Restaurant review: Pizza Sophia, Bloomsbury, London

One of the benefits of living in central London is that you are able to explore the city's nooks and crannies and find neighbourhood restaurants that people passing through - even those who work there - may overlook. I'm one of the latter - I work in London but commute in, and so only know the area around my office and the main streets elsewhere (think Upper Street, Wardour Street and so on). One of my friends lives in Bloomsbury and she stumbled across a gem of a local restaurant on Tavistock Place: Pizza Sophia.

It's one of those restaurants that barely has a website (it just has the address and phone number), only has a handful of tables at street level (with more downstairs) and you'd almost walk past it if you weren't looking for it.

 

My friend has been a couple of times now and said the pizzas were amazing and she wasn't far wrong. They are absolutely huge, clearly homemade and smothered in delicious toppings - for instance the menu states that the restaurant smokes its own meat. There is a wide choice of pizzas and some pasta on the menu and they were happy to cater for my vegan friend by altering some of the toppings.

I had the New Yorker, which was a steal at £9 for a giant pizza, with smoked beef brisket, pepperoni, caramelized red onion, mozzarella and tomato. It was delicious and I barely managed to finish it. I spotted takeaway boxes on the way out so if you don't manage to finish the pizza you can ask for the rest to go!

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 - Week 10

I have three days off this week as study leave to complete coursework for a professional qualification. I've been working on it for several weekends over the past few months and really hope I can get it finished!

 

 

Monday

leftover chicken in garlic sauce from Sunday

 

Tuesday

tagliatelle and meatballs
 

Wednesday – at home
Lunch - either leftover pasta or a baked potato
Dinner - fishcake with poached egg for me, gammon with fried egg for him

 

Thursday – at home

Lunch - macaroni cheese on toast
Dinner - burgers and chips
 

Friday – at home
Lunch - baked potato if I didn't have one on Weds, or whatever I can find in the fridge or cupboard!

Dinner - Maggi So Juicy Mexican chicken - found a packet mix in the cupboard I need to use! 

 

Saturday-
Lunch- croque monsieur
Dinner - out somewhere before we go to the cinema

 

Sunday – was supposed to be on a Wordpress course which was disappointingly cancelled (by the same college that has cancelled cake decorating courses more than once on me in the past!
Lunch- baked croissant French toast from this recipe.
Dinner - toad in the hole

 

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Slow Cooker Lemon Chilli Chicken

I've been using my slow cooker a lot lately as I work from home every Tuesday, meaning I can put something on at lunchtime, forget about it while I go back to my laptop and work for the rest of the day. When I work from home I pick my husband up from the train station which means I would otherwise have to wait until we were back to start dinner, so this way it's already cooked!
I mainly do chicken in the slow cooker as my husband is a very fussy eater and he likes chicken. I love lemon chicken but he doesn't like sweet and savoury food together, and lemon chicken often ends up tasting quite sweet and tangy at the same time. I came across a recipe for lemon chilli chicken on SlimmingEats.com which was ideal, as it's citrusy and spicy and not really sweet at all.

The recipe given is cooked in a pan while I did mine in the slow cooker, and I didn't reduce the sauce at the end so it was quite thin - I think it would be nicer thickened a little.

I browned the chicken in a pan and added the spices - coriander, cumin, chilli, turmeric:

and then put the chicken in the slow cooker on high for 4 hours, along with the stock, lemon zest and juice

Serve with rice and a green veg.

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'A New Home' Greeting Card

I must have made this card seven years ago because it has my address written inside when I moved house... to my home before this one! I moved in 2010 and had been making cards for a little while but it was before I started blogging. I made several 'new home' cards and wrote my new address inside them and sent them to family and friends.

I had one left over that I'd never sent, but it did have my address written inside. When one of my dearest friends told me she had moved in with her boyfriend and gave me her new address, I wanted to send them a card wishing them luck in their new home, but didn't have time to make one (every spare moment is currently taken up with coursework for a professional qualification I'm doing and planning my husband's 40th).

So I decided to use this spare card - it's not recycling if I never actually gave it to anyone! I cut the front off the card and mounted it on another card - a purple one to match the patterned paper across the middle.

To make the original card I used a small house-shaped hole punch to punch out houses in a strip of stripey paper which I stuck across the middle of the card like a ribbon. I had a pack of gold outline stickers with the words 'a new home' and also a lock and key which I used to finish off the simple card.

I'm sending this to Penny's Challenges for her card making challenge.

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Chicken Broccoli Pasta Soup

This soup is definitely a meal in itself - in fact it's barely a soup! The good thing about it is that you can thin it down as much as you like - so if you want something really chunky and filling (that's more like a bowl of pasta than soup) you can have it, or if you want to be able to drink your lunch rather than eat it with a fork (let alone a spoon) then you can do that too!

I came across a recipe for chicken broccoli alfredo soup on Food.com and decided to make it for my lunch last Sunday; I did reduce the quantity of the ingredients but still had enough left for the rest of the week!

Instead of half-and-half which you can't get in the UK, I used mainly milk with a dash of double cream. The resulting soup was deliciously creamy. I didn't have any farfalle pasta so I used macaroni which worked well.

This was a very filling soup that tasted rich and creamy and keeps well for a few days afterwards though you might find you need to add some water to thin it out again once it has been in the fridge for a while!

I'm sharing this with Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice.

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 - Week 9

This week's meal plan...

Monday – I’m at a work event in evening so home late, but not out all evening, so we can have pizzas from the freezer (update - I was even later than I thought so had something from the train station for my dinner!)

 

Tuesday – pancake day. My vegetarian mother-in-law is coming to dinner, and as usual I’m working from home today. She loved the macaroni cheese I made once before so this time I am going to make macaroni cheese with garlic bread crust from this recipe -with a couple of sausages for my husband as he doesn’t think pasta by itself is really a meal!

Dessert: pancakes: I'm going to try this Nigella recipe as I already have Frangelico at home and it sounds delicious!

 

Wednesday- stir-fry with chicken and mooli for me, chicken chargrill for him
 

Thursday – tagliatelle with prawns for me, meatballs for him (using up the chopped tomatoes and white wine I have open)

 

Friday - something with chips from the freezer

 

Saturday

Lunch- Greggs baked bean pasty with potato waffles for him, and for me tuna spaghetti

Dinner- chicken and potatoes in a creamy garlic sauce from this recipe

 

Sunday

Lunch- going to see my sister and niece

Dinner- not sure what time we will be back - probably something from the freezer

 

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Chicken and Chorizo Filo Parcels

Isn't it always the case that when you use ready-made pastry, you have some left over that find its way into the fridge or even the freezer? Not long ago I decided I needed to use up some filo pastry and had a look on the Jus-Rol (the pastry brand) website for inspiration. I thought these chicken, manchego and chorizo briouats.

 

I made them a little differently, as I always do; I left out the lentils as I don't like them, and rather than sun-dried tomato paste or even tomato puree (which would have been a good alternative) I used some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and added some sweet potato puree I had previously made, and a little plain yogurt to create some moisture. I'm also not quite sure why the recipe on the link above mentions puff pastry and think this might be a mistake!

Making the parcels very small and tight isn't that easy and mine were rather bigger than expected; we ate them as a main course with potato wedges but I think they would be brilliant as part of a buffet. The chicken and chorizo are a great flavour combination and the sweet potato puree really adds something slightly sweet and creamy, though if you don't want to go to the effort of making this specifically, just use the cheese and the yogurt. Manchego is a Spanish's sheep's cheese which I couldn't get hold of for this recipe so I used cheddar which I thought worked fine. I also took the opportunity to use up some left over roast chicken, which I shredded.

Here's what I did:

Serves 6
6 Filo pastry sheets
2 tbsp. oil for brushing
50g chorizo, diced
1 onion, diced
dash of oil or low-fat cooking spray
25g sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
4 tbsp. plain yogurt
either 4 cooked chicken breast fillets or about 400g cooked shredded chicken
salt, pepper
75g grated cheese
4 tbsp. sweet potato puree (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Heat the oil or cooking spray in a frying pan and fry the onion and chorizo over a low to medium heat for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer to a bowl and mix with the shredded chicken, cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Season. Stir in the yogurt and sweet potato puree.

Lay out a sheet of filo pastry and cut into three long thin strips. Brush with oil then add a spoonful of chicken mixture at one end.

Fold over the pastry to form a triangle, then flip the triangle up and to the right and then to the left and repeat until you have folded the filling all the way along the strip of pastry. Brush with more oil and place on a baking sheet.

Repeat until you have used up all the filling and the pastry.

Bake the parcels in the oven for 10-12 minutes. You may need to do this in a couple of batches. Serve warm with salad, couscous or potato wedges or as part of a buffet offering.

I'm sharing this with the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary - it's a good way of using up filo pastry and cooked chicken.

I'm also sending it to Cook Once, Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice, as you can cook some chicken one day (eg a roast) and use it in this recipe another day.

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Eight Great Pancake Recipes: Sweet, Savoury, Gluten-Free, Vegan

 

 

It's almost Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Pancake Day - so here are 8 easy and delicious pancake recipes, from sweet to savoury and even vegan, gluten-free and sugar-free!

 

 

First up, because it's not all about being indulgent, are these buckwheat pancakes. These are gluten-free and don't contain any refined sugar. Delicious with smoked salmon and goat's cheese.

These sugar-free coconut milk pancakes are also great for people cutting out sugar who still want to enjoy some pancakes. They are made from a combination of coconut milk, coconut oil, coconut flour, shredded coconut and buckwheat flour - great served with apple sauce.

Now for something a bit more indulgent. This crepe cake or thousand layer cake takes a bit of time to make, though there are not really a thousand layers of course. The layers are sweet pancakes sandwiched together with crème patissiere and you slice it like a cake.

Savoury pancakes are great as a main course. Don't be put off by these Spam and mushroom filled pancakes - you can use any kind of tinned or chopped ham, and they taste really good.

When it comes to breakfast, how about these buttermilk pancakes with sausage gravy? I first had sausage gravy in America - it's basically diced sausage in a white sauce which makes a great alternative to a fried breakfast.

Who remembers Findus crispy pancakes? I used to love them when I was a kid so figured out a way to make my own ham and cheese crispy pancakes! The pancakes are coated in breadcrumbs and fried until they turn golden brown; cut into them and the ham and cheese filling oozes out. I'd forgotten how good these were!

 

 

But there's no need to complicate things and sometimes you want something simple. These American-style banana pancakes work for breakfast or dessert. I don't even like bananas and thought these were really good! The buttermilk makes them extra fluffy.

 

 And finally, here's a recipe for vegan pancakes - just because you don't eat eggs or milk doesn't mean you can't enjoy pancake day! These are really good and there are all sorts of toppings you could try, from fruit to the traditional lemon and sugar.

 

 What's your favourite pancake topping and what are you planning to make for Pancake Day? Let me know in the comments!

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Scrabble Name Picture for a Londoner

I like giving homemade gifts and ever since I discovered Hobbycraft's box frames I haven't run out of ideas. I first made a picture spelling out a family's names in scrabble letters several years ago; now they are much more common and it's easy to buy packs of the wooden letters with flat backs which are easy for gluing (for instance Hobbycraft, Amazon and the Works sell them quite cheaply).

I wasn't planning to make another one any time soon until I found this piece of wrapping paper with a fab London design. I thought it would look great in a frame, and it made me think of my friend Alice who had a birthday coming up, as she lives in central London.

 The wrapping paper, from Scribbler, features London landmarks and various city skyscrapers which I recognise from around where I work. I decided the picture needed something to stand out against the background and so I found a design in the Silhouette store and used by Silhouette Cameo to cut out a few shapes from black card:

 

The umbrella was part of the set but I decided not to use it! I mounted them on top of the backing paper and put it in the frame.

My husband thought that the scrabble letters would be the finishing touch and I wasn't sure, as they would stand out better against a plain background, but personalising a gift definitely makes it more special. I hope Alice liked it!

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 - Week 8

Last week was a bit of a strange week. Our boiler broke down, and me, my husband and our cat moved in with his mum for a whole week! I don’t know what we would have done without her – luckily she had a spare room, likes cats and was generous enough to share her home with us. It took a week for the boiler to be repaired following a catalogue of disasters – we told our home insurer we’d had to move out as the house was uninhabitable since it was so cold, and that the engineer needed to ring when he was on his way (we were only five minutes away at my mother-in-law’s). Of course, the engineer didn’t ring and since we weren’t home, went away again, and wasn’t able to come back until the next day. Then the engineer came with the wrong parts – twice! – making me wonder if the boiler was ever going to be fixed. It was finally working so after a week we were able to move back into our own house - for one night until the boiler failed again! This time they fixed it the next day, but I'm starting to think we need a new boiler..

 

 

Monday

Lunch: pitta bread with tuna

chicken chargrills for him, leftover homemade lasagne from the freezer for me

 

Tuesday- I’m working from home

Lunch: macaroni cheese on toast

Dinner: slow cooker parmesan chicken and potatoes from this recipe:

 

Wednesday

Lunch:Salad

Out in the evening with friends

 

Thursday

Lunch: salad

Delia’s creole prawns with rice for me, chicken curry for him (will freeze the other half)

 

Friday

I’m working from home due to work as I need to be working from 6am and I normally have an hour and a half commute (the company I work for is announcing its financial results)

Lunch- cheese on toast

Dinner – Slimming World sausage casserole

 

Saturday

Lunch: bacon sandwich

Dinner beef medallion steaks

 

Sunday

Lunch TBA - might go and visit my sister and niece today

Dinner TBA

 

 

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Forever Friends Envelope Birthday Card

I found this card recently when I did a big clear out of my craft stash; I'd put it aside finished but didn't use it as I couldn't find the right occasion, and then mislaid it. When I found it, I didn't think it was very good, then realised what I actually felt was that it wasn't finished.

At that point the card just had the cupcake paper on the bottom half of the card and the Forever Friends bear clutching an envelope on the top. I added a thin gold border strip along the top of the cupcake paper and the words 'happy birthday' from a set of vertical outline stickers which I normally find quite hard to use - but they were just right for this project.

I was in two minds as to whether to add the little gold balloon from the same pack but did, next to the word 'happy'.

I also had a sheet of gold letters which again are quite hard to use - you have to be really careful when writing a word to make sure none of the letters are wonky, and I've seen some people selling items on Facebook where they have spelled out a name in individual letters and they are not straight, which looks dreadful.

Luckily this card was for my friend Al so I only had to add two letters, which I put on the front of the envelope that the bear is holding, along with a little star from the same sticker pack as the 'happy birthday' words. I think it looks much better now!

I'm sending this to Jo's Scrap Shack 'anything goes' challenge.

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Super-Moist Vegan Strawberry Cake

 

I’m not that good at taking a hint, I guess. I made this vegan strawberry cake for my friend Alice’s birthday in 2013,

 

Vegan Strawberry Rose Birthday Cake - Caroline Makes http://ift.tt/1dErdfS I made this birthday cake for my friend Alice, not that we needed more cake as we also went out for afternoon tea! But I wanted to try out a chocolate transfer sheet ...

 and since then she has mentioned a few times that it was one of the best cakes she has ever had. So when it came around to her birthday this year, I thought I had better make it again!

 

I didn’t want to decorate it in exactly the same way – I covered the cake with pink fondant last time – and I recalled from reading my blog post that it was an absolutely massive cake.

 

The recipe below converts the quantities from US to UK measurements, and halves the amount. This was plenty to make a two-layer cake, which I filled and topped with vegan buttercream and fresh strawberries.

 

I brought the cake with me when I went to see Alice for her birthday and we all enjoyed a slice. The cake was really light and moist and as I’ve said often before, if you have preconceptions about vegan cakes not being good, you really must try this!

 

Vegan Strawberry Cake

 

280g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
140g caster sugar
60ml vegetable oil
600g strawberries
60ml soya milk
For the frosting:
200g vegan margarine eg Pure
400g icing sugar, sifted

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Add the oil and mix well. Puree 400g of the strawberries, keeping the rest for decoration, and mix the pureed strawberries into the cake batter along with the soya milk.

Grease an 8-inch cake tin with Cake Release or with vegan margarine. Pour the cake batter into the tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool in the tin and when cool turn out onto a board. Slice the cake through the middle so you have two layers.

Beat the vegan margarine with the icing sugar to make frosting. Spread half the frosting onto the bottom layer of cake and slice half the reserved strawberries. Arrange the strawberries on top of the frosting.

Repeat with the second layer of cake with the remaining frosting and strawberries and gently place the top layer of cake on top of the bottom one. Sprinkle with icing sugar if desired.

 

I'm sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK, and CookBlogShare, hosted by Hijacked by Twins.

 

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Restaurant review: The Founder burger at BRGR.co

Have you ever wondered how McDonald's became the behemoth that it is today? A new film called The Founder tells the story of Ray Kroc - played by Michael Keaton - who started out as a milkshake machine salesman, and realised that the two brothers who ran a burger restaurant - the McDonalds - were on to something. How he turned the fledgling business into a global company is the central story of the film: you can see the trailer here.

Soho burger restaurant BRGR.co has teamed up with the makers of the film to create the Founder burger (or Founder BRGR as it is called). It's the closest thing I've ever had to a Big Mac outside of McDonald's, and is really good!

The burger consists of two Blade steak patties with melted cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, pickled gherkins and the secret recipe BRGR.co sauce, in a triple-layer sesame bun - so the burger has an extra bun in between the two beef patties.

It's only available for a limited time, until February 26. I was invited to try it free of charge this week and was quite impressed. I'd never been to BRGR.co before; the Soho branch is just off Oxford Street and is a fairly small restaurant that looks more like a pub at first glance - dark wooden panels and furniture and a well-stocked bar. I quite liked that - some burger restaurants scream 'fast food' the minute you walk in, or look really casual and don't make me want to drink alcohol, but this looked like a nice place where you could enjoy a meal and glass of wine.

 

The Founder burger comes wrapped in paper closed with a sticker, a touch which I liked. It was really juicy and very tasty but the bun fell apart very quickly and I ended up having to eat it with a knife and fork! The fries were much better than you get in a certain fast food burger chain as well.

 The official photo, versus my photo.....

I'm definitely tempted to come back and try something else on BRGR.co's menu. I noticed that you can choose the cut of steak that is used in the burgers - blade, hanger or rump. BRGR.co claims to be the only burger restaurant in London that offers these three choices. The menu also states that all burgers are made from grass-fed Scottish cattle.

A blade steak burger is £6.95 with fries from £3 upwards (cheese fries are £4 etc) but prices go right up to £24.20 for a guacamole and bacon burger using minced rump steak with  a double patty! So on that basis the Founder burger, which has two patties and is made from the blade cut, is a relative bargain at £7.50, or £10 with fries.

My husband thought the Founder tasted so much like a Big Mac though that it should have cost the same - £2.99!

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the Founder and BRGR.co for a complimentary meal

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Cheesy Ham and Hash Brown Casserole

This is something a bit different for breakfast or brunch - a cheesy ham and hash brown casserole. I think it would work well as a side dish as part of a larger breakfast - if you were cooking for a crowd for instance. We had it on its own and my husband said it needed something like sausage or bacon with it, and as it is quite rich and calorific, I think perhaps a couple of spoonfuls with some fried eggs or similar would be better. Either way it did taste really good!

Today is Valentine's day and you could even make it if you are cooking your loved one a special breakfast. I had planned to post a Valentine's cake today but due to unforeseen circumstances have been unable to make it!

You can find the recipe here at AllRecipes.com. It's an American recipe and I have a feeling that when it lists frozen hash browns in the ingredients, it means shredded potato rather than the triangular wedges you get in the frozen food department of UK supermarkets. I've eaten that sort of hash brown before in America and it makes more sense when the recipe instructs you to mix them in a bowl, I don't imagine it means the solid triangular ones.

However that was all I had and it worked fine, if a little difficult to mix initially - but when it was baked it was perfect! I used tinned ham but you could use leftover from a roast, or add chunks of sausage or diced bacon. I couldn't get cream of potato soup so used leek and potato soup (and to be honest, I felt the recipe was crying out for some green veg! My husband doesn't like leek, otherwise I would have added sliced fresh leek). I also left the parmesan cheese off the top as I decided it was cheesy enough!

So this is what I did:
To serve 6-8 as a side dish or 3-4 as a main dish:

600-700g frozen hash browns
300g tinned ham, diced into large chunks
400g tin of leek and potato soup
150ml sour cream
250g cheddar, grated
splash of milk

 

Preheat oven to 190C. Put the frozen hash browns in a large oven proof dish. In a separate bowl or jug, mix together the soup, cream and ham. Add the grated cheddar and a splash of milk so you have a thick liquid that you can pour over the hash browns.

Pour the mixture into the ovenproof dish and carefully turn the hash browns until they are all coated and covered by the mixture. Bake in the oven for an hour.

Serve with sausages or bacon or fried eggs or as a side dish to a larger buffet brunch.

 

I'm sharing this with the Weekend brunch club linkup hosted by Gingey Bites

 

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