Announcing Event~Lets cook for Halloween

The month of October brings us into Autumn , Its time to look forward to Haloween and Guy Fawkes Night. In this event I am inviting you all to cook on the theme of Halloween. Create any vegetarian recipe themed on Halloween and link them in the linky below.

To Participate:

1. Prepare any vegetarian Halloween themed recipe please link your post using the linky below by entering your Dish Name and Post URL
2. Please link this event announcement with your entry, this is mandatory. (Any entries sent with out the mandatory link will be disqualified.)
3.Use of logo is  not mandatory but it helps to spread the word if you can use it.

4. Multiple entries are allowed, archived are only allowed if reposted and updated with this event link.

4. In the event of problem using linky you can email me the entry at simplysensationalfood@gmail.com

Please use this format:

Your Name: Recipe
Name Recipe URL
Image no larger than 300 pixels.
Event Ends 31st October 2014

An InLinkz Link-up

Friends of Glass ~A cookery session with Cherry Healey and a giveaway

Friends of glass is a movement of people who believe that glass is good for them, for their families and for the environment. There are many good reasons to use glass, it comes in many sizes shapes and styles. Glass, unlike other packaging materials, won’t release unhealthy chemicals and tastes into your food. It is Dishwater safe so you can be sure your storage containers are thoroughly sterilised and don’t harbour smells and harmful bacteria. It is environmentally friendly and glass is recyclable. Glass jars and bottles are perfect for storage, transporting food, for serving drinks at parties or simply using them for decoration. They make perfect pen pots, flower vases, and utensil holders. You can create many gift idea with them too.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by friends of glass to attend a cookery session hosted by Cherry Healey. The cookery class was held at Michel Roux Jr. cactus kitchens cookery school in Battersea. This is the place where Saturday kitchen is filmed.

On arrival we were led to a lovely drawing room for a light breakfast of pastries and coffee and given our aprons. Once breakfast over, we were ushered into the magnificent kitchen for a demonstration of the day’s recipes with Cara the chef and Cherry Healey. The recipes on the menu were Mint Julep, strawberry smoothies, beetroot hummus, Butternut squash, wild mushroon and spinach pie in a jar and Autumn trifle with poached pears . All were recipes were created and served in jars.

During the demonstration we were able to sample the hummus and the smoothies and then we set off to our workstations to get hands on experience of creating the Butternut squash and wild mushroom and spinach pie in a jar and the Autumn trifle with poached pears . Chef Cara and Cherry Healey were very interactive during the cooking session in the cactus kitchen, which made the experience very enjoyable. I had lots of fun especially as all the washing up magically disappeared.

My finished creations : 
Butternut Squash, wild mushroom and spinach pie in a jar and the Autumn Trifle with poached Pears. 

We were able to eat them whilst sipping mint juleps in the drawing room. To our surprise the friends of glass team had judged out trifles and I was really excited to win the 1st prize for my creation a lovely blue glass jar.

I came away from the class with lots of inspiration and ideas about presenting food in glass. You can see a video of our day below

I love glassware and here you can see some recipes that I have created in glass:

Date Milk Shake
Mixed Berry Smoothie

 

Moroccan Salad in a Jar

Peach Frappe

 

I had a lovely time at cactus kitchens and would like to thanks friends of glass for the lovely goody bag they gave me. Not only that but friends of glass have also given me a set of 6 glass jars as a competition prize for one simplyfood reader.

How To Enter

·         Simply complete the Rafflecopter widget below to verify your entries

·         Entries can be via blog comment, Facebook, Twitter etc

·         Please read the rules they form the terms and conditions of this Giveaway

·         Closing date – Sunday 12th October 2014 Open to UK residents only over 18 years old.

How Rafflecopter works:

• You will need to complete the mandatory entry first – usually making a blog comment. You can do this by clicking on leave a comment at the bottom of the post and leaving your reply in the comment box. Please note your comment will not show immediately as it needs to be moderated however rest assured it will appear on the site, so carry on with rest of entries.
• Login to Rafflecopter – click to see what the question is. Make a comment answering the question on the blog.
•  Go back to Rafflecopter and click the green button to tell me you have made a comment, this will unlock all the other options. All entries are checked to see that the mandatory question is answered, if its not all bonus entries will become void. 
• Rafflecopter will tweet, like and follow on your behalf.
• For information on how to find the URL of your tweet click here. 
• For bonus entries you can return to this page and enter the daily bonus entries. 
• If you are still unsure as to how Rafflecopter works please do check out this short video.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filo Apple and Nut Parcels

print recipe

Filo Apple and Nut Parcels

by Nayna Kanabar 22nd September 2014

Flaky sheets of Greek filo filled with apples, nuts and honey and delicately spiced with cinnamon.

Ingredients:

• 3 sheets Filo pastry
• 2 Braeburn Apples
• 2 tablespoons Melted Butter
• 2 tablespoons Coarsely chopped pistachio nuts
• 1 tablespoon Raisins
• 2 tablespoons Flaked Almonds
• 4 tablespoons Honey
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon Lemon juice

Method:

1.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F / 175 degrees C.
2.Remove the core from the apple and keeping the skin on grate the apple coarsely. Transfer the the apples to a large bowl and add the lemon juice and toss together.
3.Reserve quarter of the almonds and pistachio nuts and add the remainder to the the apples.
4.Add the 3 tablespoons honey, raisins and cinnamon to the apple mixture and toss together to combine all the ingredients.
5. Place a sheet of filo pastry on the table and brush some melted butter on it. Add a second sheet of filo and brush butter on it too and finally add the third sheet of filo on top and brush with the remaining butter.
6. Spread the apple mixture onto the filo layers and roll the filo pastry into a swiss roll shape starting to roll from the long edge.
7. Place the filo roll onto a baking tray  and cut the roll into 6 pieces. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes until pastry starts to turn golden brown.
8. Remove the filo parcels from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly.
9. To serve, brush the tops of the filo parcels with the remaining honey and sprinkle with the reserved nuts.
Serve the parcels with some honeyed Greek yoghurt.

Details

Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 40 mins Yield: 6 slices

These parcels can be made using any type of apple and the nuts can be replaced with any of choice such as walnuts, brazilnuts, cashewnuts or hazelnuts. To make the honeyed Greek Yoghurt, stir in 3 tablespoons of honey into natural Greek yoghurt and mix together.

Submitting to:
Lets cook with Apples event by simplyfood.
 Lets cook for Halloween event by simplyfood

Strawberries and Cream hot Quinoa breakfast~ Secret Recipe Challenge 15th Sept 2014

This is my assignment with the Secret Recipe Club.The aim of the club is that you are allocated a blog from which you have to select a recipe and try it and blog about it. 

My assigned blog was Flavour Mosaic, the blog is written By Michelle who describes her self as the occasional cooker, however looking through her blog she has some amazing recipes so I think she is definitely more than just an occasional cooker as she sounds very experienced in cooking. Like me Michele loves spices and she loves playing with spice mixtures in her recipes to me that's what I love too so I shall be dropping by Michele's blog often to try out more of her recipes.

For the challenge I short listed many recipes but since I am trying to change our breakfast habits, I thought the  strawberries and cream hot quinoa breakfast cereal  would be the perfect recipe to prepare and present to my family. I followed the recipe and the only changes I made were that I used strawberry yoghurt instead of natural yoghurt and replaced the cinnamon with cardamom.

Delicious and warm breakfast that's healthy and delectable too.

Ingredients:

60 g / 2 oz Quinoa
150 ml water
129 g low fat strawberry yoghurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of nutmeg 
pinch of cardamom
6 strawberries

Method:

1. Wash the quinoa and drain, add the 150 ml water and bring the quinoa to a slow simmer, reduce the heat to lowest setting and simmer until all the water is absorbed ( approx 10-12 minutes)
2. Wash and keep aside 2 strawberries for garnish and  chop the remaining strawberries into slices.
3.  In a bowl add the strawberry yoghurt, vanilla. nutmeg and cardamom and mix together.
4 To the yoghurt mixture add the cooked quinoa and mix together.
5. Get two serving glasses and spoon some of the creamy quinoa and yoghurt mixture.
6. Add a layer of strawberries and than add another layer of the quinoa and yoghurt mixture on top.
7. Finish off with a layer of strawberries.
9.Garnish with the whole strawberry

NB- You can also serve it as a chilled dessert.

An InLinkz Link-up

Giveaway Tickets to Craft for Christmas NEC Birmingham

Crafts for Christmas at the NEC Birmingham from 
6-9 Nov 2014

Crafts for Christmas is once again at the NEC Birmingham from 6-9 Nov. Find unusual handmade crafts for the home and garden and enjoy a day out for all the family! Meet up to 250 artist crafts people from all over the UK who will be bringing you the very best in unusual and inspiring crafts, not usually found on the high street.

Highlights of the show:

Prima Craft Theatre-Get crafty with Prima in their Craft Theatre, where you can pick up top tips from the experts, and watch them demonstrate a gorgeous range of creative projects.

Live Music-Playing all your Christmas favourites and a few TV and film classics will be saxophone quartet 'Sax on TV' - sure to get you in the Christmas spirit as you while away the hours Christmas shopping!

Christmas Product Showcase-If you’re looking for inspiration for Christmas gifts this year, then look no further than the Christmas Product Showcase at the entrance to the show.

Gift Wrapping-Not only can you buy all your Christmas gifts here, you can have them wrapped by the experts too! Sparkly ribbons, bows, rosettes... whatever takes your fancy - your presents will look almost too good to unwrap!

Tickets:

Adult £12.00 at door

Senior citizens £11.00 at door

SAVE MONEY! Save up to £2 off each ticket when you buy them in advance (by 5pm on the Monday before the show starts.) After this, you can buy full price tickets on the web until 10am on the last day of the show, but tickets will need to be self-printed. You can, of course, always buy tickets on-the-door at the show.

Crafts for Christmas have been very generous and have agreed to provide 5 simply food readers with 1 pair of tickets each for the show.

How To Enter

·         Simply complete the Rafflecopter widget below to verify your entries

·         Entries can be via blog comment, Facebook, Twitter etc

·         Please read the rules they form the terms and conditions of this Giveaway

·         Closing date – 18th October 2014 12.00 am

How Rafflecopter works:

• You will need to complete the mandatory entry first – usually making a blog comment. You can do this by clicking on leave a comment at the bottom of the post and leaving your reply in the comment box. Please note your comment will not show immediately as it needs to be moderated however rest assured it will appear on the site, so carry on with rest of entries.
• Login to Rafflecopter – click to see what the question is. Make a comment answering the question on the blog.
•  Go back to Rafflecopter and click the green button to tell me you have made a comment, this will unlock all the other options. All entries are checked to see that the mandatory question is answered, if its not all bonus entries will become void. 
• Rafflecopter will tweet, like and follow on your behalf.
• For information on how to find the URL of your tweet click here. 
• For bonus entries you can return to this page and enter the daily bonus entries. 
• If you are still unsure as to how Rafflecopter works please do check out this short video.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Onken ~ Another Masterclass with Lisa Faulkner

I recently attended another master class by Lisa Faulkner for Onken at  the Terrace Suite at the Ham Yard Hotel. The theme for the master class was "Treat your self". Lisa showed us some wonderful desserts made with Onken Fruits and then we all had a go at creating our own desserts.

First on the agenda was the crème brulee,  It was exquisite and so easy to make. Using the Onken Mango, Papaya and passion fruit yoghurt and fresh mangoes , the crème brulee was definitely very tropical and luxurious.

Next we made yoghurt smoothies, the healthy berry smoothie was packed with blueberries and chia seeds and all combined with fat free yoghurt. It was the perfect smoothie for breakfast. The Tropical summer smoothie  made with the Mango, Papaya and passion fruit yoghurt and fresh mangoes and milk was ricjh and creamy and definitely my favourite of the two.

The highlight of the session was the Eton Mess,  a layered dessert made with delicious strawberry yoghurt, strawberry coulis, meringue and fresh blueberries and strawberries all garnished with hazelnuts. A majestic dessert that was truly delectable.

The evening ended with some refreshing and cool  Mango, Papaya and passion fruit Ice lollies and Strawberry and coconut Ice lollies.

I had a wonderful time at the Master Class and came home with lots of Ideas and Inspiration to create desserts with the Onken Fruit range.I would like to Thank Onken for Inviting me and for the lovely goody bag they gave me.

My Kitchen Wishlist from Sabichi

I am in the process of de cluttering and redecorating my kitchen. Its an exciting process, choosing paint, new kitchen accessories and gadgets. I have decided to have satin finish gadgets but to infuse colour in the kitchen by having coloured cookware and knives and also to have funky coloured crockery for everyday use and have the bone china white tableware for dinner parties.

I find shopping on line is the best way  to choose everything I want and then have it delivered straight to my door.Totally stress and hassle free and all done from the comfort of my armchair.One particular site I love is Sabichi. Its a shoppers haven where you will find everything to kit out your kitchen, from electrical items,  cookware, bake ware, cutlery, linen, crockery such as pots and pan and kitchen storage too. I have created a wish list of some of my favourite items that you can see on my pinterest board.

My two new additions to my kitchen are a new kettle 360° swivel base stainless steel kettle. It features a satin finish with a water level indicator and removable washable filter. It has a concealed heating element for fast boil and easy cleaning. I like the fact that the kettle is generous in size with a 1.7ltr capacity, it is fully cordless with a boil dry protection which is very useful.

The stainless steel four slice toaster is also satin finish and matches the kettle perfect. It has a crumb tray and has extra wide slots so that you can toast, bagels, buns and muffins. I really like this feature and it is one of the main reasons I chose this particular toaster.

The toaster also features six position browning options which include a defrost and reheat options too. It has indication lights and a cord storage so that there is no long cord dangling on the work surface.

Elegant and stylish both the kettle and toaster  make the perfect match in my new kitchen.

I would like to thank Sabichi for sending me both the toaster and the kettle for review. All the opinions expressed in this post are my own.

Peach Frappé ~dairy free

Delicious dairy free Peach Frappé to enjoy. (Frappé is a drink that is served with crushed ice or made to a slushy consistency.)

Ingredients:

500 ml Oatly * ( Organic Oat drink)
2 ripe peaches
2 teaspoons Natvia natural sweetener *(or honey)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 strawberries for garnish (optional)

Method:

1. Pour two thirds of the Oatly into ice cube trays and place in the freezer overnight  to make ice cubes.
2. De stone the peaches and cut them into slices.(reserve a few slices for garnish)
3. Put the peaches, vanilla, sweetener, Oatly ice cubes and remaining Oatly milk into the Optimum 4000 blender.
4. Blend the mixture until rich and creamy.
5. Pour into serving glasses and garnish with peach slices and strawberries.

* Natvia natural sweetener is made with natural ingredients Steviol glycosides and Erythritol  which is  a natural occurring nectar found in fruit. Natvia is made from the Stevia plant. It contains no aspartame, saccharin, sucralose or artificial colours The sweetener is tooth friendly, fructose free, zero calories and suitable for diabetics.

*Oatly is an organic oat-based milk alternative, it is  made from oats and water and sea salt. It is perfect for those following a dairy free or vegan diet, or just for those who want to adopt a healthier lifestyle. It can be used as an alternative to milk, it is perfect for enjoying as it comes, or can be enjoyed with cereal, muesli or used as a milk substitute in a variety of delicious recipes. In the UK Oatly is  available in plain and chocolate flavours and they also make Oatly cream which is perfect for adding to desserts and sauces. Oatly is available in health food stores and super markets.

Thankyou to Oatly for sending me the vouchers to purchase the Oatly products and to Natvia who had given me a sample of their product at the recent Food Bloggers Connect 2014.

I made my Peach Frappé in the Optimum 9400 blender. It is very versatile and it will blend, purée, grate, chop, make ice cream, hot soups, nut butters and nut milk.

To read about the Optimum 9400 check my review post here. The blender is currently on a special offer at £329.00 with a thirty day money back guarantee with free postage if not satisfied. You can also get an extra two years warranty if you order through this site You can order yours here.

The jar that is used to serve the peach frappé was given to me by Friends of Glass. Friends of Glass is a movement of people who believe that glass is good for them, for their families and for the environment.

Giveaway tickets to cake International NEC Birmingham

 Cake International – The Sugarcraft, Cake Decorating and Baking Show  is back in November at the NEC Birmingham from 7 – 9 November, the event will showcase a host of exciting exhibitors and features to inspire budding bakers. Highlight of the show will be the Cake Grotto which will be a staggering 10 foot long Christmas extravaganza complete with edible rocking horses and reindeer. PME will be hosting classes live at the show in front of an audience and visitors can also get involved in a host of other workshops and try a number of specialist activities and cake decorating techniques from the experts at The Renshaw School and more.

There will be exciting chocolate focussed activities include demonstrations by pastry chefs, competitions, interactive demonstrations on the history and origin of chocolate as we know it today, samples, workshops for children and a chocolate sculpture. Cake International – The Sugarcraft, Cake Decorating & Baking Show, featuring the new The Chocolate Experience at the NEC, Birmingham is a must-visit show this autumn.  For more information please visit www.cakeinternational.co.uk. 

Cake International – The Sugarcraft, Cake Decorating & Baking Show

NEC, Birmingham

7 – 9 November 2014

Fri 09.30 – 17.30; Sat 09:00 - 17.30; Sun 09:00 – 17:00

Ticket Prices:

Adult £14.00 (£12.00 Advance Price)

Senior £13.00 (£11.00 Advance Price)

2 Day Ticket: Adult 18.00 Senior £16.00 (Advance Only)

3 Day Ticket: Adult £25.00 Senior £23.00 (Advance Only)

Under 16s free if accompanied by an adult with a valid ticket, otherwise £5.00

All advanced tickets need to be ordered by 5pm Monday 3^rd November 2014

For more information or to book tickets please visit Cake International , alternatively, phone the Ticket Hotline on 01425 277988.

Cake International have been very generous and have agreed to  provide 1 pair of tickets each  to five lucky winners.

For good competition Karma

Follow  on Twitter @thecakeshows or find us on Facebook – Cake International

How To Enter

·         Simply complete the Rafflecopter widget below to verify your entries

·         Entries can be via blog comment, Facebook, Twitter etc

·         Please read the rules they form the terms and conditions of this Giveaway

·         Closing date – 15th October 2014 12.00 am

How Rafflecopter works:

• You will need to complete the mandatory entry first – usually making a blog comment. You can do this by clicking on leave a comment at the bottom of the post and leaving your reply in the comment box. Please note your comment will not show immediately as it needs to be moderated however rest assured it will appear on the site, so carry on with rest of entries.
• Login to Rafflecopter – click to see what the question is. Make a comment answering the question on the blog.
•  Go back to Rafflecopter and click the green button to tell me you have made a comment, this will unlock all the other options. All entries are checked to see that the mandatory question is answered, if its not all bonus entries will become void. 
• Rafflecopter will tweet, like and follow on your behalf.
• For information on how to find the URL of your tweet click here. 
• For bonus entries you can return to this page and enter the daily bonus entries. 
• If you are still unsure as to how Rafflecopter works please do check out this short video.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Round Up~Lets Prepare Summer Drinks

This is the lovely round up of the exciting entries received for this event.

An InLinkz Link-up