As you know I am following the 366 photo challenge. Here are this week's photos.

So I had some left over orange pastry that was intended for my orange mince pies but now that it is January I figure I might as well think of something else to do with it. I decided to try a twist on a lemon meringue tart. I made 12 mini tarts. This is loosely based on a recipe for Blood Orange Meringue Tarts in The Australian Women's Weekly Complete Book of Cupcakes and Baking.

For the orange pastry
250g plain flour
20g caster sugar
125g butter
Orange zest
Orange juice to bring the pastry together

Method

1. Rub butter and flour together.
   
2. Add sugar and orange zest.
   
3. Use the orange juice to bring the pastry together.
   
4. Knead the pastry.
   
5. Roll out to 4mm thin and cut out rounds and fit them into a muffin tin. I used a flower shaped cutter. Prick the pastry all over.
   
6. Place the muffin tin and pastry into the fridge for 30 mins.
7. If you have baking beans line the cases with baking parchment and add the baking beans. Bake for 10 minutes in the oven at 180C.

For the orange curd
110g caster sugar
160ml orange juice
2 tablespoons water
75g unsalted butter
2 yolks (save the whites for the meringue)
2 tablespoons cornflower




Method

1. Melt the sugar and cornflower in a pan.
2. Gradually stir in the orange juice until smooth.
3. Cook stirring until the mixture thickens then take off the heat and stir in the butter and yolks.
4. Cool and then pour into the cooked pastry cases.
5. Place in the fridge for an hour to set.

For the meringue
Two egg whites
110g caster sugar

Method

1. Beat whites until there are soft peaks
2. Gradually combine sugar.
3. Pipe the meringues onto the tarts. 
4. Bake at 220C for 3 minutes.

I am entering this into Tea Time Treats organised by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked. This months theme is Sweet Pastries and Breads.

I am also adding this to the #citruslove blog hop currently being hosted by mis pensamientos.

I met up with a some lovely food bloggers this week for a wonderful lunch at Odette's in Primrose Hill. There was a whole little gang of us including Karen from Lavender and Lovage, Vanessa Kimbell from Goddess on a Budget, Charlotte who has her own gluten free cake business at Go Free Cakes, Jude at A Trifle Rushed, Solange from Pebble Soup, Fiona from London Unattached, Ren from Fabulicious Food and Helen from Fuss Free Flavours. All blogs I recommend checking out.  We spent the time discussing our blogs and oohing and ahhing at the food. 

If you want to learn a bit more about the Chef behind the name, you can listen to Vanessa interviewing Bryn Williams about his vision for Odette's and the dishes they create. 

Here are the photos of my three courses. I had the salmon parfait served with capers, the rabbit served with cous cous and aubergine and the vanilla floating islands. They were all divine.  

So as part of my new Turquoise Lemons No Waste Food Challenge I want to try and reduce the amount of food I waste. I had some leftover cream that I don't really want to pout over puds as I am trying to avoid the extra post Christmas calories. I keep complaining about how much butter costs at the moment and so inspired by the Fabulous Baker Boys on tv and my trusty Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall Family Cookbook I decided to try and make butter with my leftover cream. It worked like a dream!

Maybe it is the kid in me but I love watching something turn into something else. As well as creating butter you also end up with buttermilk which always seems to be asked for in numerous baking recipes. I also often see cheap pots of cream in the supermarket which I will now be buying to make budget homemade butter. 

Method

1. Make sure the cream is at room temperature. It helps if the cream is near its sell by date.
2. Take a hand whisk or mixer and beat the cream. You will see it whip up and become thick. Once it thickens slow down the mixer. As soon as the cream separates it happens very quickly and it can become very messy.
3. You will now have lumps of butter and a thin watery milk called buttermilk.
4. Fill another bowl with cold water and place the butter lumps in here.
5. Store the buttermilk in the fridge or freezer for use in other recipes.
6. Swirl the butter lumps in the water.
7. Using your hand form the butter lumps into a big ball squeezing out the buttermilk all the time.
8. Change the water and wash the butter lump continu.
9. Repeat this until the water runs clear. This is important as it gets rid of any residual buttermilk with can turn the butter rancid.
10. Take the butter lump and press it firmly on a surface squeezing out any leftover buttermilk.
11. Wash again and then wrap in greasproof paper and keep in the fridge.

If you have any inventive and unusual ways of using up leftover cream why not enter the challenge.

I made two of these as presents for friends. They each use a leg of an old pair of jeans and a couple of old shirts and scraps of fabric.

I haven't been able to blog much in the last few days because of my wrists but I have spent quite a while thinking about different things for the blog this year. 

One of my new year's resolutions is to not waste so much food. I always buy more than I use. Inspired by the love food hate waste campaign I have come up with the idea of setting myself a monthly challenge to use a particular ingredient that often goes spare in my kitchen. These are sometimes ingredients that are in season and therefore are given to me buy veg growers, or food that turns up in my veg box regularly or food that is used in a few recipes but then has leftovers. 

I have already been cooking this way on the blog for quite a while. Last autumn saw a big focus on using up the apples that were kindly given to me and recently I just blogged the blue cheese biscuits which used up my left over blue cheese. By opening up the chance to all my blogger friends I'm hoping that we will all inspire each other to use up something that often goes to waste. For some of my more experienced foodie blogger friends I think this might be quite a simple task but is is something I really struggle with and would like to improve this year. I would like to collate a medley of less obvious recipes than the normal suggestions. So be imaginative and let's see what we can do.

So at the beginning of each month I will set the ingredients for the challenge. Please feel free to suggest ingredients that you often have lying around and don't manage to use up.

Challenge conditions

1. Please send an e-mail of your challenge entry to turquoiselemonsblog@gmail.com by the end of the month.
2. Please include the title, recipe and a link to your post. If the recipe is not your own make sure you credit the author. 
3. Feel free to republish old posts just make sure you add a link to the challenge and add the challenge badge.
   
4. Make sure you email before the end of the month.
5. Please also include a link back to this blog and use the badge below.

At the end of the month I will do a roundup post and hopefully we'll all have more imaginative ways of using up those things that we often waste from our food shops. I'm hoping that this challenge will help me save money and make me more aware of the food that I'm wasting and how to turn it into something tasty. 

January challenge: cream
I have some leftover double cream  and as I am trying to be more healthy in the new year I don't want to eat pudding or pour it all over cake so I will be looking for a way to use my cream in a different way. Looking forward to seeing what we come up with.

Last night my boyfriend really craved a cheeseburger. We are not fast food people and so decided to make our own burgers. I first made burgers with my godmother when I was a little kid, I really enjoyed getting my hands messy and if you have kids I would suggest making these with them. Because I am still suffering with RSI Greg did most of the making!

Makes 6 burgers

What you need:
500g lean mince
1 slice of bread
1 onion
Salt, pepper, cumin and mixed herbs to taste
Cheese
1 egg

Method

1. Take the slice of bread and rub it between your hands, over a big bowl, to make breadcrumbs.
2. Season with salt and pepper and add cumin, mixed herbs and anything else you like. It's great fun to experiment.
3. Finely slice an onion and add to the bowl.
4. Add the mince and beaten egg and mix together with your hands. 
5. Make the mixture into burger shapes and either shallow fry or grill. We did ours in our George Foreman grill. I also added a small piece of brie into the middle my burger.
6. Add toasted burger bun, tomato, lettuce and cheese.

As this recipe is brilliant to make with kids and easy to knock up with a pack or mince I have entered this into Ren Behan's Family Friendly Friday recipe round up.

2012 in photos

This year I am hoping to follow the 366 photo challenge and take a photo representing each day of 2012. I realise I have come to this a week late but hope it isn't too late to start. These will be quick spur of the moment photos usually taken with my camera phone.  I will be linking up with Suzie's blog to provide me with inspiration but on particular days I may stray from the theme to show something in particular.  

Hello all. Just a quick note to say I am currently struggling with some RSI on my right hand and have been advised to use it as little as possible for two weeks. So using my left hand instead and relying heavily on Greg for everything. He might have to do some blog post typing too!

In the meantime have a peruse at the Yummy Food pages if you are looking for recipes, or Craft Makes or Homemade Gifts if you are looking for simple tutorials. 

I absolutely love making these biscuits with any left over blue cheese. They brighten up my lunchbox and are lovely with chutney. They are also super simple to make.

Ingredients
350g plain flour
150g cold butter
120g blue cheese
30g poppy seeds
Pinch of salt

Method

1. Rub the butter and flour together. 
   
2. Crumble in the blue cheese and add the poppy seeds.
   
3. Work together until the mix forms a dough.
   
4. Cut or roll out biscuits
   
5. Bake for 10 - 15 at 180c mins until golden.
   

These freeze well. Makes about 30 medium sized biscuits or 40 small biscuits.