Hello my little madeleines! Yes, that’s right, having not only spent a large amount of my time on the phone to HMRC this week, I have edged closer to true adulthood by entering gainful employment once more. (Yes I am 26, what of it). While I can’t disclose the full details just yet, I can say it is as an intern for a real life magazine so ya gal can finally say she’s a full-time (paid) journalist. I have to thank everyone who has been supporting this newsletter as I wouldn’t have kept it going without you, and wouldn’t have got this position without it.
That being said, we have to get to the practical side, which is running this newsletter. As I settle in, there won’t be as much time as usual to dedicate to FSGF, so on a preliminary basis we will now be a fortnightly newsletter, and will go out on a Sunday instead of Friday. I’ll trial this for the next month or so and see how we go, but do bear with me in the meantime.
But now, onto the good stuff.
Homemade Garlic Truffle Cream Cheese bagel
If you are looking to take your plain breakfast cream cheese bagel to the next level, may I suggest mixing a sprinkle of garlic salt and truffle oil to the cheese? It gives the topping a deeply savory and sophisticated flavour with very little hassle.
Yes Bar Vegan Chicken Bites
I have mentioned these before, but this bites are too good not to give their full dues. Chewy, but with a well-seasoned and incredibly crispy skin perfect for dipping in pink aioli.
Bleu D’Affinois
An excellent blue cheese that has very little blue in it; If you aren’t into blue cheese normally, this is a very good one to get started with. It is more reminiscent of a brie with it’s creamy texture, but the blue adds a nice little bit of tang.
Lemon Berrigon (courtesy of the Indian Tiffin Room)
After making the foolhardy mistake of going to IKEA with the full yet completely unsubstantiated belief that the restaurant would be open (why wouldn’t it be, even though you haven’t been able to eat inside a restaurant for at least four months??) we came back from our furniture trip absolutely starving. We happened across our local indian restaurant The Indian Tiffin Room, and while I may have ordered a curry that was too hot for me, I did order this amazing softail (non-alcoholic cocktail) which was some form of blueberry lemonade and it was divine. Sweet and refreshing and a great contrast for when you’re trying to play down how much your entre mouth hurts.
The Most Mushroomy Risotto
Courtesy of the bf so no recipe, but this mushroom risotto contained fresh mushrooms, dried porcini mushrooms, mushroom stock and some mushroom pate mixed in instead of butter at the end. Decadent and earthy and an outstanding contribution to blow away any memories of awful restaurant vegetarian options.
Aldi’s Cambalala Sauvignon Blanc
An incredibly affordable white wine that is smooth, not too dry and boasts the quality of a wine at least twice the marked price.
Siop Shop PB&J
Back again, this week for the vegan special, which was a peanut butter glaze combined with a raspberry jam filling. The sharpness of the fruit really cut through the nuttiness of the glaze to balance everything out. Easily one of my faves so far.
50 Ways To Use Your Deep-Roasted Sesame Dressing (pt.1)
As documented on Twitter, I may have bought a litre bottle of my favourite sesame dressing as it was better value than the smaller one. I am now on a quest to figure out as many possible uses for it. So far, this week I have had it on:
salad potatoes (excellent)
avocado toast (excellent)
sesame chicken salad (excellent, and I’ll elaborate a bit more. Semi-inspired by this recipe sent to me by my friend Cherelle, I decided to expand, switching the cabbage for a more froufrou salad. I roasted some butternut squash, which I mentioned last week, with salt, garlic pepper, paprika and chipotle chilli. then fried some quorn pieces with the sesame dressing, and accompanied this with mixed salad leaves, ripe avocado, toasted pine nuts and soft goats cheese. The squash was a bit chewy, so will repeat this either with some sweet potato instead or maybe just roast the squash for longer, but otherwise excellent combo all round).
Emma’s chocolate pear tart
This week’s homemade dessert comes courtesy of my flatmate Emma, who used some leftover pears to make a delicious chocolate ganache covered tart. It turns out ganache is much simpler to make than you think, so will definitely be trying my own iteration in future.
Aims:
Lazy Sundae
My mum is returning to Manc next week to help us get some larger stuff from IKEA, so have promised to take her to the new travel inspired ice cream bar Lazy Sundae opposite Siop Shop for variety. They also have cereal milk ice cream and well as peach tea sorbet and brown sugar ice cream, so very interested to try.
Annie’s cold sesame noodles
Fairly straightforward, this recipe combines the sesame dressing with cold noodles and vegetable ribbons as well as fried egg, which I’ve never had before.
That’s-a spicy plantballs
I bought some plantballs from IKEA so will be spending the next few weeks trying to figure out as many different recipes as possible.
That’s all for this week, but as always do get in touch! I’d love to see if you’ve made or bought anything I’ve recommended, or if you have any ideas of what to do with meatballs; in general though I’d love to hear your recipes, ideas or just a nice meal you had.
If you enjoyed my writing or found it useful, just a reminder that you can donate to my Ko-Fi or Paypal here.