Honey and Lamb Tagine

I love food shopping. I get to browse the aisles for new ideas for recipes. One of my favourite places to do this is M&S. They have all kinds of lovely food, both ready meals and ingredients. One of the things I found was a amazing sounding 'Red Pepper, Apricot & Honey Tagine Paste', so I thought "what the hell" and bought it to give it a try. 

The recipe on the back recommended adding it to a tin of tomatoes with some diced lamb but as usual I couldn't help messing with the suggested recipe. Tagines are great to make from scratch, but if your feeling a bit lazy, this is an awesome recipe. I am also pretty confident that you can substitute the M&S paste with any other similar sounding paste such as red pepper tagine paste. (I will also try some time soon to recreate this recipe without the paste, for those of you with out access to M&S.)

Tomato and Basil Soup

Tomato soup...the King of all soups :). I absolutely love the heinz cream of tomato version but it's especially delicious when tomato soup is made from all fresh ingredients rather than out of a can. So yesterday I had a go at making my own cream of tomato soup. Though I have absolutely no idea how to do this so I had to do a little research. This recipe is based mostly on the Jamie Oliver 30 minute meals version of the soup but with a few amendments. It's lovely, fresh and mostly good for you. I served it with home made olive bread and ate it out side in the lovely heat.

I aimed to make this to serve three but there was quite a lot left over. What you will need to make this soup is:

Maple Syrup Cupcakes

Ok so if you are anything like me you will love these, because if you are like me you will LOVE Maple syrup. I tried to make these a few times using actual maple syrup for the bun and the frosting, but although the cakes were tasty they were also quite heavy. So I have been looking around for a really good maple syrup flavouring and I found one :)! It's from Nanny Bakes Kitchen and its the best one I've found so far. 

These are extremely easy to make and are based on my basic cake mix. This recipe makes about 12 cupcakes. What you will need is:

Pizzas

So I thought I'd have a go at making pizzas yesterday seeing as they are the perfect Friday night food! This turned out to be a a lot easier than I thought it would be. The only problems I had were in stretching out the pizza bases to get them thin enough for my liking. The dough and the pizza sauce is the main part of this recipe, the toppings on the pizza are a bit random but I'll let you know what they are anyway. The dough and sauce ingredients are enough to make two thin base pizzas. For warning now, I leave the dough for the pizza to rise for about 30-45 minutes and it will take a good 10 minutes to shape the bases. All in all it is quite a quick pizza recipe.

What you'll need for the dough is:

• 300g Strong Bread Flour, plus a fair bit extra for dusting;
• 1 tbsp Olive oil;
• 1 tsp Yeast (instant or fast action);
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Sugar; and
• 210ml Warm Water.

Orange and Honey Sea Bass with Chorizo

I've just gotten back from Rhodes and it was an absolutely lovely holiday, thanks for asking :). Although a part of me is really glad to be back in the UK where its nice and cool; it was a whopping 42C in Rhodes last week! The healthy eating worked a treat before I went away and I felt all lovely in my bikini. Sadly by the end of the holiday all the lovely Greek dishes had completely counteracted all my good work :), it was so worth it though. Although I didn't manage to find a really good moussaka which made me a little sad so you may see one up here soon as I am determined to try and make one. 

Anyway, with the aim maintaining my healthy eating plan to counteract all of the cocktails, last night for dinner I made a lovely orange, honey and thyme marinaded, baked sea bass with chorizo, new potatoes and green beans. This was very highly rated by my sister who wanted to eat all the left over sauce from the tray, so I though I would share this one with you.

Thai Style Beef on Noodles

Ok so I have been a bit absent, mostly due to my bikini diet not really being blog worthy. However I have missed you so I am back :). Just so you know the healthy eatings going well and I actually started running half an hour a day. Even more surprisingly I am enjoying the running. However, although I am back, that does not mean that I have given up on the bikini diet, so tonight for dinner I had a relatively healthy beef and noodles. Which if I say so myself was delicious :D.
It was also very easy and very fast to make. The whole process took about 10 minutes (but with a break of 1hr in the middle so the beef could soak in the marinade). I reckon this would be ideal for a dinner party; minimal fuss.