IT'S HOMEMADE BURGER TIME // Beef, Chilli & Sun Dried Tomato Burgers

Last night I decided to make some burgers from a Nigel Slater recipe I discovered in the Observer a few weeks back. They were slightly different to your usual plain beef burger as they were made up of beef, chilli and sun dried tomatoes. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of sun-dried tomatoes, to be honest that actually make me feel a bit queasy when eaten on their own but thankfully they were delicious when combined with the beef. I made about 14 burgers and I think the whole family liked them because by the end of the night there was only one burger left on the plate. If you'd like to try making these burgers for yourself then just click here for the recipe. I have also included some photos of me making this delicious meal if you would rather see the end product without actually having to make them yourself. I have to say that these burgers were super easy to make and only took a maximum of 30 minutes to complete - bonus! :)

*Makes 4* - I doubled the recipe but managed to make 14 burgers out of it. I'm not good at maths but even I know that that doesn't make much sense but it happened . . . somehow! 

1 medium red chilli 

6 tbsp of sun dried tomatoes in oil

Add everything together, mix and add some salt to season - (400g of minced beef)

Roll together and grill or fry, whichever you prefer. We did both to make the process a bit faster as the family were hungry!

Nigel Slater also gives us a recipe for a suitable salad to accompany our tasty burgers. Once you've done all of the above steps (about 7 basil leaves, 1 lime, two avocados) mix them all together to make some deliciously zesty side dish. 

We served our burgers with an array of cheeses - Mozzarella, Mature and Edamer. Instead of buns we opted for some rye bread on the side (that's because we didn't have any bread buns in the house!). Absolutely yummmmmie :) 

Give it a go yourself and tell me how you got on! 

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SALADS CAN BE A REAL PARTY . . .

Recently I have been loving a good salad. Not those kind of salads you see with a few lettuce laves a sliver of tomato and, if you're lucky, a chunk of cucumber on the side. No, I'm talking about salads which include bacon and pears, halloumi and chorizo - you know the fun kind. It might have something to do with the sun we've been having but recently we've been eating salads all day every day. When people hear talk of salads they think it's either because their friends are trying to lose wait or they don't think at all as the monotonous green colour that they imagine is enough to send them in to a sleep or at least in to a day dream about that juicy steak they saw on TV the night before. But guys, salads can be quite the party, if you allow them to be that is.

One of my recent favourites has been a recipe I discovered whilst roaming the Internet for Glastonbury inspired food to celebrate the awesome weekend of music we were treated to and it is the halloumi, chorizo, asparagus and spinach salad. The recipe I used was one from Red Magazine (here). It sounds a bit weird but man it's incredible. The cheese is so unique and I think we as a family have come to an agreement that it actually tastes and feels more like chicken than any sort of cheese. The best thing about this dish is that is basically takes 20mins max to complete from start to finish. (Yet another plus to the good old salad.) Add a little balsamic syrup or vinegar on top (what ever you have in your cupboard) and, bish bash bosh, your finished!

Another one that I kind of made up the other day while trying to think of what we could have for dinner after a day where temperatures soared up to 32 degrees, was a bacon and pear salad. The combination of bacon and pear is something that I only discovered a few years back and even though it might sound a bit strange to eat bacon with a sweet fruit it so totally works. I threw in loads of spinach (I am now addicted to spinach) quite a few pears chopped up in to squares, lots of bacon (just add as much as you wish), tomatoes, cucumber, asparagus, peppers - you can basically throw in whatever veg you have in your fridge. To top it off I made a dressing which consisted of 4tbs of olive oil, 1tsp of Dijon mustard and some salt to season - easy pips - put it in the fridge to cool and then you're ready to go! Another healthy meal you can prepare in less than 15mins! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it, (well, both actually) it was so damn delicious(!) so I have found an example picture of a pear and bacon salad online.

Do you have any favourite salad recipes? Please share them with me, thank you :)

MILKSHAKE MADNESS

I woke up super early Monday again as I needed to watch a rugby match & write an article about it(check it out here). Once that was finished I went to my 12pm lecture on Russian propaganda (or at least I think that's what it was about - wasn't quite sure!) To cheer us up after an hour of discussing massacres, revolutions and violence I went over to a friends flat as she was making us some homemade delicious milkshakes. Back home she works in a sweet shop so she had sooooo much sweets and chocolate! She uses this enormous collection of chocolate to make awesome milkshakes. We had the privilege of tasting a new original recipe - chocolate stars, toffee crisp and Ben & Jerry's milkshake. Oh my word it was delish! There was also a maaaasive tub of sweets on the table - we had one or two of these as well! Yuuuuuuumie!

DRIVING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS :)

Well, it's been a busy week trying to get everything organised before we go home for a 3 week break for Christmas! 3 essays were turned in this week along with numerous quizzes and diaries. Finally they are done so I can now relax for a bit! Although we do have an essay to do over the holidays (bleeeeeeugh!) although it's still CHRISTMAS so that's fine! I can't wait just to be home for a bit, as much as I like it here and the friends that I've made, I think after being home only once in nearly 3 months one needs to just relax on a sofa and be able to go to the kitchen and get food whenever you want without having to worry about not eating too much as you have to survive off if for the next 3 days!

To get us all in the Christmas mood we did our secret Santa last week. This is where you put all the names of the people in your flat in to a hat and then the name you pick out is the person that you're buying your present for. It makes it much easier and it's much cheaper! It was nice to see everyone getting excited about opening their presents (the first present of Christmas!) I received a lush sign from my Santa which said "Live well, Love Much, Laugh Often" which I loved. It was cool to see what people bought for each other!

A couple of days after Secret Santa we went out for the Block J Christmas meal in Prezzo which is an Italian restaurant down the road. Everyone dressed up - the men in suits and the girls in nice dresses and heels etc (like a little black tie event!). I had risotto for main which was soooo flavoursome and tasty. For desert I had honeycomb cheesecake - yuuuum! To finish the evening I watched a film (and fell asleep) in my friend's room!

Wwwww... I've spent the last week listening to the Christmas playlist I created on spotify! It is awesome if I do say so myself! A bit of Buble, Elvis and the classic Shakin' Stevens!

I'm going home tomorrow! I can not wait!

. . . "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . . !"

Here are some pictures of campus that I took because recently it's been looking all christmasy because of all the frost that's been everywhere making everything white (:

AWESOME APPLE AND CINNAMON CAKE

After my routine cycle ride yesterday morning, I decided to bake a cake from Mary Berry's '100 Cakes and Bakes'. I went for the apple and cinnamon cake and wow, it turned out soooo tasty!

Firstly you need to preheat the over to 180c/Fan 160c/gas 4. You need a deep, round 9in cake tin that has been greased with grease proof paper. Then you should measure 225g of butter, 225g of light muscavado sugar, 3 large eggs, 100g of sultanas, 225g of self raising flour and 2 tsp of baking powder and mix them all together in a bowl until thoroughly blended. (The recipe also tells you to add 100g of chopped walnuts in to the mixture but I'm not a big fan of walnuts so I opted not to put them in my cake.)

Once you've finished mixing the ingredients, spoon half of the mixture into the cake tin and spread evenly, covering the bottom of the tin. Grate 400g of cooking apples, then spread in an even layer on top of the cake mixture. Also spread 1 tsp of cinnamon over the grated apples. Once you've done this, spoon the remaining cake mixture on top, level the surface. Before placing in the oven for 1hour 15mins, sprinkle a generous amount of light muscavado sugar across the top of the cake.

The cake is ready when it has turned a golden brown. Leave to cool for a few minutes before removing from tin. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

(Serving suggestion)
I ate mine after heating for a few seconds, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yuuummm!

CARFEST 2012

For my dad's birthday my mum bought tickets for Chris Evans' Car-Fest and this weekend we travelled the 4 and a half hour drive to Jody Sheckter's farm near Overtone in Hampshire to enjoy the festivities. When we booked the tickets we didn't manage to get camping tickets so we ended up staying in a little B&B type place around 10mins from the festival. This might have been a blessing in disguise because I don't think we would have managed to survive the whole weekend without one of us having a mental breakdown cramped in a little 4 man tent! After staying in a tent for 3 nights last week at V festival, it was nice to come home and being able to have a nice shower in the evening!

We arrived at the festival quite early Saturday morning and I immediately took the camera out as we walked passed the TrialStar Motorbikes in the Show Arena.

We stayed to watch those guys for a while, then we ventured further down towards the Hill Climb.

We brought some camping chairs with us - what a god send! After a couple of hours walking around the festival looking at the cars and different stalls we unfolded the chairs and perched ourselves down to watch the awesome hill climb! We did this with a nice bottle of Cider and flapjacks that was bought in the Best of British tent!

Those cars were spectacular! (More pics from the hill climb to come (sunday) ) I definitely saw some cars that I'd like to see in my garage! Especially the old Fiat Abarth 500, a 1963 ferrari 250 GT SWB (one of Chris's magnificent 7), MG Metro 6R4, aston martin v12 zagato etc. . . As you can see I want 90% of the cars I saw!

As well as admiring the cars in the hill climb we also went to see the other array of cars that were on show around the field. We saw some classic VW's - the Beetle and the campervan! Yeeeees, I love these cars! On our walk we also saw some classic Aston Martins and a  red Ford Escort Mark 2 that my dad use to own. We also saw a Cortina that my grandmother learnt to drive in!

 The rally cars were also so cool!

I liked this one as it had welsh writen on it's side!

At 5 o'clock and after a nice paella for lunch, we took our chairs close to the front of the main stage ready for the Rockaoke. We didn't use these chairs much for the rest of the night as the music was so good that you just wanted to dance! As well as the bands being awesome, Chris Evans doing his DJ set during the breaks between bands was equally as awesome! The Rockaoke was such a good idea, it got everyone singing dancing and laughing as we saw middle age men (women and children) living out an unrealised dream of being a rock star for 3 minutes!


CHRIS EVANS CARFEST from lisagwawr on Vimeo.

The Counterfeit stones were on later that night and they were superb! The whole act was just awesome and everyone was up singing and dancing to the rock and roll classics! The feeling were on before the headline acts - Texas! Both were very good although Texas were fantastic. Sharleen really got the crowd rocking and little children were on their parents' shoulders dancing away at close to 11pm!

Sunday we watched most of the hill climb throughout the morning and early afternoon but not before having a go on the Top Gear track simulator and grabbing a delicious Laverstoke Park Farm burger with mozzarella, fried beans and lettuce! YUUUUUMMMM!!!

 

CARFEST HILL CLIMB from lisagwawr on Vimeo.


We were just about to head over to the auction when we heard over the tanoy that Chris Evans was coming down the hill climb with MARK WEBBER!!, Jody Sheckter and Nick Mason. Obviously I raced over to the hay bales to take pictures!

 After they passed, who was leaning against the barrier opposite me, but Paul Hollywood from the awesome Great British Bake Off and soon after he was joined by his colleague Mary Berry! Yeeees!

We couldn't come to Carfest without going to watch the dancing diggers! They were so strange yet so good! Who even thought about the whole thing? Who woke up one day and thought I'm going to choreograph a show for diggers?!

While we were walking over to the main stage ready for the afternoon music we passed the Daily Mail Live Magazine tent and who was there but TV Chef and petrol head, James Martin! His cars filled the tent and he even brought his Ferrari 275 GTB (What a brave man!) That was estimated at anything from £700,000 to a cool £3 million!!!! There was also a lush 1963 Works Mini Cooper and a 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO!

We also passed some new cars from the likes of Bentley, ferrari, Jaguar and Aston Martin.

We eventually made it over to the stage with some stiff necks after spending much of the afternoon looking up to the sky as so many  spectacular air shows were going on!

We watched the final of Cakes V's Pies and then the music started with the Bootleg Beatles and finished with a very good show from Razorlight!

People were getting married in this hot air balloon at the end of the festival! 

What an awesome weekend filled with awesome cars, awesome food and awesome music. I guess you can say it was quite an awesome affair! One of the best things about the weekend however, was how safe you felt in the middle of 20,000 people! We could leave our bags on the floor behind us as we danced throughout the night without having to worry about anyone stealing anything! Children were running around the fields with other little children as relaxed parents chatted to one another. We're already looking forward to next years Carfest! - needles to say we thoroughly enjoyed!

Thanks Chris!