is the first Wednesday in a while that I didn't have college work to do.. So I had a lazy baking day.

Cat Cake

I made Sarah a cake for her Birthday party. I decided last minute while decorating it to turn it into a cat's face and this is how it turned out.

Suppli!

I first fell in love with Suppli when I had it in Don Giovannis, an Italian restaurant in Dalkey. It's deep fried breaded rice balls with melted mozzarella inside. They're unreal.

I've made them before a good while back but decided to make some last night. I don't have a deep fat frier so I just fry them and pop them under the grill.

To make them you have to make some rissotto rice. You take a bit of the rice and mold it into a ball, pop a bit of mozzarella in the middle, coat in egg and breadcrumbs and just fry off.

They go perfectly with salad cream or Garlic mayonnaise. Serve with salad, pasta is good too.

Rachel Allen carrot cake. YUM! I was watching her Bake! show and got inspired. I never managed to get a picture when it was whole. It was good though.I went my own way with the icing and made it extremely orangey. Will make again.

I got Fry's vegi sausages after hearing good things about them. They are my new fav thing. I always crave a roll with sausages and beans. I did this last night and today as well. This picture doesn't do it justice but it's deeeeelish.
This is a good breakfast. Peanut butter is something I love now. It goes so well with choclate spread and jam. So bit of both going on.
I've started freshly squeezing oranages a fair bit. It is the best way to have it. I scrape all the pulp left on top of the drainer and put it into the juice. Pulp hater, leave this page!

Pizza pizza pizaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I've all ready posted about pizza on this before but why not again! I don't have much to blog about recently cause I haven't been cooking or baking much recently. I'm great for cooking/baking when avoiding college work so I cooked twice in the past few days.

I made another blackberry and apple crumble pie. My weighing scales had run out of battery so I had to guess the measurements for the shortcrust. Thankfully it turned out.. ok. I never took a picture though.

So, I made homemade pizza for dinner tonight. I made the dough and sauce.

Topping wise I went with Roasted butter nut squash, peppers, mushrooms, mozzarella, feta, spinach and rocket.

I used an avoca recipe for the base. Next time I need to really roll it out thin. You think it's thin but forget it rises quite a bit.

Before rolling out the dough

Pre roasting b-nut squash and peppers.

Before it went in the oven.

Cooked with rocket and spinach on top!