Cook Bake Teach

  This vegetarian pie is the perfect Sunday lunch centrepiece It's deliciously creamy and yet has a satisfying tangy flavour from the leeks. We decided to make something a bit different to the usual Sunday roast this week. I had a hankering to make some pastry, and because we had a load of leeks that needed eating up I decided to make a quiche. Only had 2 eggs though! Disaster! :) I remembered back to a delicious vegetable pie my Mum used to make, full of all sorts of veg surrounded by a creamy white sauce and crisp pastry. It was comfort food to the max. We'll go down that road I thought! Now we're big fans of cheese in this house, so rather than white sauce I decided to make it cheesy (although to be fair, it's basically the same recipe, except you chuck a load of cheese in at the end). I was hoping the kids would enjoy it more that way, but sadly Master E was in one of his stubborn moods and refused point blank to try the pie. Miss L was a bit more adventurous, but s...

I personally love banana bread, but not everyone is a fan in our household. So I thought I'd mix up my favourite recipe to try and make it a bit of a bigger hit is our house. Enter chocolate and peanut butter! Sadly, there was still only me and Miss L that loved it, but c'est la vie! Banana bread isn't for everyone :) Though it wasn't my biggest hit I thought I'd still post the recipe, because if you love banana bread, then this is a winner. The combination of cocoa and peanut butter works anyway, but I was surprised at how well it worked with banana.  

Adventures in Pasta So we made homemade pasta (recipe here ) and Miss L decided that rather than the delicious and simple lasagne I had planned, she wanted to create some equally delicious ravioli! Fair enough I thought. :) Thus resumed an hour of making ravioli. First we made the filling, which is quick an easy. You can put whatever filling you like in, and the possibilities are endless. What I would say though is that you don't want it to be too chunky. If in doubt, you could always blend the filling to remove chunks. Next you roll out the pasta. As I mentioned in the pasta dough recipe I bought a cheap pasta making machine, which works fine. However, the clamp that came with it doesn't work on our kitchen table (our table is too thick) so it's a two man job. One person to hold the machine, the second to wind the pasta through. Not ideal. However, let's assume you've got a pasta machine and it works brilliantly. Pasta Making Tips: Once you've cut your dough ...