Oh, my hair smells like chocolate

Eating out isn't something I tend to talk much about on this little slice of the internet. Which is kinda strange as its something I spend a slightly unhealthy amount of my life doing, I like to try my hardest to make sure any catch up, activity or day out fits around some sort of nice meal (or cake...) wherever possible. Leeds is spoiling my food obsessed little belly these days, there are so many new restaurants popping up all over the place so my list of places to try is getting longer and longer (perfect excuse to eat out even more!).

My foodie friend Coral and I went for a slightly fancier than usual meal earlier this week at Roast and Conch, a new restaurant run by Hotel Chocolat, as we'd been intrigued by the whole chocolate-food thing since it opened a few months ago. As soon as we walked up the stairs,an incredible smell of chocolate filled the room, so as far as I was concerned the night was off to a great start! 

Most people I've mentioned the restaurant to have greeted me with a confused look of "Why would you want to eat chocolate with a meal?" but its as far away from that idea as you could possibly get! Most of the dishes are infused with roasted cocoa beans and WOW it works- the cocoa is more like a spice when its cooked like this and it gave my meal such an incredible flavour! 

We were given a butternut squash soup as a bit of an amuse bouche (I'm definitely not posh enough to be able to say that normally!) which was really yummy. I picked the burger as my main course because there'd be something seriously wrong if Kaz went to a restaurant with a burger on the menu and didn't order it. Being a massive burger obsessive, I feel I can say with confidence that this was without a doubt in my top 3 burgers ever list (yes I have a list... don't judge me!). But the real showstopper with my meal were the onion rings that came with my burger and the chips we ordered as a side on the recommendation of the girl who showed us to her table who said they were by far the best thing on the menu! They were cooked in cocoa butter and OH MY GOD they were incredible and didn't taste anything like something that you'd find on the shelves of The Body Shop!

Given that I'd wolfed down my whole meal plus the chips we definitely didn't really need (but couldn't have lived without!) in record time, I was saddened to admit that I wasn't going to have room for dessert. It seemed like a crime against chocolate given the restaurant we were in as I can imagine the desserts would have been bloomin' incredible, but Roast & Conch have clearly thought long and hard about this problem so they created a 'Tray of Temptation' filled with every flavour of chocolate you could possibly ever imagine for £1 each. Funnily enough, despite my fullness, I still had room for chocolate and decided I couldn't narrow it down to just one either. I ended up with a salted caramel chocolate (which they gave me two of because it was a bit smaller than some of the others) and a raspberry and milk chocolate cup. Its amazing how quickly I forgot about having a 'proper' dessert.

If you're in Leeds and fancy somewhere a little different and a bit special (or if you've been sent a 20% off voucher through work like Coral had!), I'd definitely recommend a trip to Roast & Conch. It was one of those meals that I'll be dreaming about for months to come!

Chocolate- The 1975

Smiles of the week: I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand

This week started off as a bit of a drag. No particular reason other than that I'd started off the week so exhausted that even being awake was taking considerable effort, so finding even the teensiest bit of energy for work and other things (especially my first Body Attack class...) was almost impossible. One pathetically early night later and I was magically cured and spent the remainder of the week jumping about like an over-excited puppy. That's more like it.

As usual, here are a few snippets for you of the things that have made me smile in my little world over the last week.

Spending an evening being completely sucked back into 90210. There's not many trashy shows that I actually watch but a few years ago I was bored and living alone for two weeks and somehow ended up watching the first two seasons of the show back to back so I'm very much enjoying having the ridiculous storylines back in my life again.

Zumba with my friend from work. I love it when she comes with me, we're like the naughty children at the back of the class who spend more time pulling stupid faces at each other than actually doing the dances.

Chilling out with Charlie and whiling away an evening gossiping and plotting how she can take over the world with cake.

Having a Saturday morning stroll to Hobbycraft and Asda Living and getting really over-excited about the pretty things I could buy once I've moved into my new house next month. I really don't need anything new but I just find it IMPOSSIBLE not to buy lots of pretty things every time I move house (this will be my sixth home in 5 years- I'm sure you can imagine how much stuff I've accumulated!). 

Eating my favourite burger at Almost Famous in Manchester's Northern Quarter. The last few trips to Mancland I've had we've not got near the place as the waiting list is always huge, but we put up with waiting for an hour this time and were so glad we did. 

Having a hilarious night out which began with the four of us owning the dancefloor and making full use of the fact that nobody else was dancing yet. Lots of hokey-cokeying to indie music (yes, we're that cool) and dancing metres away from each other just because we could. 

Buying the yummiest smoothie to attempt to relieve my horrendous hangover (and it actually working!) then managing to find the one remaining seat on the train back to Leeds. I'm not sure I'd have survived if I'd had to stand up for an hour- it was one of those days!

Round two of our weekly baking sessions with patients in the hospital. There was only one girl that could come along this week so we decided it'd be rude to let the ingredients go to waste and ended up making a huge batch to eat ourselves. That's my sort of lesson.

Hope you've all had a good one too, I'd love to know what's made you smile this week :)

Disorder- Joy Division

Smiles of the week: Ain't it strange how the other half live

One little downside of last week's bank holiday was that this morning I spent a good few seconds when my (second) alarm clock went off convinced that today couldn't possibly be a working day- weekends are three days long, right? Cue me jumping out of bed in a crazy panic when I realised I was sadly mistaken. 

Despite my confusion about how long normal weekends actually are, I certainly wasn't complaining about last week's shorter working week- work absolutely flew by and as I was still on a massive music high after Live at Leeds I was in a pretty good mood all week. Here's a few of the little things that have added to my post bank holiday good mood this week

- Going to work with bare legs on Tuesday. Granted it started raining about 10 minutes after I got to work and I spent the day dreading going back outside but still, the weather must be on the way up if I could survive walking to work without longing for my 60 denier tights back!

- A text from Mama T sent from their jollies in Portugal laughing at my Dad for forgetting to pack his underwear. The morning that they were due to leave for the airport, Papa T still hadn't packed but he'd refused help; he was adamant that he'd get it all done. I'd put serious money on him begging my Mum to do his packing for him next time they go anywhere.

- After work cocktails and burritos with work. We've all been under a lot of pressure lately for one reason or another so Happy Hour was just what the Doctor ordered.

- Having a catch-up with one of my bestests in Manchester. We tried every burger place in The Northern Quarter and struggled to get in anywhere (our plans to go to my favefavefave Almost Famous fell apart as soon as we were greeted by the bouncer outside with a HUGE waiting list). We ended up in a place called Simple and were pretty excited to see that the burgers were named after Superheroes. Mine was an Ironman, and my god it was flipping incredible (and I'm a girl who knows her burgers so that's high praise from me!).

- Spending our burger-filled night laughing about the idiotic and embarrassing moments in our lives... there were plenty of moments just in that one evening. I did a nice job of somehow dribbling half of my drink down my menu and dress just as the waiter was taking our burger orders. Smooooth.

- Spending most of the weekend putting my heart and soul into baking for the Iron Cupcake competition. I've been going along as an eater since the competition began about three years ago and finally plucked up the courage to actually enter myself! I didn't win or anything, the standards are so high and I'm pretty amateur, but I'm just proud of myself for actually putting the effort in and entering!

How the other half live- Tribes

I've been waiting a lifetime to get back down

Some of you might remember the halloumi and sweet potato burgers I posted about a few weeks ago thanks to the incredible burger book I got as a birthday present. I continued my string of burger nights with a slightly more traditional offering this time around (I say this time around but it was actually nearly a week ago now... time is whizzing by too quickly for my liking at the moment!). 

My guest for last week's burger night was the lovely Charlie who is a little bit of a cheese fiend. I'm less of a cheeseaholic in that I'm not particularly adventurous and like to keep a safe distance from stinkier, mouldier varieties but I have a SERIOUS weak spot when it comes to real gooey, stringy, melted goodness. And so, combining Charlie's enthusiasm for cheese and my peculiar fascination with food that creates a bit of a Lady and the Tramp situation between me and my meal (some may say I've crossed a relationship boundary with food right there...) I decided I had no choice but to try out the cheese stuffed burgers from my bible burger book. 

Incredibly messy but pretty damn amazing. Who'd have thought that something as simple as adding a big chunk of cheese to the middle of a burger patty would be such genius. 

Cheese Stuffed Burgers
Makes 2

325g beef mince
2 fairly thick slices of cheese halved
seasoning (I tend to use a tiny bit of salt, a helluva lot of pepper and a few chilli flakes just to make things interesting)
one small onion (fried)
salad
bread rolls (I bought those cheese-topped ones just in case our cheese quota was running a bit low...)
extra cheese for grating if you are that way inclined

Put the beef in a bowl with the seasoning and bind together to form four equal patties (about 1cm thick). 

Stack the squares of sliced cheese on top of two of your patties, then place the remaining patties on top of these and fairly press the edges together to stop the cheese from oozing out all over your oven. This would mean less cheese oozing out of your burger and into your mouth, and that's not a good thing.

Place the burgers underneath the grill and cook for about 6/7 minutes on each side. 

Meanwhile, fry your onions and prepare the salad to go inside the burger buns. 

Serve and enjoy with homemade potato wedges. Or if you forgot to make your wedges like I did, a bag of cheap tortilla chips to accompany your meal works surprisingly well too. Top quality hosting right there. 

Incredibly messy but pretty damn amazing. Who'd have thought that something as simple as adding a big chunk of cheese to the middle of a burger patty would be such complete and utter genius?!

Trust Me... I'm a genius- The Family Rain

And I'll never look back, just hold your head up

Last night I had two of my friends over for a night of burgers and brownies. Quite frankly, I'm not sure there's a better way to spend a Monday evening. Or any evening for that matter.

I got this recipe book for my birthday and I literally spend whole evenings gazing longingly (and dribbling a little) at the arghsoincrediblyyummy looking pictures and recipes, so I've been dying to get stuck in and actually make something from the book. I started in quite an odd place for a burger recipe book, going for one of the few veggie offerings instead of a real, meatilicious burger. I blame the halloumi for sucking me in, its just too tasty not to be eaten at every possible moment. 

Needless to say, the halloumi didn't let me down, the burgers tasted INCREDIBLE (even if they did look a bit like fancy baby food in a bun). And since the book was such a success with the first recipe I tried, I'm going to have to make burger night a regular occurrence. 

And just because I'm a nice, thoughtful person, I thought I'd share the recipe for anyone else who's as enthusiastic about burgers, halloumi and sweet potato as I am. 

Sweet Potato and Halloumi Burgers

450g sweet potato
175g broccoli
3 cloves of garlic
1 red onion (finely chopped)
2 red chillis
175g halloumi (plus extra to fry for the tops of the burgers)
2 tbsp flour
Salt and Pepper
1tbsp ground coriander (the recipe said fresh coriander but I decided I wasn't buying a whole bunch just for a tbsp... ground coriander worked just as well!)

Cook the sweet potato in a saucepan until tender (about 15 mins or so should do it). Once it is cooked, drain the water and then mash. 

Meanwhile, cut the broccoli into small chunks and cook in a saucepan for about 4-5 minutes. 

In a bowl, get together the garlic, onion, chilli, cheese and seasoning then add the sweet potato and broccoli to the mixture, mixing well until all of the ingredients are incorporated with each other. 

Shape the mixture into 4-6 equally sized patties, pour the flour onto a plate/worktop and coat the burgers in the flour. Then put the burgers into the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C and cook the burgers for about 15-20 minutes until cooked through. Flip the burgers half way through cooking. You could grill the burgers too, I just chose to use the oven because I was making potato wedges and can't use the grill at the same time! 

If you fancy adding a bit of extra excitement to your burgers, fry more red onion in a pan along with the remaining halloumi to add to the tops of the burgers. 

And now on to the second part of my B&B night, I was sucked into the creme egg brownie club after seeing so many people posting pictures of their own versions on twitter and instagram. I already had the brownie mix I got as a birthday present which I posted about here so it seemed like the perfect excuse. Plus, creme eggs were 8 for £1 in Home Bargains so I think it was meant to be.

I haven't got a recipe as such to post since my mixture came from the jar, but I've seen plenty of posts about them including this one on Cat's blog if you want to try them yourself. Which you definitely should do RIGHT NOW. I've ended up eating a few slices this evening and they somehow taste even better cold than they did warm last night. Amazing.

Falling- Haim