Day 6 – Tuesday 31 March – a taste of home

After several days of rich food (and leftover no-pasta lasagne for lunch!) I wanted something simple for dinner. I fell back on an old favourite, a comfort-food. It’s a healthy variation of a Northern English classic meal – egg and chips.

Translation: fried eggs and French fries

The healthy option is that it’s all baked on a single tray, with barely any fat. Nothing is fried.

 

I used 6 medium-sized potatoes, scrubbed them clean, and then cut them into thin potato wedges, and dried them on a clean tea-towel. I divided the spud wedges evenly across two baking trays lined with parchment, sprayed them with canola spray-oil, and liberally sprinkled with Cajun seasoning, although any flavour spice mix works. Cajun was first to hand.

Bake for around 20 – 25 mins in a hot oven (200 degrees C), until soft in the middle and crispy on the edges. I usually shuffle them around at the half-way point, and spray a little more oil.

Then, the stroke of genius. Move the wedges to create 3 little gaps on each tray, and break a raw egg into each gap. Then back in the oven for 4 – 5 mins. Voila. Healthy egg ‘n’ chips 😀

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While checking the fridge earlier for ham (which I’ve now run out of), I discovered three tubs of cream cheese that I bought a couple of weeks ago, intending to make cheesecake.

I made cheesecake as well.

My go-to cheesecake recipe came originally from Olive magazine, the March 2007 edition. I’ve made it a few times. Tonight I used McVities Dark Chocolate digestive biscuits for the base, as I had no plain left, and it added an interesting taste. Raspberries and chocolate do go well together.

In our house we like to eat it still slightly warm, with the texture of a thick egg custard. It tastes completely different from how it is after a night in the fridge. Below, my yummy, creamy baked raspberry cheesecake, straight from the oven.

Baked raspberry cheesecake

This is a dead easy recipe that looks like it took hours (and lots of skill) to make.

Serves 8

Preparation and cooking times

Prep 20 mins, Cook 40 mins.

Ingredients

• 10 digestive biscuits
• 50g butter, melted
• 600g cream cheese
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 175g caster sugar
• vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 142ml pot soured cream
• A handful of raspberries, fresh or frozen (if frozen, make sure there is no excess ice clinging to them)

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Crush the biscuits in a food processor (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin). Mix with the butter. Press into a 20cm springform tin and bake for 5 minutes, then cool.
2. Beat the cream cheese with the flour, sugar, a few drops of vanilla, eggs, and soured cream until light and fluffy. Pour into the tin and drop the raspberries on top, before gently swirling in with a table knife. Bake for 40 minutes and then check, it should be set but slightly wobbly in the centre. Leave in the tin to cool, around 30 minutes as a minimum.

 

 

Adapted from a recipe in olive magazine, March 2007.

 

New Zealand is under Lockdown for at least four weeks. This blog intends to avoid the bad news about rising numbers of victims. It focuses instead on food, and the challenges of cooking fresh meals every day – with the ingredients from my larder. A much nicer message 😊