RFJ: Double-Dipped Ginger & Orange Oaty Bites

I won, I won, I won! :D

And this morning I got my apron in the post! No pics of me in it as yet (and definitely not in the Greek style!) but I'll see what I can rustle up over the weekend!

The Royal Foodie Joust is a monthly event hosted by Jenn the Leftover Queen. Last month the selected ingredients were Sesame, Seafood and Cilantro - and my submission was voted top - an incredible honour.

As well as the prize of an apron, I was allowed to select the three ingredients to be used for the following month's event. I chose whole grains, ginger and citrus.

Check out all the submissions here - and if you have a food blog, be sure to vote next week!

And here is my submission!

Double-Dipped Ginger & Orange Oat Cookies

• 1 orange, juice and zest
• 2 tbsp runny honey
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 2 cups wholemeal flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 225g butter
• 0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 75g crystalised ginger, chopped
• 100g plain chocolate

Heat your oven to 175c.

Prepare the Cookies...
Mix together the oats, flour, sugar, baking powder, ground ginger and chopped crystalised ginger.

In a pan, melt the butter with the honey, orange zest and juice. Once completely melted, add the bicarbonate of soda, stir to mix in, then add to the dry ingredients. Mix well - the mixture should be crumbly, but hold form when squeezed.

I wanted to make small bites rather than huge cookies, so I rolled these into small balls about an inch an a half across. I put them on a lightly greased baking sheet and pressed to flatten slightly. Make sure you leave room for them to spread!

Bake the Cookies...
Pop in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes - do not allow to colour too much!

Take them out of the oven and allow to cool before attempting to move them.

Dip the Cookies...
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in whatever manner you see fit. (Not by chucking it in a pan over direct heat. Trust me - this never works!)

Once the cookies are cooled, dip their bases into the chocolate. Drip off the excess and put onto a flat surface. Put into the fridge until set.

I wasn't happy by the amount of chocolate that clung to my cookies - so I repeated this step - hence double-dipped!

Serve with a good strong coffee. Not for children!

Scottish Scran 3 - Trout in Oatmeal

Well, I promised you a trooty affair for the third instalment of Scottish Scran... and here it is... Trout in Oatmeal!

Trout always reminds me of my childhood in Alloa. My poppy (grandad!) used to go out fly fishing for trout down to the River Devon; many a morning I'd come down the stairs bleary-eyed to be started awake by the sight of two or three specimen waiting in the sink to be cleaned. (And on a couple of occasions, a bunny that he had managed to do a trade for if he'd got a good haul that day!)

Now, I look back and wish I had that sort of produce available to me now... but at the time I wasn't a huge trout fan - only really loving it in fish pie. I think maybe it was just a bit too strongly flavoured for my young palette - definitely not the case now.

Though I have cooked with trout many times since then - this was the first time I'd tried my hand at this very simple, but very tasty Scottish dish. Trout fillets are coated in oatmeal before being fried until crunchy, then served with parsley lemon butter.

I decided to dish it it with a spring onion potato cake, some lightly steamed, fine sliced runner beans, and a couple of oven roasted tomatoes.

And, just for a little something a little different, here's an old children's song, originally written in the 1950s by Sandy Thomas Ross in a book called Bairnsangs (i.e. Children's Songs!)

The Auld Troot

The auld broon troot lay unner a stane,

Unner a stane lay he,

An he thocht o' the wund,

An he thocht o' the rain,

An the troot that he uist tae be.

A'm a gey auld troot, said he tae hissel,

A gey auld troot, said he,

An there's mony a queer-like

Tale A cuid tell

O' the things that hae happened tae me.

They wee-hafflin trooties are aa verra smart,

They're aa verra smert, said he,

They ken aa the rules

O' the gemm aff by hairt,

An they're no aften catched, A'll agree.

They're thinkin A'm auld an they're thinkin A'm duin,

They're thinkin A'm duin, said he,

They're thinkin A'm no

Worth the flirt o' a fin

Or the blink o' a bonnie black ee.

But A'm safe an A'm smug in ma bonnie wee neuk,

A'm safe an A'm snug, said he,

A'm the big fush that

Nae fusher can heuk,

An A'll aye be that - till A dee!

I'll leave you to decipher that amongst yourselves... ah'll gie ye a heidstart, auld's old!

Trout in Oatmeal

• 2 large trout fillets
• 1 cup of fine ground oatmeal
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp butter, softened
• 2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
• The zest and juice of half a lemon
• A good grind of black pepper
• nut oil to fry
  

Prepare the Butter...
MIx together the butter, parsley lemon zest/juice and black pepper together until smooth. Place on a sheet of clingfilm and wrap tightly, before putting it back in the fridge to firm up.

Prepare the Trout...
Mix together the salt and the oatmeal. Cut each fillet of trout in two, then dip into the milk. Let the excess milk drain off, then dip into the oatmeal mixture - being sure to coat thoroughly. Place in the fridge while you prepare the sides!

Cook the Trout...
Heat a decent amount of oil in a shallow frying pan. Get it nice and hot - we want to get a good crunch going for the oatmeal - without overcooking the fish!

Carefully lay the trout into the oil, and allow to cook for a couple of minutes, until the oatmeal is nice and golden. Carefully turn and cook for another couple of minutes on the other side.

Serve!
Place the trout on a warm plate with the rosti and veg. Take the parsley butter out the fridge and cut into slice with a shape knife. Place the butter on the trout - and enjoy!

I managed to find a pic of pretty much exactly where my poppy took me fishing once. I didn't catch any trout... I don't think being a 9 year old mad child was conducive to the peace and quiet required... I wasn't asked back! But it was such a beautiful day and a beautiful place.

Scottish Word of the Day!

Greet - cry, also greeting - crying

When ma wee sister saw th' deid bunnie*, she started greetin' til ma mither said she didnae huv tae eat it! But whit she didnae ken wis that the chicken pie she et that night, may no huv been chicken efter a'!

* Oh, and here's another random Scottish fact for you - did you know that the word bunny comes from the old Scottish word 'bun', meaning rabbit??

Drunken Hobnobs... One Nibble, I was Nobbled!

Guess what? There's no booze in my hobnobs... although I was almost persuaded to add cherry brandy to them! So as you can probably tell, it was I who was drunken - not actually the hobnobs!

What are hobnobs? I hear you ask. (Well at least the non Brits! Or have Hobnobs made they're way across the seas yet??)

Hobnobs are basically a brand of oat biscuit* especially designed for dunking into tea without collapsing. I found this recipe on a forum ages ago, and they have pretty much been the only sweet thing I've made until recently! It isn't an exact replication - but it's pretty good - and some even say better - than the originals. But don't tell McVities that ;)

And why drunken? You persist. Well, [blush] a swift after-work drink turned into a long chat in the pub... and several more drinks... and then a couple more for good measure. So when I left at 10pm, insisting that I was, indeed, going to bake hobnobs to take to work the next day I was widely disbelieved. But bake them I did - and escaped pretty much unscathed**! They only lasted about 10 minutes at work this morning, so can't have been that bad ;) One of my workmates even asked for the recipe!





* read this great post by Joanna regarding the difference between biscuits, cookies and scones!

** I did make one silly mistake - adding two lots of bicarbonate of soda - one to the dry, then the proper one in the butter. They puffed up more than normal - but settled just fine. I've written the recipe as it should be though - I'm not sure I would have trusted these in my tea!

Kittie's Drunken Hobnobs!

Makes 24 hobnobs!

• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups porridge oats
• 250g butter
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 1 tbsp hot water
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Preheat oven to 180c.

Mix flour, oats and sugar together in a large mixing bowl.
Melt the butter, syrup and water in a pan - once melted stir in the bicarbonate of soda.
Add the butter mixture to the dry ingredients, and combine well.

Make smallish balls - about the size of a large unshelled walnut! Place it on a greased tray and flatten slightly.

Bake at 180oc for about 12 mins - they should be golden, not brown.

Allow them to cool on the tray.
If you put them on foil, you can transfer the foil to a wire rack... then they cool down more quickly... and then you can chow down even quicker! Bonus!

One of the pictures I took the next day - not too hungover - yay!

My First Taste & Create: Curly Wurly Cookies!

I signed up for my first ever Taste and Create last month... and that was almost as far as it went! It wasn't until I received a comment from Grace over at A Southern Grace that I realised my confirmation had been trapped by my spam filter. (At the same time, I found a missing invitation to Blogging By Mail - sad to miss that one - but can't wait for the next!)

Anyway - back to T&C!

Taste And Create is a blogging event where you sign up and are matched to another blogger at random. You then have to look through each other's blog, then make and blog about one of their recipes! As I said - I was matched up to Grace - a southern USA gal, living in New York. I've always been fairly sure I was Scarlett O'Hara in a past life - so I think it's a good match!

Grace blogged about my coconut rotis that I learned as part of my Sri Lankan cookery course - check out her recipe here!

I looked through her epicurean endeavours, and immediately fell in love with Ebenezer. I'm not a natural baker, though am trying to improve my knowledge and skills... (watch this space for efforts good and bad!) I have been thinking about creating a sourdough starter for some time. Unfortunately, with the whole notification spam thing - I only had a few days to get this blog out - nowhere near as long as I'd need to cultivate my own little sourdough pet!

So instead I opted for the Toffeed-Up Oatmeal Cookies. Given I've had moderate success in making cookies before I hoped to be successful...

Now, before I proceed any further, I'd like to give a disclaimer... My cookies don't look anything like the ones in the pictures. Something weird happened and they went very flat and thin. I'm thinking it may have been too much butter, and maybe the type of toffee... I'll let you know when I try my second batch! Unfortunately that was my last chance to bake before the deadline, so I didn't have time to try again!

However... HOWEVER... Despite appearances, they tasted amazing! I let them bake for about 8 minutes, and the toffee went all chewy, and they had a winning combination of crunch and chewiness... they just didn't look too pretty!

Curly Wurly Cookies!

It was fun using cups to measure this - I've had a set for years, but hardly ever use them!

So there was a couple of things I had to change: I was out of baking powder, so used bicarbonate of soda instead; I'm not used to measuring butter with a tablespoon, and didn't know if it meant heaped, level or rounded... I think my equivalent was about 50g; and finally Grace's recipe called for Heath bars - I figured Daim bars would be a good replacement... unfortunately the supermarket didn't have any, so I had to opt for curly wurlies!! I also did everything in the food processor - yay for lack of dishes to do!!

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup porridge oats
• 1/2 cup curly wurly, chopped
• 50g butter, at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg

Preheat oven to 180 c (350 f)

In my food processor, I mixed the butter, vanilla extract, and brown sugar to a cream.

I added the egg and whizzed until well mixed.

Add the flour, baking powder, salt and mixed until well combined, then add the porridge oats and pulsed to mix. Fold in toffee.

Place tablespoon-sized blobs of dough on cookie sheets and bake for 8 minutes or until they look "set" and the bottoms are just golden. I had to let mine cool a little before I could peel them off and pplace them to cool on a wire rack.

The original recipe said this would yield 2 dozen cookies, but I only got 14 from it. I think next time I'll add a bit less butter, and an extra 1/4 cup oats. I also think the softer caramel in curly wurlies probably broke down too much, so I will hold out for the daim bars!

Thanks for a great recipe Grace - I look forward to making a friend for Ebenezer soon!!