Hello there doggy

I illustrated 'Peeves the dog' for my dude Laura for her witty ranting blogpost about pet peeves, must read! I found it fun to illustrate and wanted to go for the cartoon and naive look.

 I used a biro pen to draw and Adobe Illustrator to add colour! GRRRRR

Illustration Friday: Sweet

This weeks Illustration Friday is sweet, so I have illustrated jars of sweets on a shelf, with few of my fav sweets included; fried eggs, cherry sweets and coca cola bottles! I know they look more like paintbrushes..oops!

What is your favourite sweet?

Magazine Designs of the Samosa Recipe!

These are the designs of the samosa recipe in the lifestyle magazines, Reflect which I work for and our sister company Aspire Magazine which was designed by Aspire's Magazine designer Lucy Crookston. Its amazing how different our styles are and I love how Lucy has used bright bold colours plus the decorative patterns!

This is my design ( Reflect Magazine)

This is fellow blogger Lucy's design ( Aspire Magazine)

Homemade Samosas!

Me and mummy made veggie samosas on the bank holiday weekend, took most of the day to make but we did make 80 so that we can freeze some and have it later at get-togethers. I took step-by-step photographs as it will be a recipe included in the lifestyle magazine I work for, Reflect and our sister company magazine called Aspire...exciting!!

Take a look at the recipe (rewritten by my dude Laura,so it makes sense)...you do need quite a lot of time for this but you can always make the veggie filling a day before you want to make the samosas and you don't have to make 80! The recipe I have included is for 40 samosas, as it is a long procedure you might as well make enough for a party!

Samosa Party Snack Recipe (Makes approx. 40 samosas)

Ingredients:

For the veggie filling in the samosas

7 medium sized potatoes (diced)

3 onions (diced)

2 cloves of garlic

Medium-sized fresh ginger

2 green chillies

2 tbsp Salt

Fenugreek

400g garden peas

Olive oil

For the pastry

750g Plain flour

150ml olive oil

Splash of lime juice

300ml water

Method:

To make the filling

1. Wash the potatoes and dice and wash again.
2. Dice the onions and garlic and fry in oil on a high heat.
3. Blend 2 green chillies and ginger and add to the pan. Chop a handful of Fenugreek and add that in too.
4. When onions have turned slightly brown add two tablespoons of salt, stir it well and let it cook for 10 minutes.
5. Add the potatoes, turn the gas down low and place a lid on the pan. Cook for 30 minutes (make sure you keep an eye on it).
6. Add garden peas and let it cook another 20 minutes and then let it cool.

To make the pastry

1. In a big bowl, mix the plain flour, the olive oil, splash of lime juice and whisk whilst adding a glass of water (more if necessary) to make the pastry. It should become a solid dough; knead the dough with your hands so that the pastry sticks together - add more water if need be. Leave to rest for an hour.
2. To make the ‘pastry glue’ to stick the pastry together in triangular shapes, you need 5 tbsp of self-raising flour, add a bit of water and mix until it turns to a thin gluey paste.

Creating semi-circle pastries 

for the samosas

1. Roll medium-sized balls of dough (you don’t have to use all the dough; you can store half of it in the fridge for later).
2. Flatten the balls of dough with your hands and then roll the dough with a rolling pin (adding flour to it so it doesn’t stick onto the rolling pin) until it’s a big circle shape.
3. Place the pastry on to a pan, cooking only one side for 30 seconds, as the other side, which isn’t cooked, will be where the veggie filling goes in.
4. Cut the circle in half and place on a plate to let it cool.
5. Repeat same procedure for the rest of the dough.

How to make triangle samosas

Now that you have your veggie filling and pastry sheet ready, using the pastry glue, let’s stick it all together!

1. Folding the semi-circle pastry in half so that the straight edges meet, place glue (using your finger or brush) on to the cooked side, at the edge of the straight lined but only halfway.
2. Join the two edges together so it forms a cone shape, pressing down the two edges and the tip of the cone so it’s firmly stuck.
3. Hold the cone upright and add the veggie filling in the cone with a spoon.
4. Spread the glue around the edges of the inside of the pastry at the top and press down the sides together so there’s no gap or hole; it should create a nice triangle samosa shape.
5. Repeat procedure with the rest of the semi-circle pastries.
6. Freeze the samosas you don’t want to cook yet.
7. Fry the samosas you do want to eat, in oil until they turn brown.
8. When taking the samosa out of the oil, make sure you rinse the oil out and place the samosa on kitchen towel to soak up excess oil.
9. Tad da! You have made your samosas. You can eat them with tomato sauce, chutney, salad or chickpeas – it’s entirely up to you.

Enjoy!!

These samosas are suitable for freezing. To make fewer samosas, just adjust the ingredients accordingly.