Sausage and Squash pasta

I must admit that while making this dish I had a packet of pasta sauce on hand incase what was originally a good idea, turned out to be bland and boring. But alas, the sauce remained in its packet, and I gobbled this down, just as I'd made it.

So, I made gnocchi from scratch...

Home-made gnocchi somehow reminded me of eating marshmallows. They are much softer than the store bought ones, and not as rubbery. They are not a sticky texture either, just soft to the bite..they have a huge air of comfort about them, like you just want to smother them in some kind of cheese or a buttery sauce that just about coats them.

Pesto Pasta

Tasty, easy and nutritious, this is one of my go-to meals during the week.
There's eat least three different vegetables in here (not including the garlic, spinach leaves or sugar snap peas) AND chickpeas, so it's full of goodness. And the pesto means it's full of flavour!

Smokey Chicken drumsticks (and herby ones too)

Over Christmas, I tried some ready-made party food chicken drum sticks at my boyfriend's house. I had never ever had chicken drumsticks before, and apart from them burning my tastebuds off with chili, I was taken aback by how tasty they were.

Ever since tasting them, I've had cravings to re-create those delicious drumsticks- the only problem was, I had no idea what they were marinated in.

Pizza Fold-over

This may be something very simple, but need I remind you how well peas and cheese go together?
And besides that, its something else you can do with the pizza dough you made earlier.

This fold over only went in the oven in order to melt the cheese and warm the whole thing up together- the dough was already cooked.

I quite like this method of cooking pizza dough, it has the opportunity to give rise to all sorts of meals

Eggy spinach pizza!

 'Polpo: a Venetian cookbook of sorts'- a book Waterstones deemed one of the year's best cookbooks in 2012, contains a number of beautiful recipes, and this Spinach and Egg pizza was inspired by one of them.

I made the dough using a recipe from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's  Veg Every Day. 'Magic dough' it is, and from my experience, it gets better with time.

It's been so long!

How long has it been? .....1....2....3...4...5! Weeks!

Well, first of all my camera ran out of battery while I was at home for Christmas, and I did not have the charger with me :( and also...I've just bravely finished the last of my five January exams. Wahooo!

So, one thing you missed over the Christmas period was my Dad's amazing Coulibiac- the centerpiece to my family's Christmas feast!

And here is the beautiful thing...

 Inside this beast are layer upon layer of pancakes, mushrooms in a white wine cream, smoked fish, egg and rice- all wrapped up in a brioche pastry. It is the epitome of flavour accompanied by beautifully crisp roast potatoes, garlicky brussle sprouts, sweet roast parsnips, and all the rest.

There hasn't been a Christmas I remember when we haven't had a coulibiac, so it is throughly a part of family tradition now. The recipe my Dad uses is an adaptation of Anton Mosimann's own coulibiac recipe. Unfortunately i'm not going to provide you with the recipe- that remains my family secret ;)
However, feel free to try it out- it's a beautiful thing. :)