A Taste of Lemon

I made these biscuits, another recipe from Dish magazine, in the weekend as a gift for two different friends. They are lemon and poppyseed biscuits. Unusually the recipe had cream cheese in the mixture as one of the fats. I made square shaped biscuits and then some little round ones. They are quite a nice, plain biscuit, easy to make but look nice with the wee bit of lemon icing on top. I think I prefer the small round ones to the bigger ones.





On Tuesday night for dinner I made a quinoa salad which we had with polenta coated fish. Quinoa is an interesting grain. Apparently it has quite a high protein content in comparison to other grains. I simmered the quinoa in an equal amount of chicken stock for 10 minutes and then left it to steam with the lid on for another 10. To this I added roast pumpkin cubes, sun dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, marinated artichokes, baby spinach and crumbled feta. It didn’t need anything further – not even any dressing as the oiliness of the other ingredients seemed to be enough. You could use cous cous or bulghar wheat instead of the quinoa. This was a delicious meal in itself, but went well with the fish.

I have written another feature for the foodlovers website, this time on Sweet Loaves and what to do with them. Check it out here.



Lemon & Poppyseed Biscuits (from Dish magazine)

180g butter
115g cream cheese
¾ c sugar
1 egg
fine zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp poppyseeds
2 c flour
¼ tsp baking soda

· Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar. Add egg, then zest and juice
· Mix in dry ingredients
· Chill dough for an hour or until firm
· Roll out and cut into shapes. Bake at 180c for 12-14 minutes
· When cold, ice with icing made with icing sugar and lemon juice