I love Indian pickles, especially lime pickle. I’ve not had much luck in the past making them, but this worked out well and used up a glut of fresh chillis from a grocery box delivery.
Growing up I hated mince and plain boiled potatoes, which is a shame because other than me it was something of a family favorite. Having grown up, I still don’t enjoy boiled potatoes, but I discovered dumplings, and that changed everything.
My friend knows I’m always interested in unusual food, so when you messaged me to see if I wanted a jar of “this tingy chilli oil that my wife loves and you can’t get in the UK” I jumped.
We had this as a main course (a huge pile of it) but it would make a good side dish. It’s super savoury, with all the boxes being ticked (sour, sweet, salty, spicy, stuck on bits, burnt bits, squidgy bits, everything).
This was an excellent tea made by my girlfriend, well worth a write up. Pre-rolled pastry is a great shortcut to delicious dinners.
You will need A pack of pre-rolled puff pastry Half a large onion (finely sliced) A pack of smoked salmon (great use of the cheap packs of offcuts) Half a small tub of soft cheese A big squeeze of lemon juice A good scattering of capers Egg if you’re bothered about glazing the edge a slug of olive oil Do Softed the onions in a pan with the olive oil until translucent Let them cool a bit Add the soft cheese and lemon juice Bake the pastry on a sheet at 180 for a few minutes Pile it all into the middle of the pasty and spread towards the edges, leave as much crust as you’d like Scatter with salmon and capers Egg wash the crust if you’re into that sort of thing Return to the oven and bake until the edges are golden and the ctopping has a hint of char Result I’m sure this was meant to feed six but we didn’t let that get in the way.
Many years ago this was made on Blue Peter and from that point on it became a family favorite and Christmas tradition. Famously one of my elderly relatives absolutely refused to share the piece we gifted her each year.
Gado gado is one of my favorite dressings, sour, sweet, hot, salty, deeply umami. Rather than the usual noodles, I broke out the airfrier, and crisped a heap of potatoes.
Perfect for a cold day as the nights draw in, this used up some sausage meat in the freezer from last Christmas, some past their best parsnips and the last of my homegrown apples.
I’m trying to reduce our food waste by not letting anything spoil, so tonight’s dinner was the reduce of googling “aubergine and beef”, because we had some aubergine needed using up our The Christmas Farm meatbox contained are beef cut for stirfry.
This week I ran across okonomiyaki on twitter (mostly because I jokes about the potencial farts from a cabbage and egg based meal), but we had a big green cabbage to use up, so I figered I’d have a go.
This morning I noticed that since I started posting more to Instagram I’ve basically stopped updating here, which is bad badness. Where youpost matters, because ultimatey you’re putting all your effort into growing their platform, and they own you and your audience, so tihs moring I downloaded most of my content from there and rolled the last few months worth into this post.
Over lockdown we’ve been getting deliveries from Grainge Market which have been tremendous. The veg boxes always come with a net of garlic bulbs and so we’ve got quite a stash.
One of my favorite cookbooks at the moment (I collect them so we have a few) is Perfect Plates in 5 Ingredients by John Whaite and recently we ate the chickpeas cooked with chorizo and cider, a marvelously savoury dish.
It’s been an amazing summer for fruit and during lockdown I’ve been walking a lot round a local industrial estate, listening to podcasts and occationally picking fruit.
This week I read an artcle about redbeans and rice which looked delicious. I didn’t have any of the ingrediants, but the idea of soupy beans cooked with strong flavours and pork sounded great so I improvised.
I’ve always strayed away from baba ghanoush on menus because I thought it would be slimy. Last weeks vegetable box included a pair of big purple aubergines and I didn’t want them to go to waste.
This week the content of our veg box lead to a super dinner. Firstly we had a tonne of garlic (2 nets, 12+ bulbs) and we had fresh aubergines, avocado, tomatoes and a massive loaf of bread.
I’ve written about shin beef chilli in the past, but when a big chunk of shin landed in our meatbox I couldn’t resist giving it the InstantPot treatment.
I saw this Mongolian Beef recipe this morning and it ticked all the boxes, sweat, sharp, crispy fried bits and such lovely colours, so it went on my mental list to make.
This week we got a great delivery from Grainger Market, salad, fruit and an Indian Cookbox from Hector Hall. I’ve always loved dhal, it’s great comfort food.
This is probably a complete travisty, but it’s a dead easy and super tasty. The InstantPot left-right-left of saute, pressure cook, saute is an absolute winner.
driving home this afternoon I caght a bit of Radio4s Food Programme about pasties and couldn’t resist cooking some up this evening. I’ve spent a week in Minsk with work and one of the things I’ve really enjoyed (and that reminded me of eating in Czech Republic in the late 90s) was the use of cumin, so I decided to break it out tonight.
This week I ran across The Cury Guy’s spicy chicken wings and couldn’t resist. Whenever I buy chicken breasts from Block’n’Bottle the wing is still attached.
Beanbeans are a staple of Mexican and texmex food, but they’re not that common in the UK. You can get them in tins but they’re faily expensive and they’ve never had the texture I remember.
