Cooking With Jaye #4: Easy Peasy Risotto

I have been on a cooking roll recently, trying out countless new recipes, making things myself so I know exactly what is in what I'm eating! I instagrammed this picture and loads of you asked for the recipe, so here goes!

You will need:

- around 250g of arborio rice

- one chopped onion

- a handful of asparagus tips

- bacon/bacon lardons

- frozen peas

- 750ml of vegetable stock

-125ml white wine (plus a glass for whilst you cook!)

- 30g of parmesan

- butter

- a clove or two of garlic (to taste)

To start, add the chopped onions and garlic to hot butter (about a tbsp) and fry slowly til soft.  Then add the rice and keep it moving constantly on a high height for 2-3 minutes. Pour in the wine and allow the rice to absorb it on a medium heat. Once the liquid has been absorbed, add the first 250ml of stock. Mix gently and then leave the rice to absorb. Then add another 250ml of stock.

In another pan, heat another spoon of butter and fry your chopped up bacon or bacon lardons. You can use as much or as little bacon as you like, or leave it out completely if you're veggie. Once the bacon is cooked through add your chopped up asparagus tips (I like to chop them to roughly inch long pieces) and toss. After 2-3 minutes take the pan off the heat and add two or three handfuls of frozen peas, and let the residual heat of the pan cook them. 

Add the last 250ml of stock to the rice and once that has absorbed taste the rice. It should be cooked perfectly by now but it may need a little more stock! Once the rice is cooked how you like it, mix in the bacon, asparagus & peas, and grate the parmesan into the pan. Mix it up all good and proper, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve with a little extra parmesan on top. All of this shouldn't take more than 25 minutes!

So there we go! If you try this recipe please instagram or tweet me a picture! What are your favourite quick and easy meals?

Cooking With Jaye #2 - Super Easy Cookie Cakes

I'm a low fuss sort of baker, I love the finished product, but if I'm gonna spend time cooking, I want it to be super easy, fairly speedy (so I don't loose interest) and use as few utensils as possible so I have less to clear up.

I had half an hour to kill this week and decided to whip something up using what we had in the cupboards. I much prefer to make things like cookies and flapjacks, it's so much cheaper and you can tailor them to your fancies. Plus these literally took me about ten minutes to make, and then I baked them while I got on with my work. I made these by adapting an American recipe so it works off cups, but if you don't have cup measures, just use a small coffee mug as 1 cup!

What You Need:
One cup of soft butter
One cup of sugar (you can use brown or white, they are more cakey with white and gooeyer with brown!)
Two medium sized eggs
One tbsp of Vanilla Essence
3 cups of self raising flour (or use plain and add baking powder)
Chocolate (you can use whatever chocolate you want! I used Dairy Milk Caramel as it was what I had in my cupboards, but you can use anything, or a mix! I used two bars but you need roughly 250g)

It's all super easy, pre heat your oven to 180c/350f and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Then, in a big mixing bowl beat the butter til smooth and then mix in the sugar. Add vanilla essence and eggs and beat together. Then slowly add the flour, mixing as you go. I found that after two cups, it was easier to use my hands to kneed it in as the mixture got a little thicker. The consistency shouldn't be too thick though!

Then it's chocolate chopping time! I cut each square into four, because I didn't want massive chunks, but you can cut it as big or small as you like, or have varying sizes in there (probably easier if you aren't using caramel chocolate!). Also, if you're planning on using caramel chocolate like I did, it's worth sticking the chocolate in the fridge for five minutes before you cut it, to stop all the caramel sticking to your knife! Then just mix it into the dough, it's as simple as that!

 From there, it's simply a case of spooning the mixture onto the baking tray, and sticking them in the oven. I kept mine pretty small but they still ended up as monsters! If I did them again I'd probably do them a little smaller, since they ended up huge!

Baking them is a bit of a guessing game, I'd say around 8-9 minutes, but go buy the colour, I took them out when they started to go golden round the edges. They'll be squidgy still when you take them out, but they'll harden up as they cool. I stuck them on a wire rack to cool straight from the oven, and then put them on a wooden chopping board when they were cool and put them on the coffee table when the boyfriend got home! So domesticated!

 Yum! Enjoy!

Do you have any quick and easy recipes?

Cooking With Jaye, #1

If any of you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you will know that a couple of weeks ago I won Wagamamas Instagram competition, leaving me with a Ramen Bowl, chopsticks, a ladel, two sauces, a tote bag, an apron, a cookbook, and a whopping £100 voucher! I've never won anything before, so I was crazy excited, and after it all arrived, I hopped into the kitchen, kitted out in my new apron, ready to cook up a storm.

I thought I'd start with a simpler recipe, and I adapted it a bit, but I thought I'd share it with you guys! This literally took less than 15 minutes to make, and it's super healthy! This recipe serves 2.

What You Will Need

 100g of egg noodles

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

2 garlic cloves

3cm piece of ginger root

150g beef steak

1/2 a red pepper

2 teaspoons of cornflour

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 teaspoon of sugar

100ml chicken stock (I used vegetable since we were out, and it still tasted good!)

1 tablespoon of vineagar

Juice of one lime

2 tablespoons of defrosted frozen peas

A handful of beansprouts

A bunch of fresh coriander

2 spring onions

To make, simply cook the noodles how the packet suggests, drain them and rinse in cold water, and leave whilst you cook the rest. Heat the oil in a large wok (the bigger the wok is, the easier!) and stir fry the sliced ginger and crushed garlic for no more than 30 seconds, or the ginger will burn (I learnt this the hard way, but it's always better the second time right?). Then add the beef, shake it all up, then add the red pepper. Fry that for about 3 minutes. In a separate jug or mug, blend cornflour with soy sauce, then pour this into the wok, along with the stock and vineagar. Then shake it all up, so everything is covered in sauce, then allow it to simmer for a minute so the mixture can thicken up a bit. Finally, add the noodles, lime juice (it recommended using a whole lime, but this felt like a little too much for me, next time I would probably only add half), peas and beansprouts. Cook everything for three more minutes, and then serve, sprinkled with coriander leaves and spring onions! Done!

Have you tried any good speedy recipes recently?