Fond of mushrooms?

I've met quite a few people who absolutely love mushrooms and all that there is to do with it. And I've met a few who will resolutely pick out any suspicious mushroom-shaped bits of their food. If you're one of the latter, this post isn't for you, I'm afraid. But if you adore mushrooms like me, then this dish is pure heaven and so easy! 


I used chestnut mushrooms for this - they might be slightly more pricey but the gorgeous rich and woodland taste is definitely worth the value. You could use any cheese with this I suppose but mozzarella is ideal since its milkiness combines with the mushroom juices to create a lovely sauce at the bottom of the dish that's great dabbed up with bread. You could also sprinkle on some herbs if you like, thyme will go well with this. 


Maybe surprise your mum with this lovely recipe tomorrow? :) 

Baked mushrooms with cheese:


As many mushrooms as you like (sorry, that isn't really an accurate amount of mushrooms but it really does depend on how much you want to make. I used a 500g box of mushrooms and it served 4 as a side dish) 
A ball of mozzarella cheese
1 clove garlic (optional)
Glug of olive oil
Salt and pepper


1. Preheat the oven to 180'C. Slice the mushrooms fairly thinly and layer them round the dish, overlapping them slightly since they'll shrink as they cook. Chop the garlic (if using) finely and sprinkle evenly over the mushrooms. 
2. Tear the mozzarella into small chunks and distribute over the mushrooms.
3. Drizzle the olive oil all over the mushrooms and finally season with the salt and pepper. 
4. Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes. 
5. Fall in love with this mushroom-y delight. 

Speedy speedy supper!

Hello there - I'm sure you've all been struggling with the lack of my posts lately :P I've had some crazy number of exams which left little time for blogging (and even cooking which is unusual for me - thanks to all of Chilswell house for looking after me during my Mods! :D). 


So I'm back with one of the quickest dinners you can imagine, literally just got to wait for a pot of pasta to boil and that's it really! And how can anyone refuse comforting pasta and a classic tomato sauce dotted with yummy meatballs, a dish that looks like straight out of Lady and the Tramp? 

For the pasta:


100g (dried) spaghetti per person (add an extra 50g-100g for hungry boys!)


1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil with a pinch of salt. Break the spaghetti in half )to make it easier to cook and eat) and add it to the pot. 
2. Boil for 8-10 minutes until it's done (or follow the packet instructions!). Drain and toss with a little bit of oil to stop it clumping together.


For the sauce:


1 jar tomato sauce (Sainsbury's tomato and chili sauce is very nice)
1 packet Swedish meatballs, already cooked
Few mushrooms/other veg like peppers (optional) 


1. While the pasta is cooking, empty the jar of sauce, meatballs and any veg you're using into another pan and heat it up. 
2. Ladle on top of the spaghetti and enjoy! :)

Classic but oh-so-amazing apple crumble!

Yeah yeah I know what you're thinking - phaw apple crumble, there too many recipes for that, it's nothing new. And yes, I admit that this is classic, old fashioned apple crumble with no modern, fashionable twists to it but isn't that we want sometimes, when the wind is howling outside and work seems to stretch interminably ahead of us? Certainly what we like in our house with dollops of custard!


This crumble recipe is from my friend Ben Knell, the head pastry chef at Pearl Restaurant in London, and it's the only crumble recipe I use - it gets the right mixture of that sweet, crunchy, buttery taste. I also use his method of cooking the crumble - I spread it out on a baking tray and bake it separately from the apples and then reassemble the crumble when they're both cooked. Might seem a faff but this way you can ensure that the apple (or whatever fruit you want to use) isn't all gooey and icky with flour and the crumble is perfectly crisp. Just try it and see (and it's not that much more effort!). I just hope he doesn't mind me sharing his cheffy secrets :P

For the crumble:

125g butter, cubed

125g sugar

125g ground almonds

150g plain flour

1. Preheat the oven to 180'C. Put the flour, ground almonds and the sugar in a large bowl and mix until combined. Add the butter and then rub it in with your fingertips until you can't see any large bits of butter. 

2. Spread this mixture out evenly on a baking tray line with baking parchment and put it in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until its golden and crispy. 

3. Leave to cool and then break the crumble into bitesize chunks (I swear my friends and I eat more crumble at this stage and actually with the apples!)

For the apples:

6 Bramley/eating apples or whatever fruit you fancy (pear, rhubarb etc)

2-3 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinammon

Handful dried raisins or cranberries (optional)

1. Peel, core and chop up the apples into chunks and put in a baking dish. Sprinkle over the sugar and cinammon and toss to combine evenly. 

2. Put it in the oven for 25-30 minutes until the apples are soft and the juices are bubbling. 

3. When the apples are done, sprinkle over the cooked crumble and serve with custard! (There, told you this way was easy!)

What about a curry tonight?

I realised that all my recipes so far have required an oven and I know that not everyone has ovens at uni so here's a very simple curry recipe for which you only need a pan and the hob!


I must admit though that whichever way we cook rice, it turns out quite gloopy and too wet each time so if anyone's got a foolproof way of making fluffy rice in which you can actually see individual grains of rice, please let me know below! :D 


This is a vegetarian recipe but you can easily make this into a meat curry if you like by replacing the lentils with chicken breast or whatever takes your fancy. Just make sure to cook it until there's no pink meat showing! 

For the curry:


1 onion, chopped
500g red lentils (or meat if you prefer)
Half a jar of curry paste (I used Patak's Balti Paste from Sainsbury's)
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 packet fresh coriander, roughly chopped


1. Fry the onions in a large pan with some oil until golden brown. Add the lentils and the curry paste and stir to coat everything in the pan. Add the tomatoes and stir again. 
2. Have a cup of water besides the pan and whenever the curry looks too dry/is sticking to the pan, add some water so there's enough liquid for the lentils to cook (despite some rumours that lentils are poisonous when uncooked, this is actually not true. I undercooked the lentils slightly in this curry so they kept some bite rather being completely mushy and I'm glad to say that we're all perfectly alive!). 
3. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes and keep adding water if it gets too dry. Add the fresh coriander at the end and serve with rice and naan bread! (If anyone finds this too spicy, just add a tablespoon or two of Greek yoghurt and that'll make things much milder!)

Do we have anything for pudding?

That's one of my housemate's favourite questions after we've had dinner and sitting around in a vain attempt to put off work/washing up for as long as possible. And normally my answer is sadly 'no' but when we have more time, we do like to make a pudding - it can't get much cosier than sitting around with your friends with a hot baked pudding and lashing of custard! 


So here's one of my favourite puddings to make on a cold winter's day - apples with vanilla sponge over the top and a golden syrup sauce. You could also use pears in this as well if you want. It also tastes even better if you make one of your housemates run to the shops for milk to make custard when it's nearing 0'C outside :P (thanks Lucy! :D)

For the sponge:


5 eating apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks (any apples will do)
1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
250g butter, at room temperature
250g sugar
3 eggs
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder


For the sauce:


6 Tbsp golden syrup
200ml water


1. Preheat the oven to 200'C. Lay the apples in a baking dish/pie dish and if you like spicy apples, sprinkle the cinnamon over the apples and toss to cover all the chunks.
2. In a big bowl, beat the soft butter with the sugar until creamy and pale with a wooden spoon. Crack in the eggs one at a time and mix until it's all incorporated. Add the flour and baking powder and lightly mix it in until you have a smooth batter (but try not to over-mix). Spoon the batter over the apples and smooth the top with a knife.
3. Put the golden syrup and water for the sauce in a little saucepan and stir over a medium heat until the syrup is runny and warm. Pour over the batter (ok, it might not look so pretty now with the sauce floating on top of the batter but it'll look and taste delicious later!).
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes (you might want to put some foil over the dish if the top browns too fast as it might because of the golden syrup) and serve whilst still fairly hot but be warned, the golden syrup is very hot so you might want to cool it a bit before eating if you can resist the temptation! Whip up some custard whilst you're waiting! 

Not so dull pasta!

So we're students. And hence poor. Therefore pasta and rice is cheap, filling and easy so we have that a lot (at least we do in our house!). But last term we probably had pasta a bit too much and we seemed to have it the same way every time - with a tomato sauce. And that got dull pretty quickly. 


And so I started doing pasta bakes that are kinda like macaroni cheese but with added veg so it wasn't just stodgy pasta but had vibrant colours and different textures. Also it's a prime way of sneakily getting some of your five a days in! I used frozen veg - it's cheap and very convenient, it makes the whole cooking process much faster since you don't have to stand around prepping veg for 20 minutes. Of course, if you're not a broccoli fan, then add whatever veg takes your fancy - carrots, celery, peas, mushrooms, sweetcorn... 

For the cheese sauce:


50g butter
50g plain flour
Pint/600ml milk
However much cheese you can handle without getting nightmares
Salt and pepper


For the pasta:


100g pasta per person
Whatever veg (if using big veg like frozen broccoli, then defrost it in the microwave before adding it to the sauce but small veg like sweetcorn you can just add straight to the pan)


1. Make the cheese sauce - melt the butter in a pan, add the flour and stir until it's all combined. Add the milk a little by little and stir with a wooden spoon until it's all absorbed (if you add too much milk in one go, then you'll probably get a lumpy sauce). It'll be quite thick at the beginning but it'll get there, don't worry! 


2. While you're doing this, boil the pasta until just done and drain. Preheat the oven to 200'C.


3. Once all the milk has been added to the cheese sauce, stir in the cheese and seasoning until it's all melted. Add the veg you're using and tip in the cooked pasta. Stir it all together and tip it into a big baking dish (or even several big plates if you don't have a baking dish). Grate some more cheese over the top and bake for about 15 minutes.


We had this with garlic bread (one of your favourite foods!) and some fresh rocket because it was on offer in Tesco's and because my friend eats it in an amusing way like a rabbit. 

Want pizza but Domino's too slow/too expensive/too greasy?

Hello again! Not a recipe this time but I thought I'd share an amazing food discovery, which is not only cheap but makes you feel you're eating posh gourmet food that's incredibly nom! 

So I was coming back hungry and tired one evening and I passed a wood fired pizza van called 'Pizza Artisan'. That's right, wood fired pizza in a kebab van-style van (but many times cleaner and nicer!) in the middle of Oxford. Outside the main gates of Christ Church on St Aldates, opposite G&Ds to be precise (you'll smell the wood smoke when you draw near - it's irresistible like a bonfire). Anyway, I had passed this several times last term on my bike but had always been either going out to have dinner or had already eaten so never had the opportunity to try one of these pizzas but this night I was determined to try one and I conveniently 'forgot' the fact that my lovely housemates were cooking for when I got back home (but it was so worth it and now I got my housemates hooked as well!). And crazily inside this van there's a little wood fired oven and there's a guy rolling out the dough there and then by hand and putting pizzas in the oven with one of those big shovel-paddle things and another very friendly chap who's happy to have a chat while you wait for your pizza to cook (I forgot to ask his name but I will next time, which I think will be quite soon!). 

There's a few veggie options which is good and lots of meaty ones for the lovers of salami and, in any case, you can add extra toppings for just £1 which is pretty nice. And not only do you get a wood fired pizza but for free they throw in some rocket and spinach just so you can kid yourself that you're having a 'healthy' dinner, parmesan and a selection of flavoured oils (the chilli is a favourite of mine). So what's not to love? The base is soft and chewy with a few crispy bits, and never soggy, plenty of cheese and a generous amount of toppings. Awesome.

So hop along down to St Aldates for a nice chat and proper Italian pizza - they're normally there from 7pm-ish so just in time for dinner or maybe a post-pub snack. Trust me - try it once and you won't look back! Dominos, out of the way - Pizza Artisan has arrived!

Winter comfort dinner of sausages, mash and Yorkshire puds!

Hello and welcome to the first post of Baked Beans on Toast! I had planned to start this earlier but then life kinda got in the way. But here we are and for the first post, I thought I'd share what my housemates and I had for dinner yesterday when we needed warm comforting food since we had to cycle in the rain and cold. We cook and eat dinner together every night but we sometimes we get stuck in a pasta/rice rut and needless to say, it got a little boring. 


So this term, we're expanding our foody horizons and last night we ventured to the exotic land of Yorkshire. Yes, yes, I can already hear some purists shouting that Yorkshire puddings should only really go with roast, and roast beef at that, but they're yummy, they're easy, they go nicely with sausages so why not? If you don't have an oven, I'm sorry for the tragic loss in your life but you can just do the sausages, mash and gravy which is awesome in itself :D Oh and I did little Yorkshire puddings in a muffin pan because we don't have a roasting try and it turned out fine!

For the Yorkshire puddings: (serves 6 hungry people, about 2/3 each)


300g plain flour
1 egg
About 300ml milk
About 100ml water
Salt and pepper


1. Put about a tablespoon of oil (I used veggie oil) into each hole of a muffin pan and put it in a oven preheated to 220'C - the oil needs to be really hot before you put the batter in. 
2. Put the flour into a bowl, make a little well in the middle and crack in the egg. Mix with a whisk if you have one or just a wooden spoon as I did. Add the milk and water slowly, stirring all the time until it forms a smooth batter that's runny as double cream (basically pourable). The amount of liquid is quite rough - just keep adding until it's fairly runny!
3. When the oil is hot, add two tablespoons of batter in each hole of the pan and then return it to then oven for 15 minutes. They should be crispy and golden when they're done! 


For the sausages:


2/3 sausages per person 


1. Put a little bit of oil in a frying pan (not too much otherwise the sausages will spit at you and that, as we learnt the hard way, is not fun). Fry the sausages on a low-ish heat so they cook all the way through, about 10 minutes. If you cut one open, there should be no pink meat if it's done. 


(I'm vegetarian now so I used veggie sausages and that takes much shorter time than meat sausages - just fry them in a pan until golden and they're done!)


For the mash: (my favourite bit!)


2 potatoes per person
Knob of butter
Few splashes of milk
Salt and pepper


1. I baked the potatoes in the oven for an hour because, although it takes longer than boiling, is much easier since you don't have to stand over the hob in a hot and steamy kitchen watching potatoes boil which is on a par with watching paint dry. This way I can shove the potatoes in, go and do some work for an hour (so she says...) and then start cooking properly! So pierce the potatoes with a knife in a few places and put them in an oven preheated to 220'C and bake for an hour (and also this way you have the oven nice and hot for the Yorkshire puds later!).
2. When they're done, cut them in half, scoop out the middle with a spoon into a bowl. Add the butter, milk, salt and pepper and mash (if you don't have a potato masher, a fork works just as well). You could add some grated cheese at this point if, like us, you're cheesy mash fans!

I hope you enjoy this wonderfully warming meal (and the nice break from pasta!) and come back for more recipes/meal ideas soon :)