Mitchell, St Andrews - The Parentals are visiting!

My stepfather has never been to my flat before, and I've been in the same place for over a year now. They both drove up in the morning, had a cup of tea and then we jetted of for a walk around St Andrews.
I think overall St Andrews is a nicer place to stroll through compared to Dundee. It's a much more quaint town and it doesn't seem to be overrun with huge chain shops yet, which is a nice change to the city centre here.
We stopped for lunch at a place called Mitchell. This place just screams comfort from the outside. They had bags of fresh veg sitting outside and a deli up front with cheese, wine, meat, jams, chutneys, you name it! That's my personal idea of heaven. Inside had a rustic vibe with good basic food that was more about the produce than the complexity. Think anti pasti and big sandwiches.
I ordered a typical ploughman's with smoked ham, cheese and chutney. My mum had a classic breaded fish and chips and Steve pesto chicken. He had to avoid the gluten.
Afterwards we had a massive binge in the deli. I bought some pate, turkish delight, christmas coffee and stroopwaffels. My mum bought similar, but with a mulled cider spices for next weekend.

 I also had a hot chocolate as thats my go to drink when out for lunch. Mitchell luxury hot chocolate does not disappoint. I nearly died.

My 'haul' :

We headed back to the flat in the afternoon to watch the rugby, then went back out again for some dinner at Rishi's.
Rishi's is a new indian restaurant that has opened near me quite recently. They served the best pakora I've ever tried. Apart from that I spent the majority of the meal trying to work out what kind of fish was in my curry. Turns out it was kingfish so that was a new one for me!

Hope everyone else had a foodtastic weekend. I'm off to bake!

Simple Sundays - Puddings, Sorting and Furry Knuckles.

Don't you just love productive days?
I woke up with every intention of having a lazy day. I wanted to lie on the sofa, maybe play Mario and catch up with some TV. In the end I sorted out my entire wardrobe. I've found that most of my clothes are sitting untouched now because it's been too cold, so it was nice to swap out all my flouncy shirts for cosy jumpers. Bring on the maroons, navy blues, mustard yellows and evergreens.

I also made a Jossy's Lemon Pudding Delicious from the Leon Baking & Puddings book. This recipe is beyond tasty. I cannot put into words how tasty this recipe is. Light and airy but soft and sticky underneath. The recipe calls to put the soufflé dish in a tray of water whilst in the oven. I've never tried a recipe that does that before, so I was a bit wary. I found it hard to stop eating it though, so I think it turned out great!

This weeks purchase included jewellery. For anyone that knows me well, I don't wear jewellery.  That's not to say I don't like it, just that I get fed up of wearing it very easily. I really loved this though after seeing it on Etsy. Also, how weird does my hand and arms look in that photo?

And that's all for this Sunday. It's been a fairly uneventful week, but I suppose that happens every now and again.

Hope you've all had a lovely weekend!

SYGN - thats not ketchup.

I went up to Edinburgh to see my friend Fiona for an afternoon of shopping and food. The latter being more important to us!

In the morning it was absolutely pouring down but it managed to clear up by mid afternoon, which was a nice surprise as we left the restaurant. 

Speaking of restaurants (not subtle), we went into a place called Sygn. This place was pretty ace, and was the highlight of the day. We had both never been before so it was a nice surprise inside. There was an american vibe with lots of vintage looking signs and awesome visual design on the menu's. The windows had this weird bottle display which I never got a good photo of, and inside they had an old school popcorn machine that made the place smell amazing.

In the end we were spoilt for choice so we ordered two burgers and had half of each. We chose chorizo & pork and the cajun chicken with a sharing side of halloumi. This was a good call. The place does mainly pizza, hotdogs, salads and nachos, but their portions and food are great. 

I think in the end the cocktail we chose was the 'Flying V', containing Tanqueray gin with cherry and violet liqueure, lemon and an absinthe rinse. It tasted a bit like liquorice. 

They also had a variety of sauces, one of which was definitely not ketchup but a rather spicy chilli sauce. I realised this too late, don't make my mistake!

The ranch was beautiful. 

Food talk over!

I would love to go back there actually and I know Fiona will be going back because she lives near. Lucky. 

After that we were pretty full and I decided to head back at around five so I was home in time for Doctor Who. I have my priorities!

Hey guys! Today it's been raining pretty hard in Scotland (when is it never?) so most of my afternoon has been spent cooking and being cosy. 

As halloween is nearing I thought it would be fun to decorate my room a little bit to try and get myself in the Halloween mood. I cut out little bats and stuck them on my wall and I think they turned out really nice! I saw the idea here! 

I also bought some super comfy socks yesterday in preparation for the cold. They are so comfortable that I even wear them over my jeans! 

This is what I made on my rainy day. 

What you need: 

450g/1lb pork OR 350g/.7lb of lamb

3 tbsp of soy sauce

1 tbsp cornflour

250ml/9fl oz of hot chicken stock

2 leeks

2 cloves of garlic

2.5cm/1inch of root ginger

100g/4oz of unsalted cashew nuts

salt and black pepper

I got the recipe from one of my mums old cook books that I technically stole from her and took to university with me. Don't worry, she doesn't use it much anymore! The book is called 'Warming Winter Favourites' and I think it was part of a collection. The recipe adds in 100g of button mushrooms for those who are a fan, however, I am not so I chose to leave them out.

For the stock I used a stock cube in boiling water and although the original recipe suggests pork I decided to use lamb. I like lamb better.

Note to self:

As much as I liked this I think the sauce could have done with an extra something. I personally would have added a little bit of chilli or something to give that little extra bite. In saying that, I still enjoyed it.

Step 1.
Cut the lamb up and set it aside for later. I chose to cut the lamb into cubes for this, but I was given stewing lamb on my online shop instead of pre-diced lamb. The choice is yours!
In a bowl mix together the soy sauce, cornflour and stir in the stock.

Step 2. 

Cut up the leek into thin slices. Peel, crush and chop up the garlic. Peel and grate the ginger.

Heat oil in a large pan until it is medium high (hot but not smoking)

Step 3. 

Add cashew nuts to the pan and stir-fry until golden. Remove them from pan and set aside on some kitchen paper to drain.

Step 4.

Add a little more oil to the pan and start to cook your lamb (or pork). Stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, or until it is no longer pink. Remove from the pan and set aside. 

Step 5.
Add the leeks to the pan and stir-fry for 1 minute, then add the garlic and ginger. stir-fry for a further 2-3 minutes.

Step 6. 
Return the lamb(or pork) to the pan and add in the soy sauce and cornflour mixture. Bring it all to the boil and then simmer for about 2-3 minutes, whilst stirring, until the lamb is super hot. Add cashews and season!

xcx

I've tried to make cinnamon pull apart bread before and it worked, but I always felt I had done it wrong and it wasn't as tasty as it should be. This time I tried cinnamon rolls instead and they worked out perfectly. I used this recipe and really recommend sticking to it, it worked out well and I don't think I strayed away from it at any point. 

I left the dough overnight because I started making them quite late and when I woke up in the morning the dough had risen so much that the shelf above the bowl in the fridge was being pushed up! 

I recommend these, they were delicious!  

 xcx