All Posts

Beef bolognese with Parmesan dumplings

Mince and dumplings are great (I’ve written about how much I enjoy savoury mince and dumplings). Beef bolognese is great. At some point, somebody combined the two.

What a few months of HelloFresh has taught me

I wrote this before HelloFresh had some sort of meltdown leading to missing boxes, poor communications and ultimately us canceling our subscription. It was helpful for a while though.

Salmon with samphire, roast potatoes and delicious butter

You will need A pair of salmon fillets Enough potatoes for two, cut into cubes A slice of a block of unsalted butter roughly 1am wide The juice and zest of half a lemon A teaspoon of capers A bag of samphire A sprig of thyme A big sprig of parsley A quarter of a clove of garlic Olive oil Do Shake the potatoes with a teaspoon of oil and stick in the airfrier on 180 for 20 minutes Drop the samphire into boiling water for 2 minutes and drain, set to one side When you’re about ten minutes off the potatoes being ready, make the salmon Put a good slug of olive oil into a pan and once it’s hot add the salmon in skin down (it should sizzle) Cook skin side down for a few minutes, then turn them over Turn the heat down and add the butter, thyme and garlic Add the lemon zest and capers, keep it cooking for a few minutes, pop the salmon on it’s side if you need to to help it cook though Add the Parsley, samphire and lemon juice, stir round, cook for another minute or two Pile the potatoes into the middle of the plate, point the rest over the top.

Saag Paneer

A very quick, easy and vegetarian tea, perfect for using a huge bag of spinach that was very heavily discounted. Adapted from the perfect saag paneer.

Sausage and roast potato bhorta

I was very skeptical of Fish Finger Bhorta when I first saw it, not because of the fish fingers, but the English mustard. When it was being discussed on TV Nigella mentioned that is was suitable for anything crunchy, so tonight I switched in in a family favorite.

Pine smoked trout salad

We got some lovely pink sea trout in our FishBox and I finished work on time so had a little bit of time to faff.

Peanut (groundnut) chicken

I love the Rivers of London books and all thought it Peter Grant raves about the groundnut chicken dish his mum makes. After a bit of googling I found that groundnuts are another name for peanuts (and fascinatingly in Nigeria “peanuts” are groundnuts dipped in dough and fried).

Tingly pork and braised greens

I love Chinese meals of rice, greens and meat. This months meatbox had a lovely slab of pork belly in it so I got to scratch my itch and try using the Unknown Tingly Green Sauce I last had it in Tingly Chinese Chicken

Roasted veg and chips

This is not a classy dish, or some high end cooking, but it’s a great way to use up any vegetables going a bit soft and it’s a super tasty tea.

Chilli Lemon Pickle

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.

Super Savoury Beef Mince and Dumplings

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.

Tingly Chinese Chicken

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.

Super savoury butternut squash

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).

Smoked Salmon Tart

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 Softened 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 topping 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.

Courgette Fritters

We had a few courgettes that needed using up and I came across a recipe on BBC Food that I adapted to make a quick and tasty tea.

Blue Peter Jigsaw Log Cake

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 airfried salad

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.

Autumnal traybake

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.

Beef and aubergine hotpot with quince

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.

Okonomiyaki meets Wales

This week I ran across okonomiyaki on twitter (mostly because I jokes about the potential farts from a cabbage and egg based meal), but we had a big green cabbage to use up, so I figured I’d have a go.

Cornish pasties

I love a Cornish pasty and a pair make a great tea. I used beef mince because it’s what I had in, next time I’d probably use very finely sliced steak.

Lockdown catch up mega post

This morning I noticed that since I started posting more to Instagram I’ve basically stopped updating here, which is bad badness. Where you post matters, because ultimately you’re putting all your effort into growing their platform, and they own you and your audience, so this morning I downloaded most of my content from there and rolled the last few months worth into this post.

Super savoury garlicky jam

Over lockdown we’ve been getting deliveries from Grainger Market which have been tremendous. The veg boxes always come with a net of garlic bulbs and so we’ve got quite a stash.

White fish with chorizo, chickpeas and cider

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.

Making fruit liqueurs

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 occasionally picking fruit.

Soupy Beans

This week I read an article 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.

Baba Ghanoush

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.

Smoothered Pork Chop

I love a pork chop, they’re a much underrated cut of meat. There were a pair of them in our meatbox this month and I couldn’t resist.

Oven baked aubergine, tomato and garlic

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.

InstantPot Shin Beef Chilli

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.