The Best Barbecued Turkish Lamb Sandwich with Spiced Pumpkin

Recently I purchased this recipe book of Peter Evans who has worked with the Heart Foundation to bring us his favourite recipes.

So far I have cooked half a dozen recipes and I am very impressed. 

They are simple, tasty and healthy.

Please do consider adding this book to your collection.

Pumpkin is roasted and then mashed with caraway, cumin, garlic, chilli and lemon.

The lamb backstrap is lightly seasoned, we added a little sumac too, and cooked on a hot barbecue.

Toast some delicious fresh turkish bread.

Slice up your lamb.

Tempt the dog with the best meat you have ever tasted.

And assemble your sandwich with natural yoghurt, grated carrot, fresh mint and rocket leaves.

It was seriously good, we savoured every bite.

Perfect for longer daylight, warmer weather and dinners enjoyed outside.

Butter Chicken with Okra

Recently I discovered this recipe on Dani Venn's blog for Indian Butter Chicken. 

With its promise of authenticity, as the recipe was learnt in India I knew I had to try it.

The chicken is marinated with garlic, ginger, chilli and lemon juice for a couple of hours.

A paste is prepared by cooking cashews, water, milk and red onion and then pureed.

The sauce begins with cooking the whole spices, then adding fresh ripe tomatoes, water and ground spices.

I decided to add some okra to my curry, so I sliced it up and added to the sauce until tender.

I then picked out all the okra and whole spices (yes a little tedious!) and blended the sauce until smooth.

Meanwhile the marinade is drained off the chicken, and yoghurt, more ginger and garlic, and other spices added to coat the chicken.

Cook the chicken on the bbq to intensify the flavours (traditionally a tandoor is used).

The sauce goes back in the pan with some extra spices and combine some (or in my case all - it tasted so good) of the cashew puree.

The chicken and okra are then added to the sauce, along with salt, crushed fenugreek leaves and honey.

It was amazing.

The sauce tasted beautifully spiced, the okra was melt in your mouth tender, and the charred chicken was just perfect.

(There were plenty of jealous tastebuds whilst enjoying the leftovers at work the next day).

I will definitely be cooking this one again.

Zumbo honey comb-over

I finally decided to have a go at making one of Adriano Zumbo's creations.

As you flick through the pages of his book there are so many wacky, wonderful and delicious looking sweets.

I mainly chose this one because I had the ingredients (well most of them) and I do love honeycomb.

Really it is a straight forward cake, right? a cake rolled with buttercream covered in a glaze then topped with some honeycomb.

But as you make your way though the recipe it does get a bit more complicated. 

You start with the glaze which requires a 'neutral glaze' that you must prepare first.

It also requires ingredients such as gelatin leaves (I used powdered), pectin (I used jam setter - yes really) and liquid glucose (left it out).

Not surprisingly my glaze was not perfect, but it still tasted good.

The honey comb is poured into a shoe box to cool, seriously that is what Zumbo recommends!

A decent chunk is broken off, chopped finely and folded through the buttercream.

The buttercream also requires preparation of creme patisserie, and it contains almond meal which I found odd but actually it tasted great.

I loved the spiced cake which was made mainly of honey that is whipped with butter.

It is coated with coconut then rolled up with the delicious buttercream.

The glaze is then poured over the cake and decorated with honeycomb.

The aroma of this honey cake was heavenly, and it tasted beautiful, very sweet.

The best part - sharing it with friends under fairy lights.