Recently I’ve been cooking a lot of spiced spinach dishes. It’s a tonne of green vegetables, full of spicy goodness and if you squint you can convince yourself it’s healthy.
After a busy week mostly fuelled by snacks and black coffee we needed a dinner full of vegatables than was also satisfying. The combination of a tonne of spinach and cheese fitted the bill.
Reasonably often we make flat breads, pile them full of tasty things and hot sauce and at them with our faces. It might be a bit formulaic, but it’s always tasty.
In a recent tweet my friend Branden mentioned making his own yoghurt to reduce the amount of single use plastic in the house and it reminded me that I’d always meant to have a go.
I love bread and butter pudding and I love hotcross buns, so when I left a pack of hotcross buns out and they went stale there was only one option - another using up combo recipe.
A super quick tea with lots colour, crunch and spice. The rare steak melts in the mouth.
You will need A small steak of of high quality as possible (this was a 300g filet between two) A block of noodles A big handful of beansprouts 3 spring onions, green parts finely slices, white parts sliced into battons 1 carrot grated A few inches of cucumber, cut into fine battons 1 red chilli finely sliced 1 teaspoon of runny honey 2 teaspoons of soy 1 teaspoon of fish sauce 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame seeds Half a teaspoon of grazed ginger The juice of half an oranges A hard handful of peanuts, ideally unsalted but salted will be ok.
For April is still unfeasibly cold and grey, so I fancied some sunny flavours. Nothing tastes more like the sun that jerk with is sweat chilli, bright thyme and fragrent spices.
I love fresh pineapple. Recently we’ve been eating it in salsa a lot (grill until blistered, mash with chilli and corriandar), and it made me thing of something I heard years ago but can’t source, that ripe pineapple is great with salt and chilli powder.
Another using up meal which turned out really well. I firmly believe that food you put togehter with your hands at the table is always the most fun, this being no exception.
The weather turned cold and miserable today, so I decided to kill four birds with one stone:
Steamed suet pudding, to help get though the weather Use up some oranges that were going past their best Answer the question: can you make suet pudding in a slow cooker Answer the question: can you use clingfilm instead of muslin and safe yourself a tonne of time.
This was inspired by a Nigel Slater recipe that involved a lot of standing at the stove and stirring. Being a lazy and busy man, I shoved it all in the oven and relied on a bit of vigerous stirring at the end.
After seeing deep fried halloumi on TV this week, I wondered whether it could be airfried. Good news, it can!
You will need A block of halloumi cut into chunky chips.
Yep, it’s still winter, so it’s still legally required to eat stew once a week. Shin beef always slow cooks brilliantly but the probelm is you can’t do dumplings in the slowcooker (I’ve not tried it yet anyway), thus this was slow cooked for 8 hours, then finished in the oven.
After Christmas sprouts are still in the shops and excellent. Fine sliced they can be used in loads of places. I’d not thought of having them in pasta but the combinate with sausage is great.
It’s that time of the year (that most wonderful time of the year) where you can completely justify eating comforting food.
YES - I said it again - the weather is rubbish, everything seems to be terrible and it’s totally justified to eat pork, carbs and cheese baked in meaty salty delicious stock.
It’s that time of the year (that most wonderful time of the year) where you can completely justify eating comforting food.
You will need 3 decent quality sausages per person (I used the Italian jobs from the most excellent Block’n’Blottle) A medium onion per person (halved and then quartered) A measure of sherry/masala/glass of wine/beer A bay leaf A tablespoon of plain flour A blob of butter (25g maybe) Half a stock cube Do Pop the sausages and butter in an oven suitable pan on a medium heat Cool under the sausages have some colour and then remove, keep them to one side Pop the oven on 180 Stick the kettle on Add the onions and bay leaf to the pan, reducing the heat Cook the onions until browned but still juicy.
Marinading chicken pieces and baking them in the oven is super simple and delicious. I always seem to have lots of yoghurt marinade left and there’s nothing you can do with it because it’s full of raw chicken.
Perfect Plates in 5 Ingredients by John Whaite is a tremendous read and really quite an inspiring book. This dish was very much inspired by it, with a bit more garlic.
It’s the time of year (the week really) when squashes and pumpkins are super discounted. I’ve generally no idea what to do with them, but I pinched the method that HelloFresh often uses, roasting in the oven and then saucing.
To try and break a bt of a food rut we’ve been in were trying out recipes from Perfect Plates in 5 ingrediants, shopping specifically for the ingrediants for chosen dishes, rather than doing a general shop and making stuff.
I’ve been experimenting with marinading wings chicken in Irn Bru before frying them to see if the Bru flavours come though. They do, but it’s not as strong as I’d hoped.
Cooking pork twice, once to help break down the fat/cartalidge and once to crisp up the outside seems to be a winning formula and the combination of “poor man’s sous vide” and the Airfryer works brilliantly.
I have a bit of a thing for sticky sweet meat dishes, and so this mid-week dinner was a bit of a guilty plesure. The poached bak choi is a good foil to the rich fish.
Even on the hottest day of the year, casserole with dumplings is still my favorite comfort food. The aubergine ended up in there becaue I was having a use up of veg, but the texture was tremendous.
I love hot sauses (see picture below of out fridge drawer) so when I saw a limited edition Encona sauce (already someting of a favourite brand) I couldn’t resist it.
I love meals which can be prepared in advance and with a little prep work come together like magic at the end. This is one where everything benefits from a little marinading time.
A love a good casserole and there were some excellent meatballs in this months meatballs. Casseroles are also an excuse for dumplings too. Thus, an all spherical dinner!
One of the things that takeaways excel at (and that I assume is dreadfully bad for you) are those dishes where chunks of meat are crisp but coated in a spicy sweet unctuous sauce.
I love mackerel pate. It’s super quick to make, deeply savoury and satifying. If the mackrel, lemon and cremefresh are all fridge cold you can serve it straight away.
It all started with Facebook’s vile bonhomie “What’s on your mind?” prompt, leading me to write “What’s on my mind? Whether a Twix sandwich is feasible, and if so, legal?
There’s something very satifying about eating spicy food scooped up in a leaf. This is 10 mins from start to face.
You will need Pork mince (about 300g in my case) 2 small hot chillis (I used birds eye) 1 lime 1 stem of lemon grass, finely chopped (I cheated and used the pre-packaged puree - abot a teaspoon) 1 fat inch of ginger 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (I cheated again!
At an amazing hole in the wall place in Key West we ate corn on the cob that came wrapped in foil. I’d no idea what it was called, but a bit of googling uncovered “elotes”.
Growing up I held donner kebab is the lowest of regards, writing it off as the worst quality meat and something I’d never eat. Indeed right though university I managed to avoid it, right up until a couple of years ago when I had a bite or two on top of a pizza (there’s another story) in Middlebough.
A few months ago my friend Jim sent me a bottle from his latest venture The Birch Syrup Company and other then a quick birch gin martini (excellent) I’d not got round to having a play with it, until I was walking home tonight and had a craving for char sui pork.
I love a bit of quick grilled lamb and a marinade and glaze never goes too far wrong. Despite lamb being sweet I think it benefits from a slightly sweetened glazed, however if you grill lamb hot and fast (as it benefits from) sugars in the glaze burn, so I decided to try adding it at the very end of cooking.
I love a good roast chicken and we very often spatchcock them for speed and even cooking. Excellent, but lacks the gravy which is so easily made from a roasting tin.
Every so often my G&S Organics meatbox comes with a secret message on the top - CC. It’s my twitter handle, but it’s also a goodd sign that Lee has popped me something exta in, knowing we’re not a household which only eats steak.
I was looking for a way to use up a ripe aubergine and some excellent pork mince when I ran across this rather excellent looking roast aubergines with Szechuan fragrant pork made by Thomasina Miers.
One of the fringe benefits of eating a lot of BBQ in the States was eating a ot of BBQ side dishes. It was facinating how many variations on potato salad there were, from the mayo coated gloop at one end to the warm, sharp, vinegar laden jobs at the other.
I’ve been working up in Scotland quite a lot over the last few months and whilst there came across two excellent local treats: macaroni pies (maracroni cheese, in a pie) and chicken tikka pie (you can figure it out).
In this week’s rather excellent Our Man Inside our man Documentally mentioned hit last meal would include Iraqi Lamb and Eggplant Stew which sounded like a great use for some lamb neck steaks that were in our meatbox this month.
I stumbled across an excellent slow cooker pulled brisket this week and had cravings. I also had a small leg of lamb in the freezer which needed using.
I love chicken wings and until recently I thought deep frying was the only way to get really crispy results. I was wrong. The combination of baking at two temperatures and a little baking powder makes all the difference.
I love Graze boxes and I especially love their spicy crunchy snak thing. I started to try and bulk buy such things online but it was pointed out they could probably be replicated easily enough.
Nothing complicated here, just some lamb chops grilled fast are hard, grazed and served with a flavoured couscous. I thought I had a pot of ras el hanout around somewhere but when I couldn’t find it I improvised and loved the result
There are times when I crave savoury so bad it is unreal. I’ve found myself eating chilli flakes in oil from the jar not five minutes after making peanut butter and lime pickle sandwiches.
I wasn’t going to blog about this but the photos attracted some attention on twitter, so I’m knocking it out quickly. The trick here is using a metal oven tray, promoting stuck on savoury bits.
An easy supper to feed lots of folks. I got the idea from this Thomasina Miers’ post. The Belazu tagine paste (bought from Sainsburys) adds a good base and body of flavours.
Ever since I ran across it somewhere on the Internet I’ve wanted to deep fry a turkey. At first it looks like the most redneck and crass thing, but… it’s the best turkey I’ve ever eaten.
After getting a chance to buy some goat on the bone from The Lakewood Goat Company whilst they were at Jesmond Food Market there was only one thing on the cards, curry goat.
I love roast beef, and the more I cook it the faster it is to cook. I had a chunk of excllent looking silverside from our meatbox so I decided to go for a super fast and hot roast leaving it rare in the middle.
I love carrot soup, and it’s super easy to make. This was an experiment in cooking out the veg for an hour, almost roasting them, so that there were carmelised bits and a deep, rich flavour.
One of the things we ate in Texas which was so much better than expected was smoked turkkey at Kreuzs in Lockhart (after a morning of blasting away with all the firearms banned in the UK).
Pork mince isn’t very diet friendly, but it is delicious and a little goes a long way. I have a lot of dried lemon peel left from an experiment (to be blogged) so I thought I’d combine the two.
Sous vide (cooking at low temperature for an extended period) has been around for a while and was originally the realm of top end chefs with expensive kit.
After a trip to Wagamammas this weekend I realised I’d not had miso in ages, and my donburi had some excellent sweat sticky chicken. I thought the combo of the two would be rather good.
There are few things as American as hot wings in my eyes, and I bloody love them. They’re great vechicals for hot sauce too, which is handy because eating it with a spoon is generally frowned up.
I trie dthis before and it didn’t really work, but the flavours were about right and it was the consistency that was wrong. Attempt two (mostly to use up bits in the fridge)!
I completely forgot to take a photo before this was basically all eatten, sorry about that. This went from ingrediants to IN MY FACE in less than 5 minutes, including plating up and contementation.
A little while ago the Two Hungry Boys mentioned Perfect Plates in 5 Ingredients by John Whaite and I impulse bought a copy. It’s excellent, and a lovely read.
Beef wellington is one of those things which looks amazing, combines some expensive ingrediants but it surprisingly easy. The trick to it is manage to cook the pastry whilst keep keeping the beef rare.
I love takeaway Chinese lemon chicken so much. Even when it’s bad, it’s good. I’ve already blogged a fakeaway version already using chicken being quickly deep fried, but this version is very easy on the weight watchers points, and that’s pretty important to me right now.
I love a good sausage roll. Every so often I buy a cold one from a shop and they’re always dissapointing. With pre-made pastry they’re stupidly easy to make too.
One day I’ll cook mushrooms without cream, but that day is not today. I boody ove mushrooms, and when you leave them chunky they’re so good as part of a main course.
I had a great pork chop that had been lurking in the freezer for well over a year and needed eating. Instead of grilling it fully loaded or deep fried it, I decided to bread and bake it.
Turkey mince makes a great burger but because it’s so low fat it’s difficult to keep them together in the pan. Step forward baking. Because all the juice is kept in they’re juicy.
Second dish of the trip, this cooks up quickly because the hard to cook bits (the potatoes) are done in advance.
You will need A couple of big potatoes A coupe of chorizo A medium sized onion Butter Do Dice the potatoes and stick under boiling water for 5 mins Drain and set aside.
I’m just back from driving round The North Coat 500 whih was tremendous fun. Knowing I was camping for a few days I wanted to take some food with me but everything I read in “quick ccampfire meal” type blog posts involved boiling huge amounts of water.
I’m funny about eggs. I love an omlette, but I’m not keen on soft eggs, be they fried or poached. I’d also never eat a hardboiled egg on it’s own, but I love a scotch egg or even a pickled egg.
I love turkey. It’s a great meat, seemingly only eaten at Christmas, but it’s low fat, super tasty and often on offer. I’m planning on eating more of it this year and although tasty in itself it’s great at soaking up flavours.
