Sweet potato and spinach bake

I am officially a University of Manchester graduate! Graduation was such a memorable day with great weather, lots of alcohol and picture taking. Sadly, it also led to many goodbyes as all of my course mates started heading back to different parts of the world for further studies or to start their careers.

                                

Having Tom and mum here has led to lots of eating out but we've still managed to cook some nice and healthy meals in the frenzy of things. I decided to make a healthy type of veggie bake with the sweet potatoes and spinach that we had in the fridge and it turned out to be super delicious and the perfect accompaniment to our lamb steaks.

SWEET POTATO AND SPINACH BAKE

• 250g peeled and thinly sliced sweet potato 
• 200g fresh spinach
• Rosemary or thyme
• About 50 ml non fat milk
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• Salt & pepper
• A few tbsp of light cheese, grated

1. In a frying pan, lightly pan fry the spinach with some crushed garlic and season.
2. In a greased baking dish, form a layer of sweet potato slices on the base, season with salt and pepper. Top with a third of the cooked spinach.
3. Continue layering the vegetables, seasoning as you go along. You could add a little cheese between each layer if desired.
4. In a small saucepan, heat the milk, herbs, mustard and garlic until simmering. Strain and pour over the sweet potatoes.
5. Top with a little cheese and bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees for about 30-40 minutes.

Enjoy! Xx 

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Simple octopus salad

So my holiday has now come to an end. Time to head back to a sunnier Manchester(hopefully!) to graduate and start my new job at EY! These four weeks have been a good relaxing break before going back to the hustle and bustle. Having eaten out quite a bit whilst on holiday, I've come across a few new lovely restaurants and my favourites were Selfish in Pointe aux Cannoniers and Izumi at Port Chambly. Selfish is a small and homely restaurant mainly serving seafood. Their sushi dishes are based on Mauritian flavours such as guava and tamarind and are a nice tasty twist on traditional sushi. Izumi serves traditional Japanese food and we had a delicious teppanyaki celebration meal when I received my final University results.

As a yearly tradition, my mum hosts a lunch for her tennis group and this time round I offered to cook all the food. I made lots of different 'salad-y' dishes including octopus salad and a trio of desserts to finish.

Octopus can be a tricky thing to cook as it can easily become super chewy and hard to eat. My dad taught me the trick to perfectly tender octopus and mentioned that the most common mistake was to boil it, big no no! On to the recipe.

OCTOPUS SALAD

• 1 kg of octopus
• 1-2 tomatoes, diced
• A large onion, finely diced
• Large bunch of coriander, chopped
• Salt & pepper
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice

1. To clean the octopus, scrub with lots of salt and wash throughouly.

2. In a large saucepan, add in a little oil and the whole octopus, (only chop it up once cooked). Stir around for a couple of minutes, lower the heat and cover to cook.

3. Check the octopus every 5 to 10 minutes stirring it around as it releases it's own juices and pricking it with a skewer. Once tender after about 20-30 minutes, the octopus is cooked.

4. Once cooled, chop the octopus into fine slices.

5. In a large bowl, combine the octopus slices, diced tomatoes, diced onion and chopped coriander. Season with salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice.
 

                                              

Enjoy xx 

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