Olive, ham and rosemary twist-tastic!

I was invited to a New Year's eve party so I thought I'd take one of my signature dishes, olive, rosemary and pancetta bread sticks. I have made them quite a few times now. I started by mixing together the salt, flour and dried yeast.

Then I heated some milk and olive oil until it was lukewarm and added it to the mixture.

Now for the sticky bit. I kneaded the dough to get it nice and bouncy (or tried to - it was really sticky.)

But eventually it looked like this.

I kneaded in some chopped olives and some chopped up rosemary from the garden and divided it up into 16 balls.

Then my mum rolled them into sausages and I wrapped them in pancetta ham.

Time for a little break - while they were cooking I took my chance and scoffed the rest of the olives...

This is what they looked like after we took them out of the oven - I wish you could smell them! (I had to put up with the smell - not because it was horrible but because I wasn't allowed to eat them yet.)

And here are my bread sticks and me ready to go to the party!

The finished Christmas Goalie Cake!

It's time to finish the Christmas cake. This is going to be the best Christmas for cakes that has ever happened! Pass me the rolling pin Mr Bond...

Here I am getting ready to deal with the marzipan! Mwah ha haaaa! 

After I had rolled out the marzipan, using my special mathematical rolling pin that guarantees a 2mm thickness (apparently), I needed some glue to stick it to the cake. So I boiled up some apricot jam and spread it over the cake. This will make sure the marzipan sticks.

I put the marzipan on and cut round the edges of the cake to make it look neat.

Now for the icing! 

I decided this year to take up my counsin Bekah's suggestion and let's just say, have a Christmas cake with a twist. A goalkeeping twist! Look's like Santa's finally ready for some exercise! Good save Keeper!

Here is the final result. Hope you like it! (Because if you don't - I've got my rolling pin!!!)

Christmas Cake

Welcome back to The Cooking Goalie. Sorry it's been a while - I've been a bit busy. Anyway this year my Mum said me and my brother could make the Christmas cake so we did it in half-term. Here we are, at the ready with all the gear.

Jamie was in charge of measuring the ingredients as usual. That's his job. I am mixing together the dry ingredients - flour, mixed spice and some salt.

Here I ahem attempted to mix together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Oh dear. We are still finding bits of it on the walls.

Here the Cooking Goalie's Brother is chopping up the glace cherries and trying not to eat them all. They are his favourite.

I am mixing the eggs and treacle into the flour. And  then all the currants, sultanas and raisins go in. And mixed peel. And lemon zest and brandy. You have to do this with a metal spoon and try not to knock out all the air otherwise the cake will be flat as a pancake. (As you might have noticed I am now wearing a very professional chef's hat from a posh shop in London.)

The Cooking Goalie's brother is having a go at mixing all the ingredients together. My mum thinks I may have been on the brandy.

This is the cake just before it goes into the oven...

...and this is it about 4 hours later. We stuck a skewer in it to make sure it was cooked. I will decorate it before Christmas - watch this space. Suggestions for decorations on my blog comments please, otherwise it will be the usual Nativity set.

Pesto, bourbons, fishing

June 2010

This time I decided to make linguine al pesto. To make the pesto I mushed up some garlic and some pine nuts then added some basil leaves, parmesan and olive oil. It makes a nice green paste. This is a picture of my pesto.

We then put some pasta in some salted water and left to boil. When it was cooked we mixed it into the pesto. This is what the recipe thought it should look like :

But I made it better by adding - SALAMI !!!!

Then I decided to make some bourbon biscuits. I had to rub flour and cocoa powder into the butter first.

I added an egg and some sugar. And some golden syrup. Then I had to roll out the mixture and cut it into long biscuit shapes. I pricked them with a fork because that's how bourbons look.

This is the cooked version.

I then mixed up some icing sugar, cocoa paste and butter and put it in the whisker. I left it in the fridge overnight to firm up and then spread it in between the biscuits.

This is a picture of my luxurious bourbons!

This is me on my first fishing trip. I am catching a fish.

And here it is! Not bad eh?

Postcard biscuits

Our granny went on holiday in the Lake District  last week and sent us a postcard with a recipe on it  for Parkins.

Here is the Cooking Goalie's brother weighing out the ingredients and the Cooking Goalie making sure he is getting it right.

The Cooking Goalie's brother is now asleep while I get on with rubbing the butter into the flour and oatmeal.

(The Cooking Goalie's brother, Jamie, says "I'm boooooooored!)

The mixture was brown sugar, oatmeal, mixed spice and ginger, golden syrup and butter.

Then the mixture was rolled out. By me.

And it was cut into shapes. By him.

We put them in the oven and went outside to play and my mum left them in the oven too long. They were very tasty but rock solid!

Kicking, Cooking, Cricket

                      SAVE! Just to prove that I am, really, a goalie.

 

This time I was making fish wraped in prosciutto with roast vegetable but as you can see I had my usual trouble with the onions!

 I chopped up carrots, spring onions, red onions and put a tin of tomatoes and some extra passata over them. The green stuff is flat leaf parsley. I added some pepper to give it a bit more HARRRRR!

I wrapped the fish (which was called pollack) in some prosciutto ham. It all went in the oven . (The veg went in the oven earlier)

I have now magically transformed into a cricket player because Friday evening is cricket night.

Here I am holding my tea. All we have to do now is serve it out.

 Here's me enjoying my food. (Well except the broccoli...)

Stuff

Sorting eggs we collected from the chickens on holiday

I got Man of the Match at football this week.