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MINCE PIES IDEAS Impress with some easy twists

UPDATED DECEMBER 2021

Mince Pies Ideas – Name 5 ways to jazz up a jar of shop bought mince meat that will guarantee to impress guests and have them believe your mince pies are all home made

I’m not suggesting you should struggle with  mince pies ideas that recommend you make your own pastry and pre soak your fruit mince for months! BUT I ATE MY WORDS THIS YEAR as I now own a THERMOMIX!

I say cheat a bit and buy some ready rolled chilled pastry and easily spruce up that shop bought jar of mince meat with some deliciously simple ideas!

Mince Pies Ideas DoinDubai Close up

Eating Mince Pies on Christmas Day used to be Illegal

No not another local rule you didn’t know about! But it really was illegal to eat Mince Pies on Christmas Day in a certain Mr Cromwell’s time, but the county of Kent rebelled and caused the Plum Pudding Riots in 1658.

The Pastry for the best Mince Pies Ideas

Buy either puff pastry or short crust pastry but make life easy by buying the ready rolled variety straight from the fridge! Easily available in the chiller section of most supermarkets. Do ask if what you need isn’t out, there may be some in storage. Lay out your pastry on a work surface dusted with flour. You do need a rolling pin later to roll up the excess back flat to cut again. 

Mince Pies Ideas DoinDubai

Get a small Indian bowl for a cutter, those tiny, steel bowls are perfect for cutting cleanly and the size is ideal. Must be available at Lulu’s or Carrefour. I have a very old star shape from a packet of four that came from IKEA I think I bought it to make play dough shapes initially! These are ideal for cutting out star shape pastry pieces.  The stars are the lids.

Mince Pies Ideas DoinDubai cut using a steel bowl

The Mince meat for the best Mince Pies Ideas

I looked for the Waitrose own mince meat in Spinneys, but was told they only had Robertsons! OK so be it. So here’s what you can do with your Robertson’s mince meat for some Christmas va va voom!

Mince Pies Ideas DoinDubai Robertsons Mince Meat
  • Use a teaspoon of it as it is straight into your pastry shells that are in your baking tin, still smells gorgeous when cooking in the oven, dust with icing sugar when cold before you serve
  • Take out all your mince in a large bowl and add 2 to 3 large tablespoons of BRANDY OR WHISKEY to the mix, then use as above
  • Add the brandy and some of your favourite chopped dates and apricots or cranberries too!
  • Add fresh LEMON LIME OR ORANGE zest to the mince meat with or without the brandy, Easy to make the zest in a thermomix! 
  • Chop up 100g of DARK CHOCOLATE and run through your mince meat and use the orange zest too. Perhaps try some cointreu orange liqueur with that or even some single malt! Chocolate, orange and whiskey are perfect together.
  • Substitute rum for brandy in any of the steps above.
  • Add some GROUND ALMONDS with freshly GRATED APPLE that you’ve sprinkled with cinnamon to your mix

Mince Pies Ideas the best accompaniments

The jury’s out on that one but you could try

  • Madagascan vanilla ice cream
  • Bateel’s yoghurt dibbs ice cream with dates in it (especially good if you have dates in the mince meat) and makes a really Dubai Style Mince Pie
  • Try a side of kesar kulfi with your mince pie, the pistachios and saffron in the real thing would really complement a hot, sweet mince pie
  • If you can’t get the real kulfi easily (available at Bikaner’s) then just use the Kulfi ice cream available in all Dubai supermarkets in a tub

IF YOU DO HAVE A THERMOMIX OR a GOOD FOOD PROCESSOR AND YOU HAVE TIME.. then you MAY want to have a go at making your own pastry! I did this year using a cookidoo recipe from thermomix but substituted the flour for spelt flour and substituted some of that with flax seed powder, pumkin seed powder and almond powder! Mix is a bit sticky to work with as I forgot all those seeds give off a little oil too, but very tasty, much HEALTHIER TOO! 

Remember you can use the same pastry shells to do savoury filled mini quiches easily as well. Great for Christmas party snack ideas or pass arounds. 

Mince Pies Ideas DoinDubai savoury snacks too

Thanks Monica

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RECKE MULTI COOKER

Why is the Recke Multi Cooker  one of my most used kitchen gadgets?

Read on to find out how easy it is to use a multi cooker to make your everyday food more healthy. Not to mention the time you save on cleaning pots, pans,  your oven and hob! A great, inexpensive kitchen aid that works; now easy to buy in Dubai.

Salmon cooked in Multi Cooker

 

What is a Multi Cooker?

A compact, portable self contained electric cooking pot that performs a variety of  functions in just one bowl. The non stick German coating means you can minimize the amount of fat you need to cook with, without your food sticking or burning. The easy to use temperature control lets you customize precisely how hot you’d like your cooking to happen at, unlike a conventional gas or electric hob.

Recke Multi Cooker

 

Why am I writing about a Multi Cooker?

I was invited to a media presentation at a hotel in Dubai where the Recke Multi Cooker was being demonstrated and was then asked to try the device at home. To be honest despite there being a whole variety of dishes prepared for attendees to try, none of them really appealed to me. Lots of them were quite meaty so there wasn’t much I could try.  So I took my Recke Multi Cooker home and it sat in it’s box for a while. But  eventually I tried it and was pleased enough to bother writing a post to share with you my readers!

In fact it worked so well that I sold my slow cooker

via a second hand sale website to make room for my new multi cooker.

Now together with my Nutri Bullet I have the ideal kitchen gadgets!

What have I made with my multi cooker?

Here’s a video of how I made roasted root vegetables in the multi cooker: It’s about 6 minutes long.

I started off with really easy things like wrapping up some salmon in aluminium foil with my usual herbs and then just steamed in the steamer basket! This is an every day family meal I’d usually make in an oven proof dish that then in turn sits in another dish of water (bain marie). Doing this in the multi cooker was SO MUCH EASIER!

Multi Cooker Salmon

Next time I put some veggies next to the salmon, you have to be careful not to over cook them, as they become al dente very quickly. I tried with carrots and broccoli.

Veggies to accompany in the multi cooker

I’ve also experimented a lot with frying vegetables, making stir fried tofu with sesame seeds and soya sauce, great with Thai noodles and more recently made an Indian based black eyed bean curry.

Multi Cooker Tofu and noodles - DoinDubai

 

Rice of course works fabulously well, but the multi cooker is so much more than a rice cooker! I’m still learning and I know the multi cooker can do a lot more than what I’ve used it for so far. My maid loves not having to wash up greasy pots and pans and I am convinced we’re not losing nutrients while cooking. My husband even had a go at using it while  he was on his own for part of the summer and this would be ideal for a student living away from home, or for anyone who perhaps has limited kitchen space.

 

Some unique features of a multi cooker

  • You can open the lid while cooking
  • You can use it as a slow cooker as well as a very fast cooker
  • It’s not at all heavy to carry around and has a useful handle
  • The inside cooking bowl is made of  a highly non stick German coating meaning you need to use very little fat in your cooking
  • Would be ideal for any students going to university or anyone living away from home
  • It’s much more reasonably priced than some other cookers available at the moment
  • The extra steaming basket means you can easily steam fish and vegetables at the same time

 

Multi Cooker veggies in basket DoinDubai

 

The lid means you’re able to cook very cleanly without messing up your whole hob and surrounding back tile area in your kitchen.

So give the Eating Out a rest and get the family Cooking with a Multi Cooker! Would love to know if this post has inspired you to try the Multi Cooker from Recke!

Happy Cooking

Monica

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PALEO DESSERT RECIPE

An EASY, NO COOK Paleo dessert recipe

…that is slightly adapted from the original which comes from an Australian cooking forum. My super fit and uber health conscious neighbour from Melbourne (now in the Arabian Ranches) shared it with me and it’s brilliant.

They call it “I can’t believe it’s not chocolate!” and actually the name is very appropriate. Forget Chocolate Brownies, Hello Paleo Pudding! Excellent for kids and adults alike AND it makes use of LOCAL INGREDIENTS. No sugar, flour, butter or eggs, so it’s good for vegans too. If you use a certain type of sunflower oil then the recipe is Paleo as well.

I can’t believe it’s not chocolate!

Preparation TimeSetting TimeTotal time
 15 minutes 45 1 hour

 

Paleo_Dessert

Ingredients for Paleo dessert

Dried Dates without stones 200 grams
Cashews Nuts 75 grams
Almonds 125 grams
Cocoa Powder 25 grams
Coconut Desiccated 65 grams
Sunflower Oil 80 grams

Here’s the video for the Paleo dessert

It’s about 5 minutes long but would save you reading everything and may stay in your mind a bit better than the words!

 

 

Notes on the Ingredients for Paleo dessert

  • I used some dates I had in my fridge from Spinneys, cannot remember the brand. Bear in mind some date varieties are more sweet than others, so experiment. They also vary in price here too, so do what suits your taste and budget. And of course why not make use of ones in your garden if you grow them? I weighed my dates after I removed the stones. The original recipe suggests Majdool Dates.
  • I used desiccated, packet coconut that I had in the cupboard, you could use fresh for a more coconuty taste. Lulu’s supermarkets grate your fresh coconut for you. Coconut is a staple in South Indian cooking too.
  • Use plain or raw nuts, ie not salted or roasted. Don’t worry if you substitute a few other nuts to make up the quantity, I don’t think it would dent the recipe too much, but remember our nutritional analysis is based on the ingredients as above.
  • The original recipe calls for coconut oil, my husband threw my coconut cooking oil away! So I used sunflower oil, it works very well. Ideally it should be high oleic Sunflower oil if you want your recipe to be truly paleo, else stick to coconut. My Melbourne Neighbour suggests using slightly less than the 80 grams of coconut oil.

Equipment to make Paleo dessert

  • A flattish baking tray for spreading out the mixture
  • Silver aluminium foil to line your tray with
  • Food processor with large mixing bowl
  • A knife or icing sugar trowel to spread your mixture evenly
  • Shelf in the fridge to set the mixture
  • Sharp knife to cut up into squares
  • Tupper ware box with a lid to store in the fridge or freezer
  • And of course a good set of electronic scales to weigh your ingredients accurately!

Method for making Paleo dessert

Line the baking tray with silver foil
Blitz up the nuts in a food processor till it resembles rough crumbs or almond meal
Add the dates, coconut, cocoa powder and oil to the nuts in the food processor bowl and blitz up again till the mixture is spreadable
Put the whole mixture into the tray
Spread out to about one inch high, evenly over the tray
Put into the fridge to set for about an hour or 15 to 20 minutes in the freezer
When set simply cut into the number of squares you’d like. If you divide it into 20 squares the resulting pieces will be approximately 28 g each and relate to the nutritional analysis below.

 

 

Paleo chocolate pudding

 

 

Nutritional Analysis for Paleo dessert

food label for doindubai

 

The calculations below represent a 28g portion

Using the ingredients as listed above and  have been based on dividing the finished dessert into 20 pieces and the approximate resulting weight of each piece being 28g. 

Energy kcal146.2
Fat11.6 g
Carbohydrate8.3 g
Sugars7.4 g
Protein2.7 g
Calcium23.1 mg
Magnesium40.5 mg
Phosphorus74.8 mg
Potassium185.6 mg
Iron0.8 mg
Selenium1.9 ug
Vitamin E3.5 mg
Dietary Fibre1.6 g

Using Figs rather than Dates

If you choose to use 200g of dried figs instead you would increase the nutritional value of the 28 g piece to these values. Calcium 43.6 mg from 23.1 mg  Magnesium 44.4mg from 40.5 mg  Potassium 212.6 mg from 185.6 mg and the Sugar would reduce to 5.9g from 7.4 g which would reduce the kcal  to 141.9
But figs are more expensive here in Dubai so my preference would be to use the dates

Using coconut oil

Would increase the fat content to 11.6 which is a very small increase although interestingly the sugar content increases to 7.3 g from 6.4 g which again isn’t a lot.  I would use coconut oil as a preference.

What does Paleo mean?

Professor Loren Cordain explores how to build a modern Paleo diet: The nutritional characteristics of a contemporary diet based upon Paleolithic food groups.  a paper offering insight as to the amounts and ratios of protein, carbohydrate and fat in the ancestral diet

 

 

 

 

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FRESH CARROT CAKE RECIPE

Brilliant Carrot Cake Recipe 

Many people have their favourite recipe for fresh carrot cake, this is mine, it’s easy, it works and is popular with kids and adults alike, it works well as a teatime treat, but this carrot cake is brilliant as a dessert after a spicy Indian meal. Try it and see if you agree!

Carrot Cake improved

Ingredients for Carrot Cake Recipe 

Don’t use whopping great big mugs as your cup, a typical tea cup is about the right size, but do get a few of them the same size full of all the ingredients you need :

1 cup of sugar
3 medium sized eggs
¾ cup of vegetable oil
1 and 1/3 cups of self raising flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
2 cups of fresh grated carrots
¾ cup of fresh roughly chopped up walnuts and a few halved walnuts to decorate

carrot-cake-ingredients

 

Method to make the Carrot Cake 

Beat the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy
Sieve all the dry ingredients in together
Then add the oil and nuts and mix well
Pour the batter into a pre greased cake tin, bake on about 170 ◦ C or until cake is spongy to touch and the tip of knife comes out clean

The Icing on the Carrot Cake 

Half a 250 gram block of good butter
Half a tub of cream cheese
7 oz of sieved icing sugar
Blend all the icing ingredients together and spread over the cooled cake
Decorate with walnut halves
Prepare to see it disappear fast!

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