They Eat And They Drink: A Little Trip To Thailand

As mentioned in my last post it was indeed my birthday yesterday and as it fell on a Sunday this year my boyfriend and I decided to go out for a lovely meal and drinks (lots of drinks, that's my excuse for the not great pictures!) on Saturday night. I chose a little place that I've been dying to try called Thailand No1 in Nottingham's Lace Market after hearing lots of good things about it from my housemate (you can read her blog post on it here). 

The restaurant has a lovely atmosphere and I didn't feel at all out of place in my fairly dressy birthday outfit, we were seated by the window which is fine by me as I love a good people watching session! The staff are all so lovely and our extremely cute waitress even explained what some of the words on the menu meant, I was also struck at how accommodating they were for our special dietary needs. Everything on the menu is clearly labelled if it is vegetarian, gluten free or contains nuts making order a hell of a lot simpler!

We both decided on the Tom Yam soup, a hot and sour clear soup with lemongrass, chilli and coriander. I went for the mushroom option and Jack went for the king prawn and mushroom variety. The soup was a great dish to start really delicious despite packing quite a punch in the spice department!

For mains we both went for curries, I love love love Thai curries so it really wasn't much of a decision for me! But in the end I decided on the Gaeng Pha which is a spicy jungle curry with Thai spices and mixed vegetables, again this was definitely spicier than I'm used to but it was super tasty all the same especially along with the sticky coconut rice we ordered. Jack went for the Thai green curry with duck and it smelt absolutely perfect. I had a sneaky taste of the sauce and it was perfection. 

Shamefully we were both too full to finish our main courses but obviously found some room in our dessert tummies for something a little sweet to finish the night off with! The boy ordered us a shot of Baileys each along with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and warm banana in a coconut sauce, this was the perfect end to a lovely meal, the Baileys was smooth and the banana was so creamy and rich with the coconut and the ice cream off set all of this keeping it light and delicious. 

I would also like to mention the wine. I have recently become partial to a glass of rose here and there, but I went for a Thai classic rose on Saturday night and needless to say it was excellent as I polished off the entire bottle. It went great with the food, possibly a little too great judging by my sore head the next morning!

Thai food is most definitely a favourite of mine, I much prefer it to Chinese which I find can be quite heavy and greasy at times, and aside from my own mums excellent curries not much bets a Thai curry, be it red, green or jungle.

xoxo

She Eats Burgers: Carnaby Burger Co.

This Saturday was a day of firsts. My first visit to the IMAX in London (The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug was amazing) and it was also the first time I'd ever eaten at this lovely little burger restaurant near Carnaby Street called Carnaby Burger Co., which is what I really want to talk about. 

As a vegetarian family whenever we go out and fancy some comfort food in the shape of a burger we tend to stuck with one of two options: a sad portobello mushroom or a drier than sawdust bean burger. So it was a very pleasant surprise to see so many interesting vegetarian options on the menu. 

There was the usual vegetarian section of the menu but they also highlighted where a vegetarian substitution could be made. Even better the menu was full of gluten free options so needless to say I'll be taking the boyfriend.

Firstly I want to say how quick the service was, we'd just chowed down on our starter of nachos when our mains arrived.

I decided upon the Quorn Chicken, Mushroom and Swiss burger and fries. To quote the menu it was; a sautéed portobello mushroom, fried onions, melted Emmental cheese with peppercorn sauce (this was seriously delicious).

It goes without saying that we all left with very happy tums! All us vegetarians and meat eaters were satisfied - I distinctly remember my sisters boyfriend describing his burger as 'perfect' and my sister was ready to eat her falafel burger all over again.

The season of stuffing your face has most certainly begun! Have a great Christmas everyone!!! xoxo 

Urban Indian Canteen: Tamatanga (Where else?!)

I've been a neglectful blogger it's shameful, if my blog were a child social services would have taken her away by now! I'm afraid third year is kicking my little behind and it's only the first term... Scary stuff. But enough about that, I've been meaning to write this blog post for weeks and weeks! I recently made not one, but two trips to the fabulous (yes it's that good) Tamatanga in Nottingham.

I come from an Indian family that know food. So it takes a lot for Indian cooking to rival my mums, which is why I often avoid Indian restaurants but I'd heard nothing but good things about this place so we ventured in...

Firstly, there's a warm and really inviting atmosphere in this place that makes you think it'd be far more expensive than it is. Our first trip was being paid for on expenses so we didn't hold back (free food always tastes the best). We had onion bhajis to start which were delicious and what made them even better was they were gluten free! They were accompanied by a yoghurt and mint dip (I think! Whatever it was it was to die for). 

My boyfriend got the malai lamb chops- this looked pretty awesome even to me and I don't eat meat! He described it as the best lamb he'd ever tasted and it kept him quite for a good ten minutes so I can only assume that it was scrummy. The menu sums it up beautifully, tender lamb shops marinated  overnight with ginger, garlic and freshly ground cloves, with a mint and coriander chutney.

I went the whole hog and decided on the vegetarian thali, so I had four dishes, naan and poppadums not to mention salad and another onion bhaji! Embarrassingly the couple at the table next to us were sharing this between them... This was great as I got to try a bit of everything- the naans are so fluffy and tasty and the curries were really tasty. They give you a choice of one curry and then give you a selection of three others. I went with the paneer makhni which was accompanied with daal makhni, bombay aloo and bhindi do piaza. All of these looked so good I didn't really know where to start! 

All in all a very good first trip! The second time round I went for one of the curry bowls, I chose the paneer makhni again because it was so good first time! The garlic naan was delicious both crispy and light :)

If all of that wasn't good enough if you go along before 5 you can get a curry bowl (with naan or rice) and a drink for £6.95! So if you're ever in Nottingham definitely take a break from shopping and head over to Tamatanga.

:) xoxo

Birthdays Are Natures Way Of Telling You To Eat More Cake

I don't really need any excuse to make a cake but the boyfriends birthday proved to be the perfect opportunity to try out a recipe my good friend Hannah sent me for a flour-less, yes you read that correctly, a flour-less chocolate cake.

Having recently found himself to be intolerant to gluten my lovely boyfriend is still adjusting to his new diet, so the best thing I can do is try to make some delicious treats to make up for it ;)

So lo and behold my very first attempt at a flour-less cake;

It's no where near perfect, I used a rather large tin which made the cake really thin and its a teeeeeeny bit over cooked. Despite this I'm pretty chuffed with this as my first go purely because it still tastes pretty damn good! 

I'd also like to bring this lemon and blueberry baked cheesecake to your attention, also gluten free, made by my boyfriends mum. With a dash of cream it was the bees knees, really moreish and just delish.

You can find a recipe the chocolate cake pretty much anywhere, I like to go with the BBC as their recipes are clear, simple and easy to follow. Must go, it is the day of rest and we have lots of wine to drink and cake to eat!

What's your favourite gluten free dessert recipe?

She (Occasionally!) Cooks; Veggy Chilli

I've been a vegetarian my entire life and it's never something that I've considered changing about myself. Like most vegetarians I have struggled to get a sufficient amount of protein in my diet (there's only so many nuts a girl can eat!) but then along came Quorn! I know I don't have a frame of reference but I think it tastes pretty damn good, so I thought I would share one of my favourite meals with you all; chilli. I love anything and everything Mexican and chilli makes for a really hearty winter warmer and it's great on a student budget too! 

So here's what I use for this yummy meal;

Olive Oil, Rice, Ouorn Mince, Pointed red pepper, 1/2 Tin of Mixed Bean Salad, Chopped Tomatoes, 1 green chillie, Crushed Chillies, 1/2 red onion, 1 Clove of garlic and generous handful of coriander.

I will admit that I am the worst at cooking rice. But this Asda white rice came out surprisingly good! I just took a handful (roughly enough for one person) added a tiny bit of oil and salt to the boiling water and let it gently simmer while I cooked the chilli. 

The great thing about Quorn is that you can cook it from frozen, so I threw in a dash of oil to a hot frying pan and cooked the mince on a low heat. I then added the chopped onion, green chilli and garlic (I always crush garlic to get more flavour) and let that cook through. I then chucked in about half a tin of chopped tomatoes and sliced red pepper followed by the beans. Slowly let that simmer and thicken slightly before adding salt and pepper to taste and some crushed chillies for extra heat. Keep tasting it so you don't end up blowing your heads off!

Finish off with a good amount of coriander and let all the flavours combine for about five minutes before serving with rice and lots of cheese!

Et viola! A really filling and satisfying dinner, maybe not one to have just before donning that new body con leather skirt... But hey that's what Spanx are for!

I'm back to living away from home so I'll be experimenting a lot more with food and blogging all of my successes and some of my mishaps (I'm sure they'll be a few!)

:) xoxo

The Sweetest Thing: White Chocolate and Ginger Cheesecake

As you've all probably gathered by now I am a big big fan of cheesecake. I'm also a big fan of Wagamama's which inspired me to put together this tasty treat :) So here I present to you my white chocolate cheesecake on a ginger biscuit base. 

How did I put this together you ask? I used my recipe that I posted here added 200g of melted white chocolate (I just use the cheap stuff, it all tastes the same!) to the mixture and smoothed over the biscuit base. I had a slight panic when the filling seemed to be much thinner than any other cheesecake I'd made before but this is supposed to happen! I was not prepared to wait the full day that it took to set but it was worth the wait... 

This is definitely an indulgent dessert, it was pretty heavy and really rich! I think I'd use a little less white chocolate if I were to make this again, I have been requested by my sister in law to make a low fat one so we'll see how that goes :)

I also got my hair chopped, so watch this space for a blog on that! 

:) xoxo