Sanna's Kitchen

Scratch is a new company that makes fresh meal kits for one, so that busy people can have the pleasure of cooking quick and tasty meals. The ingredients are fresh, washed and pre chopped, so all you have to do is follow the instructions and you’ll be ready to eat in about 10 minutes. In addition to allowing people to eat healthier, Scratch also has the potential to reduce the amount of food waste, by eliminating the need to buy big bags of ingredients that end up going old in the fridge.

Scratch meals arrived to Sainsbury’s Locals around London in April 2012, and are due to go national later this year.

The recipes were developed together with Michel Roux, whose restaurant waterside Inn is the only one outside of France to have been awarded three Michelin Stars for 25 years in a row. There are four different meals kits available:

- Chicken thai green curry with bamboo shoots

- Makhani chicken tikka masala

- Tagliatelle pistachio pesto and cherry tomatoes (vegetarian)

- King prawn & chorizo paella

I tried out the first three of them…

Chicken thai green curry with bamboo shoots

This meal kit contains rice, pieces of chicken breast, green curry paste, coconut milk, sugar snap peas, bamboo shoots and a kaffir lime leaf. The estimated cooking time is 7 minutes, but for me it took close to 10.

After the addition of the coconut milk, the sauce became very runny, which was quite nice with the rice. The taste was somewhat spicy and quite sweet. The sugar snap peas and bamboo shoots were an exquisite addition.

Makhani chicken tikka masala

This meal kit contains rice, pieces of chicken breast, makhani paste, red pepper, tomato passata, a curry leaf and some natural yoghurt. The estimated cooking time for this meal is 8 minutes, but for me it took 11.

The final step of the recipe was the addition of the natural yoghurt to the sauce. There was therefore a very strong taste of yoghurt in the ready meal, perhaps a little too strong. The dish as also somewhat spicy.

Tagliatelle pistachio pesto and cherry tomatoes

This meal kit contains pasta, pistachio pesto, courgette, cherry tomatoes, green olives, rocket and a chunk of lemon. The estimated cooking time for this meal is just 5 minutes, but for me it took 7.

This meal was my favourite one. The pistachio pesto was very mild and pleasant and the pasta itself was excellent. The cherry tomato and courgette were delicious too. I almost forgot to add the rocket, but noticed it last minute.

Verdict: The meals were very quick and easy to prepare (plus they made my kitchen smell wonderful). The tikka masala was my least favourite, but the other two meals were great and I would certainly buy them again. Definitely worth a try!

Looking at recipes for falafel I realised just how easy it was, so I wanted to try making some. It wasn’t quite so easy though. Firstly the ingredient were so dry that they stuck to the sides of the food processor and the blade was just whizzing away in the air. Secondly I put too much parsley, as the recipe just said a handful (guess I have big hands!). Thirdly it was impossible to evenly fry the balls on the pan, so in the end I put them into the oven. I definitely need some practice to perfect these, but they were tasty anyway. Here’s the recipe I used, just made them smaller and rounder.

We tried making a new pasta shape - tortellini, because so far we have only attempted linguini (the easiest). It was a lot of work, and not really worth it, as it turned out that we do prefer linguini.

The amazing salmon sauce is my trusted recipe, that I have already used many times. It is so good that it literally makes your taste buds sing hallelujah :D

Here’s the recipe for the sauce (serves 2):

150 g sliced smoked salmon

50 g finely chopped red onion

60 g finely chopped leek

4 g dried dill (I used fresh dill)

2 g single cream

160 g pasta

Gently fry the onion and leek on a pan until very tender. Add the cream and heat up, while stirring, until the cream thickens. Add the dill and salmon. Check the taste and add freshly ground black pepper and salt, if required.

I’m happy that I finally got to make sushi at home, thanks to my Taiwanese friend. It was actually really easy, just required some preparation. We had smoked salmon, cucumber and carrot in most of them, but made some with only sushi and some with chicken. We couldn’t be bothered to buy wasabi, as so little gets used, so we just had plenty of ginger and soy sauce. Very nice!

It’s been years since I last made ribs, so it was definitely time to give them another go. Unfortunately I don’t own a barbecue, so I had to cook them in the oven… but they were super yummy anyway.

I removed the transparent “film” from the underside of the ribs and cut it up to single ribs. I marinated them overnight in the following marinade:

- 50 ml olive oil

- 2 tbsp honey

- 2 garlic cloves (finely chopped)

- some dry herbs (oregano, thyme)

- juice of half a lemon

- salt and pepper

I arranged the ribs onto an oven tray and covered the tray with silver foil. I cooked the ribs at 140 °C for 2 1/2 hours, which made them extremely tender.

This is a nice, easy and fresh starter or side dish. Try to find really sweet tomatoes, as tasteless ones ruin the whole thing!

Chop up some tomatoes (around 1 per person). Put them into a sieve over a bowl and sprinkle on some salt. Let the excess water drop away while you do the rest. Finely chop up some basil and some onion (the sweeter the better). Combine these with the tomato in a serving bowl. Drizzle on some olive oil and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Give it a mix and decorate with a whole basil leaf. Serve with some nice toasted bread.

This love story began when I had a Belgian Chocolate Tiffin in Costa Coffee a few months ago. It was incredibly good (and a bit of it falling on the floor left me nearly heartbroken)! Anyway, I searched the internet for recipes and found a plethora of different ones. I finally decided to use a recipe from my BBC GoodFood book called “101 Cakes & Bakes”. All I can say is: SUPER EASY, SUPER GOOD, SUPER ADDICTIVE :D

200 g digestive biscuits

100 g butter

3 tbsp golden syrup (I do not add this, as the result is sweet enough without it)

2 tbsp cocoa powder

50 g raisins (optional)

100 g dark chocolate

Butter an 18 cm sandwich tin. Put the biscuits into a strong plastic freezer bag and bash into uneven crumbs with a rolling pin. Melt the butter and syrup in a pan. Stir in the cocoa and the raisins, and finally the biscuit crumbs. Mix well. Spoon into the sandwich tin and press down firmly.

Melt the chocolate, spread over the biscuit base and chill for at least half an hour.

This recipe is from an Italian cookbook that I once had a look at. I’ve used it many times, as it has a very nice flavour and it’s very simple.

4 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped or grated

some cherry tomatoes (perhaps 15), quartered

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 tsp sugar

100 ml dry white wine

olives, whole or chopped

basil leaves, torn to pieces

parmesan

Heat 3 tbsp of the olive oil in a pan. Fry the onion and garlic on medium heat until softened. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and wine. Let simmer on low heat until the sauce thickens. Add the olives and basil. Check the taste and season with salt and pepper as required. Serve with some grated parmesan cheese.

I recently bought Jamie Oliver’s “Cook with Jamie” and the first thing I tried from it was his lime and mascarpone icing for carrot cake. It was REALLY good, I much prefer it to the usual cream cheese icing. For the cake I used my own carrot cake recipe, because his contains a staggering 285 g of butter! I made the cake in a loaf tin, which is not the best choice. It’s nicer to get more surface area to spread the icing on. Below are some photos and the recipe for the icing.

I made a few cupcakes with excess batter

Previously made carrot cake with more surface area

Icing:

225 g cream cheese (I used 200, as that was the size I found)

115 g mascarpone cheese (you can put a bit more to make up for the missing cream cheese)

85 g icing sugar

zest and juice of 2 limes (I didn’t use the juice of both)

Just mix all the ingredient together and spread on top of the cake. You can decorate with some chopped walnuts.

This pie is so easy to make and tastes really good! I highly recommend it! When making it, check if the salmon is very salty and adjust the amount of salt accordingly.

For the base:

Store bought or home made short crust pastry

For the filling:

1 leek

1 onion

200 - 300 g smoked salmon

a bunch of dill

200 ml single cream

3 eggs

some grated cheese

Spread the short crust pastry into a greased pie dish. Finely chop the leek and the onion and fry them in a pan with a bit of oil until tender. Cut the salmon and dill into small pieces and add them to the pan. At this point you can turn off the heat. In a bowl, mix the eggs into the cream. Spread the salmon and onion filling on the base and then pour in the creamy egg mixture. Sprinkle some grated cheese on top and bake in the oven at 180 °C for about 30 minutes. Let the pie rest and cool down for about 10 minutes, decorate with some fresh dill and serve.

I saw this recipe and  I knew that I had to make it!! I ended up cooking it in the oven for almost five hours. There was a strong taste (possibly from the wine) that was a bit overpowering, but otherwise it was a very good stew and just got better as the days went by. I had potato, carrot and parsnip as the veggies.

This cake was a bit of a strange idea, but worked pretty well. My boyfriend requested it, because he loves eating chocolate with fairy cakes (and other plain cakes).

I first made the top layer using my trusted lemon cake recipe. I then removed the cake from the tin and made a chocolate tiffin in it, using the melted chocolate layer to “glue” the lemon cake onto it. Worth a try!

Made this for my boyfriend’s birthday. It tasted really good and the hazelnut decoration looked great (I left space in the middle for candles). However as you can see it does not bear much resemblance to the original. That’s because the icing was very runny compared to what it was supposed to be. I don’t really see how it is possible… maybe some double creams are thicker than others? Also, I only used about half of the icing. Here’s the recipe.

A few times I’ve bought a nice hummus wrap from a shop and wanted to recreate it at home. It turned out to be really good, so I’ve now had it four nights in a row :D

Inside the wrap I have some cucumber, orange/red pepper, a few rocket leaves (or what ever I happen to have in the fridge), plus of course the hummus. I’ve been a bit lazy and bought the hummus in the supermarket, but it’s really easy to make at home.

I planted some herbs on our balcony, so I had quite a bit of basil to use up. I decided to use it as the base for a salad. I bulked it up with some rocket, red pepper and toasted pine nuts. Finally I drizzled it with olive oil and ground a bit of salt and black pepper on it. Very simple and good!