Madhouse recipe : Sticky Pomegranate Persian Halloumi

Last week, I told you about the first recipe that I'd made with the ingredients from Gousto - Honey Baked Gammon with Cranberry Salad & Wholegrain Mustard Mayo - and now I can share the second dish that we tried, the equally delicious Sticky Pomegranate Persian Halloumi. As I explained before, the Gousto delivery includes everything you need, except salt, pepper and oil, in exactly the right quantities so there is no faffing about measuring and zero food waste. If you're unfamiliar with halloumi, it's a salty Cypriot cheese with an extremely high melting point, which means you can fry it.

Sticky Pomegranate Persian Halloumi

ingredients (for 2) :

225g Cypriot halloumi

1 lemon

2 onions (red or brown)

150g pilavlik bulgur

10g fresh mint

1tbsp pomegranate molasses

30g sultanas

1tbsp ras el hanout

Cook the bulgur wheat in boiling salted water for 10-15 minutes (as you would pasta) until al dente, then drain and return to the pot.

While the bulgur is cooking, cut the halloumi into thick slices. Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon as well as some zest, then sprinkle over the ras el hanout, combined with some pepper to add a kick.

In a large frying pan, heat a drizzle of oil and gently fry the finely sliced onions for 5 minutes until lightly caramelised. Push them to one side of the pan and add the slices of halloumi. Cook for a couple of minutes on each side until golden.

Mix the sultanas, chopped mint, lemon zest, pomegranate molasses, remaining ras el hanout, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil through the bulgur and serve. Lay the slices of halloumi around the edges and top with lashings of fried onions.

This was a simple dish to prepare that was bursting with flavours and, again, comes highly recommended. 

Disclosure : We received a free Gousto delivery to try out the service and the recipes. Read our review here.

Giveaway #630 : Win 3 x The Mills & Boon Modern Girl's Guide To Growing Old Disgracefully - closed - winners Katie Skeoch, Tracy K Nixon and Keri Jones

The Mills & Boon Modern Girl’s Guide to Growing Old Disgracefully, published on 25th May 2017, is the sixth book in the series, with previous titles including Turning Into Your Mother, Working 9 to 5, Happy Hour, Helping Yourself and Happy Endings.

Drawing on Mills & Boon’s heritage and experience of over 100 years’ publishing for women, the Mills & Boon Modern Girl’s Guides bring together nostalgic black and white archive photographs of twentieth century women and witty twenty first century commentary from a dynamic writing duo under the pen-name Ada Adverse.

“Ada Adverse” is a larger than life character who was (supposedly) brought up in a deeply puritanical household where looking at a cake was considered a decadence punishable by a night in the coal cellar. At the age of fifteen, she ran away from home and is now the world’s leading authority on Having Fun, which is definitely an actual job, and she has ‘Fungineer’ printed on her business cards to prove it. Ada’s hobbies include topiary, mazes, homing pigeons, flea circuses, embalming things, tattoos, pylons, and the films of Billy Wilder. Ada’s dislikes include predatory macaws and getting out of the wrong side of bed. The tone is set !

Packed with indispensable tips for embracing the onset of ageing, from how to know if you are attending an actual ‘dinner party’ to the indignity of not getting ID-ed in Asda, and covering crucial topics including causing havoc in the National Trust gift shop and losing your temper with the lady from ‘customer services’, the book is a hilarious catalogue of those ladies who are letting go of their boring, well-behaved younger self and embracing their adventurous, naughty side.

 

Readers may include some of the following:

· Those who have treated afternoon tea as an ‘all you can eat opportunity’

· Those who have realised they only ever hoover these days when they are expecting guests

· Those who flatly refuse to ‘act their age’

The fun, feisty and feminist annotations and hilarious vintage photographs make this the perfect present for a mother, daughter or best friend. It's great as a coffee table book, for dipping into for a moment of light relief when you have a few minutes to spare.

“Hilarious indispensable guides to life” – Woman and Home

“These tongue-in-cheek A-Z books provide laughs galore with advice on how to survive the modern world” – Bella Magazine

“This fun and feminist series of humour books celebrates the sisterhood with a wry smile” – Red

RRP : £6.99

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Mills & Boon (18 May 2017)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0008244812
• ISBN-13: 978-0008244811
• Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 1.3 x 18.4 cm

I have three copies of the book to give away to lucky Madhouse Family Reviews readers. Fill in your entries via the rafflecopter widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

UK only. Closing date : 20/6/17

T & C's : Entries close at midnight on the closing date. Winners will be selected with a random number generator and announced on facebook and in the giveaway post subject line. Please note, you will be contacted by email and/or twitter and if I haven't heard from you after 28 days, I'll have to pick another winner. Prizes will be sent out by the companies or their PR directly to winners. Madhouse Family Reviews cannot be held responsible for any prizes that go astray !

You may also like to enter my other giveaways :

Book review : The Original Ginny Moon - Benjamin Ludwig

Being a foster parent is a hard enough job at the best of times, but taking on a special needs child takes the challenge to a whole new level. Even more so when they have a psychotic birth mother intent on getting their child back and you have your own baby on the way. Such is the situation that Maura and Brian find themselves in when they take on the inimitable Ginny Moon. It would be easy to portray them as totally altruistic, heroic, faultless individuals but the book is more realistic than that, showing them at times pushed to their limits by Ginny's testing behaviour and making dubious parenting choices. Maura in particular has a hard time keeping Ginny close when she feels that her own newborn is at risk. But Ginny, with her unique take on the world, is a heart-melting, extremely lovable if not always likeable teenager and you can't help but empathise with her, even when she's painstakingly planning on how to get herself kidnapped or trying to burn the house down !

Anyone who has ever lived or worked with an autistic child will recognise many of the common behavioural patterns, such as needing to eat a specific number of grapes for breakfast or not being able to deal with more than one question at a time, but just as in the real world, every child is unique and Ginny has her own complex backstory and hang-ups to deal with. Having had a very traumatic early childhood before being taken into care, she has come a long way and developed into a very caring and fiercely loyal person - unfortunately this isn't the way she always comes across so fitting into her new Forever Home, and the world at large, isn't always smooth sailing.

By turns poignant and funny, it sucks you in and has you compulsively turning the pages, desperate to find out if Ginny will get the happy ending that she undoubtedly deserves. The author, Benjamin Ludwig, has drawn on his own experiences of adopting an autistic child in this book, and this really comes across in his endearing, enlightening and brutally honest narrative.

star rating : 5/5

RRP : £12.99

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: HQ (1 Jun. 2017)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848455429
• ISBN-13: 978-1848455429
• Product Dimensions: 15.9 x 3.2 x 24 cm

Disclosure : I received a review copy of the book in order to share my honest opinion.

Globecooking recipe : Cheat's Jamaican Patties

Jamican patties are little pastry parcels, similar to pasties, filled with a curried mince and pea mixture. The pastry is usually made with turmeric to give it a lovely yellow colour, but I was in a rush so I cheated, using ready-made puff pastry and brushing the tops with melted butter mixed with turmeric. This worked just as well and made them a fuss-free mid week meal that the whole family enjoyed.

 Cheat's Jamaican Patties

ingredients :

1 pack ready made puff pastry

1tbsp butter

1 tsp turmeric

1 pack minced beef

drizzle of olive oil

1 onion

2tsp curry powder (to taste)

salt, pepper

a small amount of beef stock (optional)

1/2 cup frozen peas

Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the onions for 2 minutes, then add the mince and cook until it is completely brown.

Add the frozen peas and continue to cook for 5 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper and add the curry powder. You can add a very small amount of beef stock if you want a moister filling but you don't want it too runny or it will be hard to fill the pastry cases.

Cut circles out of the pastry.

Hold a circle of pastry in one hand, dollop a spoon full of filling in the middle and use your fingers to flip over the other half of the disc and crimp the edges, making sure it is sealed all the way round. Melt the butter, mix in the turmeric and brush the tops of the patties.

Bake for 10-15 minutes at 200° until puffed up and browned. Serve with rice and mango salsa (mango, red pepper, spring onion and a squeeze of lime juice).

*** Don't miss my country-by-country globecooking recipe index ! ***

#MySundayphoto #SundaySnap 4/6/17

Cap Blanc Nez, near Calais, France

May #KitchenClearout roundup and June linky

Summer's here and the time is right for dancing in the street ... well, maybe not, but it's definitely time for switching over to some lighter meals packed with fresh fruit, vegetables and salad ingredients, which is great for the waist but bad for the waste, as they are all things that tend to go off quicker than you can eat them. Never fear, my trusty bunch of #KitchenClearout participants have some cunning recipe ideas up their sleeves. Jane from Onions & Paper also had a genius idea - clearing out the recipe books that are cluttering up the kitchen (and the rest of the house - glad I'm not the only one), making three recipes and deciding whether to keep or pass on to the charity shop. Here's this month's roundup of cunning dishes to clear out the fridge and cupboards. 

Balmoral Chicken was an interesting way of using up a pack of haggis from the freezer, as well as some sweet potato croquettes. It's a chicken breast, stuffed with haggis and wrapped in pancetta.

Creamy Sweetcorn Chicken with Rice was what the kids ate while we ate the Balmoral Chicken, thrown together with the odds and ends from the fridge.

Chicken Potat-razzini was a cheeky twist on a classic American dish, Chicken Tetrazzini, which is usually made with pasta. Chicken, mushrooms, peas and potato in a creamy sauce, topped with breadcrumbs, parmesan and grilled onions - delicious, family friendly and perfect for using up leftovers.

Haggis puffs used up the rest of the haggis, along with cooked potatoes, tomatoes and cheese that were looking past their best in the fridge.

Red kidney beans, peas and ham hock salad was another delightful combination from Galina at Chez Maximka, and once again, she's produced a plateful of food that wouldn't look out of place in a posh restaurant.

Chalupas de salsa verde were little homemade corn tortillas that could be topped with green salsa and whatever other delights were in the fridge - in our case, some barbecued chicken and the end of a tub of feta.

I wasn't overly keen on Mexican soup, Sopa de Lima, with flavours of chicken, tomato and lemon that I found too bitter, but it finished off the barbecued chicken and a dried lemon that was lurking in the spice rack.

Peanut & Raisin Cookies used up the end of a tub of margarine and a bag of peanuts and raisins from a Christmas hamper.

Jane from Onions & Paper made a trio of dishes from a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook -  Chana Aloo Chaat, Chilli Champ and Aloo Gobi - which tasted great, used up loads of odds and ends and convinced her that this book was a keeper.

Another fabulous salad and another fabulous photo from Galina at Chez Maximka - Grilled Tuna and Courgette Salad. I think Galina should become a food stylist as she has a definite eye for photographic foodie flair.

Much less pretty but a decent family-friendly midweek meal all the same - Cheesy Tomato Topped Mince is like a lighter version of cottage pie, with tomatoes instead of potatoes.

Fancy joining in? Have a rummage through your kitchen cupboards, spice rack, freezer or fridge and see if there's anything that needs using up then come and share your creations with us. Or if it's way past its sell-by date, throw it in the bin and come and tell us what you found ! It would be great if you could add my badge and a link to this post for anyone else who wants to get involved.

What's Cooking at The Madhouse? menu plan 2/6

This week will be a weird one. On Saturday, I'll be tired out after a day trip to London with the pupils, leaving at 5.45am and getting home at 10.30pm. Monday is a bank holiday, which will give me time to recover, but Tuesday and Thursday I have after school meetings until quite late. Time for some easy options this week, I think. The good news is, I've finished all my marking for this school year and I only have three more classes to go for the end-of-year reports. I can also smell the sun cream !

Saturday

lunch - it's that time of week again ... McDonald's ! Actually we've defected to Burger King lately but it's the same idea.

dinner - soup - maybe French onion, or tomato, or leek, potato and bacon (I can choose at the last minute because I have everything I need for all of them)

Sunday

lunch - probably BBQ, if not, it'll be roast dinner.

dinner - fridge grazing or leftover soup

Monday 

lunch - leftover cooked meat from yesterday with noodles, veg & sweet soy sauce

dinner - quiche with salad & baby potatoes

Tuesday 

dinner - chicken adobo with rice

Wednesday 

lunch - homemade fish cakes with mash & mushy peas

dinner - spicy duck with salad & noodles

Thursday 

dinner - Tlayudas which are like Mexican pizzas, made on tortillas (or I'll be using flatbread)

Friday  

dinner - spaghetti bolognese

***Click on my Menu Plans tag to see all my other weekly menu plan blogposts.***

Join in with the weekly meal plan bloghop !

Madhouse diaries : Vintage vehicle rally in the town centre

Life has been a blur lately - what with having stupid amounts of end-of-year marking to get through plus a sudden burst of activity on my family tree research that has had me transferring everything over to the Ancestry website to connect with other distant relatives, I haven't been taking much time to blog much lately, so I have about a month's backlog of days out and recipe posts to share. Oops ! 

This day out was actually a month ago and was one of the first sunny days we'd had so we couldn't resist popping into town to check out the displays of vintage cars and vehicles that were parked in strategic locations around the town centre. The first ones that we looked at didn't look that old to me, but maybe that's just me showing my age !

There didn't seem to be much logic to the way they were set out because right next to them were the oldest vehicles.

Some of the owners had added vintage accessories, such as these old fashioned suitcases in the roof rack, which really helped imagine how old they are.

 Others looked more like life-sized versions of children's toys !

There's something about round headlights that always make cars look happy - or is that just me ?!

There were also a few military vehicles from the Operation Dynamo museum.

With Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk movie coming out this summer, the town is really highlighting its links to the past and World War II.

I'm not sure this boxy shape would be very popular today - it looks like a coffin on wheels !

 As we headed around, we bumped into a couple of policemen - the one on the right was French but the one on the left was pretending to be English, which totally confused Pierre ... especially when he told him (in broken English) that he could pet his pretend dog ! I think Pierre was trying to work out if he was totally crazy or just playing a game and he certainly wasn't sure either way ! A bit further on, we moved from policemen to firemen.

The fire engines don't seem to have changed all that much over the years.

The sirens weren't very hi-tech in the olden days though !

After a while, I started looking at the people just as the much as the cars.

 There were so many men standing around contemplating them like they were utter works of art, making enthusiastic noises when the proud owners opened the bonnets to show off the engines. Not something I can ever get excited about really but each to their own !