RECIPES TO LOVE ON HUBPAGES

Hi I have recently started putting more recipes on an American site called Hubpages, I hope that you will come and visit this site and enjoy even more recipes and fun.

My Hubpage site is not just about food and I hope that you'll take time to have a look at my other pages and comment on them. Perhaps you would like to post your own hubpages or recipes, we'd love to have you on board, it's an amazingly friendly site with lots of great people and great writers.

Please see the link below.

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QUICK PUFF PASTRY QUICHE

I had a very busy day yesterday and after spending 3 hours in the garden trying to fight my way through a jungle I was not in the mood for cooking and needed something now without any effort.

Luckily I had some pre-rolled puff pastry in the fridge and decided to make a Puff Pastry Quiche.

Ingredients:

Pre-rolled Puff Pastry

4 Large Organic Eggs

4 rashers of Bacon, rind and fat removed, and chopped

100g Cheddar Cheese, finely grated

Double Cream

Whole Milk

1 teaspoon of dried Italian Herbs

lashings of ground Black Pepper

dash of salt (depending on how salty your bacon and cheese is)

Now this as you can guess from the recipe isn't a measured recipe, it's more of a throw it all together as the mood takes you, but it still always manages to come out perfectly whenever I make it.

• Pre-heat your oven to 200C / 180C on a Fan setting / Gas Mark 4.

• Spray a good non-stick frying pan and gently heat before adding your chopped bacon, and fry till it's no longer translucent.

• Grease a baking tray, approx. 21 x 28cm.

• Put the Puff Pastry into the tray and place the tray in the fridge to keep cool.  The colder the pastry is when it goes into the oven the more it will rise when it hits the heat.

• Whisk together the 4 eggs, 100g grated cheese, 1 tsp Italian Herbs, Black Pepper (and salt if using).

• Now add and whisk in the double cream and milk, proportions of which are up to you, I like about half and half until you have a mixture that you would use for an omelette.  I do mine in a measuring jug so that the quantity normally gets to about the 700ml / 1+1/4 fl.ozs / 3 cups.

• Pour the liquid on top of the puff pastry and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

I have made more elaborate dishes that get less compliments than this gets, easy, hot and filling - it's a home cooked meal without the work - and your family will be impressed.

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HubPages

MY KITCHEN

Cooking is my passion, how did I arrive here?  My Mother, now most people will rave about their Mother's cooking - with me it's the opposite my Mother couldn't cook, no that's unfair she could cook - 2 things - soup and an old Scottish favourite called Stovies - but honestly that was it.  There are family stories about the Christmas where she nuked portions of Christmas Pudding in the microwave and slopped some milk on top - Christmas Dinners were SUCH a disappointment.  She also boiled cabbage for hours, yes we would have been better off drinking the water but did we know that?  No, food was just the wallpaper hanging on the wall, we had it but no-one took any notice of it, it was just something that had to be done, fuel for the body not the soul.

In my early adulthood I went out to dinner, cooking?  Not for me, how boring, what is there to get excited about?  Somewhere deep inside me was my distant Italian heritage's love of food, just desperate to get out, it arrived with my first child, he was sensitive to additives, and I wanted the best for this gorgeous boy of mine and he was going to get it.

One Christmas a very kind boss, Chris Pouncey, bought me a cookbook and this I had to dig out of the attic to where it had been banished many years before, I still have it, it's called The Creative Cook by Mary Berry (I had no idea who she was at the time), it's been well-thumbed and has fallen apart, the recipes of 30 years ago are so different from today BUT it taught me the basics, how to boil an egg, how to make a basic sauce, what to do with this hard stuff they call pasta, that may sound a bit basic but trust me when you leave home and you only know how to use a can opener and put a Fray Bentos pie in the oven then it was exactly what I needed.

So now I'm starting my own blog about my cooking, like the millions of us foodies around the world ... I hope you'll try some of my recipes and enjoy them as I do - I look forward to making new friends through this blog, if you have anything to say or have any suggestions to add to my recipes I'd love to hear them.

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HubPages