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.
