Watermelon Margaritas

It’s been sunny, therefore a great excuse to make cocktails on a girly night in! 🙂

I’ve never tried watermelon margaritas before, but have heard very good things – who knew something so yummy could be made so easily! Do make sure you get a big juicy ripe watermelon, like the one I found which was as big as my head…

Watermelon Head

The basic ingredients for this include:

• Watermelon 
• Sugar
• Tequila (hat is optional)
• Orange liqueur – Triple Sec / Cointreau / Grand Marnier
• Limes

Tequila with a hat 🙂

This is great because you can play around with the quantities to suit your preferences, for example, we wanted a bit more orangey-ness, so added some orange peel into the mixer as well!

To make our watermelon margaritas, we used about 25 cl tequila, couple of splashes of grand marnier, half an orange peel, 2 heaped tbsp sugar, juice of 3 limes, generous helping of crushed ice – add it all to the blender and whizz it up!

Once made, put your rim of your glass into the used watermelon (to make moist), then turn around on a plate with some salt on to create your salty edged glass, and viola!

Nom nom nom!

Criterion Restaurant, London

Afternoon, Abi here.

After much deliberating over many yummy possibilities, I decided to take Will to Criterion for his birthday lunch! What swayed me in the end was the beautiful interior (that’s featured in quite a few films!) and history of the restaurant. Check it out here: http://www.criterionrestaurant.com/

Upon first stepping into the restaurant we were taken very good care of, the atmosphere was great, it didn’t feel like we were in the middle of a busy tourist filled London at all!

For my starter I decided to go for the beef carpaccio, which isn’t something I usually go for, but I was intrigued by the way it was described on the menu – coming with a parmesan basket that was filled with beetroot and rocket, with a balsamic glaze. It was as tasty as the below picture shows:

I absolutely love duck, and there was a very appetising duck main on the menu which I had no trouble deciding on! It was accompanied by red pepper glaze, cranberry puree and kumquat jus, which sounds like a lot of different flavours on one plate, but it all tasted great when eaten together with the juicy pink duck breast.

After these two decent sized portions my boyfriend and I decided to do the sensible thing and share a dessert, there was no way I was missing out on one! I have to say the dessert was definitely my favourite course, we chose the panna cotta, which came in little delicious cubes that melted in your mouth, with tiny pieces of crunchy shortbread, a rhubarb ice cream that was finished off with a basil sorbet and raspberrys and basil leaves dotting the plate.

It was a slightly pricey place – for 2 courses each, a shared dessert and 2 glasses of wine the bill came to just over £100 – but it was definitely worth the money! As well as beautiful food, the service was wonderful and interior was amazing. A great place for good food on a special occasion.

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Lasagna Pie Time

This food monstrosity isn’t one for the waistlines, but it fills a gap that is hard to match!

Ingredients:

For the pasta: 300g OO pasta flour and 3 eggs.

For the fillings: Your choice but we recommend pesto (homemade for us – see recipes for how to), salami/chorizo, ricotta/cheese, white sauce, bolognese…

Preparation

Method:

Make the pasta first as it needs at least 30 mins in the fridge to cool before being rolled. Make a well out of the OO flour, and crack the eggs into the middle. Get your fingers in and slowly start working the egg in a circle, incorporating the flour bit by bit.

WARNING: you will get to a stage where your fingers are covered in eggy flour and you think it’s a lost cause , keep faith! Keep adding the flour until you have a firm ball of dough which when you bend doesn’t crack, but slowly tears. You’ll know when you’re a the right stage due to your arm feeling like its about to fall off! Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 mins

When you are ready to roll out your pasta, take out the fridge to get to room temperature, it won’t roll properly if too cold. Cut your huge ball into 3-5 pieces, otherwise when you roll it out it will be far too long to manage.

Get your pasta machine out (if you don’t have one you can manage with a rolling pin). Set it on the highest setting and start working the dough through, lowering the setting and folding the dough over until you have a long strip. Feed it through slowly and catch on the back of your hand.

Normally you would wait until you can see newspaper through the dough but as this dish is a bit less refined than a ravioli, a bit thicker is probably better.

Just keep rolling rolling rolling

Time to assemble! Grease your bowl and cut the pasta into sheets so that they are just longer than you need to cover the sides of the bowl. Layer the bowl with pasta sheets to create the crust, leaving a fair amount of overhang to cover the base later.

Now for the fun bit – Start adding your choice of fillings, leaving a layer of pasta sheets inbetween and wiping with white sauce. We did something like salami, cheese, pesto, cheese, bolagnase, salami, cheese. Once you have finished, wrap over the ends on the pasta and brush to seal with white sauce.

Cover in foil and cook at 180 degrees for 30minutes before uncovering and cooking for a further 15.

• Flip it out onto a board, cut and enjoy.

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