Food & Drink «

Macaroni Cheese Recipe

What you will need:
350g Macaroni (I used penne!)
3 tbsp Olive Oil
3 tbsp Plain Flour
600ml Milk
150g Boursin cheese with herbs
250g Grated Cheddar Cheese
250g Cherry Tomatoes

Step 1 : Boil the pasta in slightly salted water for 18-20 minutes. Once cooked, drain in a colander.

Step 2 : Pour the olive oil into a saucepan and add the flour. Stir over the heat for 1-2 minutes, until smooth. Add the milk a quarter at a time, whisking well after each addition. If the mixture feels to thin add a sprinkle of corn flour. The mixture should be a smooth and thick sauce. Remove from the heat and add the Boursin and most of the cheddar cheese, leaving some for the top.

Chop the tomatoes in half and add to the sauce. Season to taste.

Add the cooked pasta and the sauce into a casserole dish and mix well. Sprinkle the rest of the grated cheese on top. Put into a pre-heated set to 200ºc and cook for 30 minutes.

Serve with garlic bread and salad.

Quorn Chicken & Leek Pie – Recipe

This is a first for Belle Fantaisie: a recipe! With Glenn being a vegetarian and myself not eating pork/ham/bacon, we got ourselves a Quorn recipe book. We regularly buy the Quorn chicken, Quorn mince and Quorn sausages and this recipe uses the Quorn chicken pieces. I love cooking a proper meal when it involves lots of measuring, chopping and mixing so this recipe sounded like a easy and great one to do! If you wanted to follow it but wanted to use real chicken, you just need to swap it for the Quorn. Have a go!

Quorn Chicken & Leek Pie

Prep time: 10mins + 30 mins chilling – Cooking time: 25 mins – Serves 4

Pastry Ingredients

150g plain flour

50g butter, diced

75g cheddar cheese or equivalent, grated

5-6 tbsp chilled water

Filling Ingredients

40g butter

1tsp vegetable oil

2 medium leeks, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

25g plain flour

1 vegetable stock cube dissolved in 100ml of boiling water

200ml semi-skimmed milk

1. Preheat the oven to 200°/400°F/Gas Mark 6

2. For the pastry mix the flour and butter, rubbing to make a bread crumb consistency.

Add the grated cheese and mix together. Add water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture forms a firm dough. Cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

For the filling start off by putting the oil and butter into a frying pan and melt.

Add the chopped leeks and cook for 5 minutes over a medium heat. Soften them but don’t let them colour!

Stir in the garlic, Quorn pieces and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook or 1 minute. Gradually add the stock and milk while stirring to make a thick sauce. Season to taste.

Pour mixture into a pie dish and allow to cool.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out to a size that will cover your pie dish on a lightly floured surface.

Place the dough over the mixture and decorate! I did a polka dot one this time! Glaze with milk and put in the oven for about 25 minutes until golden brown.

Let me know if you make it!

Sunday Picnic

Wearing: River Island trousers, old blue vest, independent shop espadrilles, Topshop sunglasses and blue gem necklace.

Graze

About a week ago, one of my good friends told me about Graze. She said it was a website that sends you healthy little treats in cute packaging. On that, I was sold. I went onto their website curious to see how it all worked and most importantly, how much it costs! I was pleasantly surprised. So this is how it works:

1. You pick which box you want. You can choose between a nibble box or a nutrition box, both healthy options but the nibble box has some extra goodies in such as flapjacks whereas the nutrition option is just filled with healthiest snacks!

2. Choose how often and when you want your box delivered. You can choose any amount of days, Monday to Friday.

3. After setting up your account and your card details, you then do the fun bit, rating all the lovely snacks they have to offer. They have over 100 different selections including crackers, flapjacks, deli topped focaccia, olives, natural treats, dried fruit, nuts and seeds. To make it easy for you and them, they have a rating system on all the options. You can pick bin, try, like, love and there’s an option “send soon”. Bin it if you don’t like it and don’t want it sent to you, click try if you are willing to give it a go, like it if you would like to be sent it occasionally and love something if you want the option regularly. If you are really excited to try something, you can tick the send soon box and they will try to send it to you in your next box!

4. Sit back and wait for your first box to come!

Top Tips & Info

Graze boxes are small enough to fit through your letter box, so you don’t have to wait in all day for it. Your postman can just pop it through the door!
Your first box is half price and the next two just £2.99. Any boxes after this are £3.49 with free first class delivery.
In your account, you can specify any dates which you are on holiday and they will stop sending your boxes for that time!
You can hit the push back button in your account to skip the next delivery date to the week after.
You get 4 portions of foods, all 4 different and nutritionally balanced.
Make sure to check out the illustrations in the booklets inside the box. They are so lovely! (Graphs have never been so cute!)
You receive 3 “feed your friends” tokens which allows your chosen friends to get a free box which then gets you £1 off your next box, or to give that £1 to charity!
Once your box has been made up, you can have a look at what is in your box online in your account! Or you can wait for the surprise!

What’s in the box?

In the box you get 4 portions of food, a book of tips on how to eat healthy and why Graze is so good for you, a recyclable napkin and a nutrional booklet to let you know all about the nutritional content of your snacks.

In my first box I received Cracking Black Peppercorn, Apple & Cinnamon Flapjacks, Olive, Rosemary & Siciliano Focaccia and Billionaire’s Shortbread which is a mix of blanched almonds, fudge pieces, milk chocolate drops and cranberries.

I’m so excited to try my snacks! At the moment I am just having on delivery a week, but I do think at £3.49, having one a day for your lunch is really cost effective and is the same as buying lunch at work! I’d quite happily tuck into one of these every day at lunchtime!

Valentines Breakfast

I hear all singles groaning as I press publish on this post, but my boyfriend is so sweet and made me a lovely breakfast which were surrounded by rose petals and chocolate hearts and roses! I know it’s a bit late and Valentines day is long gone, but I am a very luck girl and wanted to share it with you all!