Fairview Camembert Promotion - Camembert & nutbutter springrolls with a fig, balsamic and honey dip

More and more companies are getting the idea that social media, such as Facebook, twitter and blogging, is the best way to expand the "word of mouth" side of marketing. Getting people to comment, retweet and blog your product for a chance to win a prize or fame is a great way to get your product out to as many people as possible while not spending too much money on the process. The best part of it is that bloggers like me get challenges and have fun.


Fairview is one of those genius companies. Not only do they make some of the most delicious cheeses and wines but they also cottoned on to us food bloggers loving a challenge. Here is how it works:
"We invited all South African food bloggers to submit their suggestions and recipe ideas to us, all of which needed to include our Fairview Camembert"

I decided to take ingredients that I always associate with stinky cheese. Nuts, honey, phyllo pastry and figs and turned them on their head.

What you need

1 round Fairview Camembert

1 packet mixed nuts

1 roll phyllo pastry

4 dried figs or 2 fresh figs

1 cup honey

½ cup water

4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

olive oil

What to do

Preheat the grill. Cut the philo pastry into rectangles. Cut the Camembert into long pieces. Place the nuts in a food processor or pestle and mortar. Crush finely then add water slowly until you get a smooth paste. brush a teaspoon or 2 of paste into the corner of the philo, place a piece of camembert ontop. Fold the corners in and roll till tou have a small triangle left, place a little bit of nut butter on the corner to stick it shut. When done place spring rolls in baking dish. Mix a couple of tablespoons of olive oil with a little bit of honey. Brush the springrolls with the mixture. 

Seperately, place the figs in a food processor and blend well. heat the honey, water and vinegar in a pan and add the fig. Allow to come to the boil then take off the heat. Allow to cool throughly. Meanwhile place the springrolls under the grill until golden brown. 

Serve warm and gooey with the dipping sauce

Now Go Vote

The Shopping List

Ready, steady, COOK!

Ladies and gentlemen it's time for a blog challenge. This one is called Ready, Steady, Cook and is loosely based on the TV show of the same name. A few years ago something very similar was done on the Food24 blogs and I had so much fun doing it. This time I am going to make some rules so that we can get a winner.

The idea is simple. You sign up to the challenge by commenting on this blog post. Entries close on the 15th of August. 

There are 2 parts:

Set the challenge

Each blogger who signs up gets assigned another blogger

They will give that blogger a list of 7 ingredients (be creative)

Get the challenge
Each blogger will then use those 7 ingredients plus the allowed "pantry" ingredients (these are listed below) and free items (salt, pepper, olive oil, sunflower oil) to create a 3 course meal.

Each course must be in a separate blog post.

Pictures and recipes to be posted as evidence :)
I want this to be exciting and worthwhile so I am in discussion with some great companies to try and get prizes for the challenge. In the event that these companies are awesome and want to give you guys great things part of the challenge will be to include them in your posts.
Include the badge in all your related posts with a link back to this blog.


Pantry ingredients

Milk
Flour
Eggs
Lemons
Garlic
Parsley
Basil
Origanum
Bay leaves
Rosemary
Cumin
Paprika
Cinnamon 
Chilli powder (this can be chilli powder, dried chillies, cayenne pepper or peri peri spice)
Sugar
Tinned tomatoes
Butter/margarine 


Once the top 4 are chosen there will be a special challenge between them to chose the winner.

Scoring

All the posts are to be completed by the end of August. Once everyone has posted their blog posts I will get the prize sponsors and a few selected judges to send me their ideas for the best in each course. I will also monitor the comment sections on the blogs as well as create a group on Facebook where people can vote.


From there we will find our top 4, our challenge finalists. There is a special challenge waiting in store for them.


So get your thinking caps on and sign up, get your friends to sign up, get your mom to sign up. The competition is open to anyone!

My Easy cooking - Event #1 - Thai Entry

If followed my comments on Food24 you would have picked up very quickly that I am not a fan or pre-made, pre-cooked, pre-packaged foods and sauces. In fact that's putting it mildly. I hate those things. I feel very strongly that taking a piece of chicken, mixing some pre-made mushroom sauce with some milk, drowning the chicken in that and popping in the oven, is not cooking and definitely not blog-worthy cooking.


So I have taught myself to make a lot of things that people just buy. For example "sweet chili sauce". I scoured the web for recipes, threw out the ones that had corn flour in them (after all my 1 complaint about store bought stuff is the starchy mouth feel) and came up with my own. I never did blog the recipe as it was in the time when I was fed up with blogging that I had made it that first time. However, one friday afternoon while browsing other food blogs I came across a recipe for butter chicken which had sweet chili sauce in it. For me that's just scandalous, a dish as rich and complex doesn't need sweet chili sauce shoved into it. 


I mentioned this to Marisa, over at The Creative Pot, and also mentioned that I make my own sweet chili sauce so the though of that fake stuff they sell at the shops glooped into my butter chicken just made me ill. She said I had to blog the recipe so she could steal it, so off I went and cooked up a batch.  


Now if you are anything like me, you cant cook up a batch of something without tasting it and while you can taste sweet chili sauce with a spoon I decided to make something a little more tasty to go with it. What better accompaniment then sweetcorn fritters.


All this cooking came at a great time. As Nina, over at My Easy Cooking is having her first Blog event. Go check it out  and see for yourself. Nina is an outstanding cook and food stylist so I jumped at the chance to participate in something that is linked to her blog. Also I love Thai food and Wang Thai is one of my favourite Thai restaurants. My corn fritter recipe was given to me by some one who used to be the manager there (of course with a  few embellishments of my own as I cannot follow a recipe to the T).

Thai sweet chili sauce
What you need
2 cups Rice wine vinegar
2 cups Sugar
Chilies
Coriander (preferably fresh)
Garlic


What to do
Put the sugar and vinegar into a saucepan and starting heating it through. Int he meantime pop all the rest of the ingredients into a food processor or blender. You want to get everything as small as possible. If you a milder sweet chili sauce then de-seed your chillies. Put the chili mixture into the saucepan and stir till all the sugar dissolves. Bring the mixture up to the boil and then reduce to a simmer. Allow it to cook for about 35-40 minutes. I used a trick I had learned earlier that day at Oded's Kitchen: put a plate in the freezer, when you think the sauce is ready place some on the plate to test the consistency.
Allow the mixture to cool slightly and bottle it.


Thai sweetcorn fritters
What you need
500g Sweet corn off the cob 
½ red pepper
1 baby marrow
2-3 eggs
2 tbs flour
fresh corriander


What to do
Mix all the ingredients together. Heat up some oil in a frying pan and place spoonful of the mixture into the pan. Fry until golden on both sides.


Just a small caution. Both these recipes originally had exact measurements unfortunately I never followed them or copied them. They both are very forgiving and so do what feels right.