A recipe for you :-)

Hello! The sun is shining, I survived my camping trip with the kids and all is well :-)

First things first, Kiran – let’s have a look at your answers to the task I set.

1. By the day time, we went shopping. - Almost right – this should be in the daytime we went shopping. or during the daytime. I think you may have got confused with the phrase ‘by night’, where you can use ‘by’.

2. The Next day morning I will go to the shops. - Good guess here but in fact it should be tomorrow morning I will go to the shops.

3. In the coming Friday I will go shopping. - Again, good try but it should be next Friday I will go shopping.

4. Nowadays I go shopping every day. - yay! This is one is correct, well done! :-)

I had heard about the flooding in Nepal and Bihar and I agree it’s a total disaster. Here in the UK it is very difficult to imagine the scale of it – when one village is flooded here it makes national headlines and people talk about it for weeks… the fact that millions of people have been affected in Nepal and India is just inconceivable. It’s strange that Bihar in particular always seem to suffer from misfortune like this. It seems like the state is always facing problems, whether it’s natural, social or economic.
By the way, I thought that this sentence that you wrote was great: “The tears of the people in that area are much more than the monsoon rain.”… very poetic :-)

A couple of our readers asked for the quiche recipe that I used the other day and I’m more than happy to oblige. This is originally a French recipe but this is my own version (adapted from various cookbooks) so apologies to our French readers if it’s not completely authentic! I’ve used broccoli in this recipe but you can use just about any vegetable… spinach is also very nice or courgettes… up to you :-)

Broccoli quiche

Ingredients:

250g flour
125g butter
water

1 medium head of broccoli, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic,chopped
Herbs of your choice
Oil

100g cheese (cheddar or similar)
2 eggs
250ml milk
salt and pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celcius.
2. Make the pastry. If you have a food processor, cut up the butter into small chunks and whizz it up with the flour until it looks like soft breadcrumbs and there are no big lumps. You can also do it by hand by just rubbing the butter into the flour with your fingertips. Add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time until the mixture comes together in a soft but not wet dough – be careful not to add the water too quickly. Put the ball of pastry into the fridge while you prepare the rest of the dish.
3. Gently fry the onion and garlic in a little bit of oil and then add the broccoli and herbs. Keep cooking until it’s tender but not too soft. You may need to add a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan if it starts to stick. Add salt and pepper.
4. Beat the eggs together in a separate bowl and mix in the milk.
5. Roll out the pastry until it’s about 5mm thick. Grease a pie dish (about 10 inches across) and line it with the pastry. Cut off any pastry that is overhanging the edges.
6. Grate the cheese and sprinkle it over the pastry so that it is evenly covered. Save a little bit for the top if you can.
7. Put the broccoli mixture (without any liquid) onto the cheese, then pour over the egg and milk mixture. Top with any leftover cheese and bake for 20-25 minutes until it’s set.
8. Eat and enjoy!

So there you go – hope you like it. Kiran, if you haven’t already planned your next post, how about sharing a Nepali recipe? I’m always looking for new ideas, I get so bored of eating the same old things everyday.

All right, I’d better go and hang the washing out. Tomorrow will be my last post and I’m planning a little vocabulary quiz for you so make sure you review all the words we’ve done over the past month if you have time.

Until tomorrow,

Amy xxx

Last post’s vocab (sorry I forgot to add it in a list at the end of the blog!)

The nights are drawing in - you say this when the summer is ending and the winter beginning, as the time of sunset becomes earlier and earlier
To be in the air - you use this when there seems to be general feeling that a lot of people have, for example if there is a national disaster you might say ‘there’s a lot of sadness in the air’
Organic- grown without the use of pesticides, fertilisers or other chemicals
To tend to do something - if you tend to do something it means you usually do it although perhaps not always - ‘I tend to drive quite slowly’
A drawback - a disadvantage
To turn up - (in this context) to arrive


Vocabulary from today’s post (definitions next time):

Inconceivable
To oblige
Authentic
Pastry
Tender
To grease

Thanks for all your contributions. This blog has now closed and can no longer accept new comments.