All 2020th Posts

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.

Mongolian beef

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.

Lockdown InstantPot Dhal

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.

Sweet and sour pork (lockdown edition)

I’ve blogged about sweet and sour porksweet and sour pork before, but this recipe was a variant to use up some bits and pieces whilst on lockdown.

InstantPot Biryani

This is probably a complete travesty, but it’s a dead easy and super tasty. The InstantPot left-right-left of saute, pressure cook, saute is an absolute winner.

Chicken Methi

Many years ago there used to be two Indian takeaways next tone one another near us. One was excellent, every dish different and a wide ranging menu.

Savoury flaky pasties

driving home this afternoon I caught 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.

Indian style spicy wings

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.

Blackbeans done easily in the InstantPot

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.

Pastrami and warm german potato salad

I’ve love pastrami ever since I first ticked a food tourism box by going to Katz Deli, being overwhelms by it all but managing to order it on rye, and fell in love.

Friday night spicy meatballs

Early this week I saw a tweet about a Smitten Kitchen post from last year for braised ginger meatballs in coconut broth which looked excellent and I was excited to try it when I got home.

The Perfect Christmas Cake

I love a real Christmas cake, a dark fruit cake, slightly too soft, a little booze, and disproportionately more marzipan than strictly necessary. This year I decided to to follow the very excellent Completely Perfect by Felicity Cloake.

Instant Pot beef Curry

The more I use the Instant Pot, the more I appreciate being able to easily use different cooking techniques without doing more washing up. Recently I’ve used it a few times to make curries and uncovered the left-right-left of Instant Pot cookery: saute - pressure cook - saute.

Spicy roast potatoes

I made this as a side dish the other night, but it was the star of the show, hence writing this up, but the lack of photos.

Christmas dried fruit tart tatin

Whilst noodling through John Whaite’s very excellent Comfort I ran across his fig, prune and port tart tatin. I’ve always rather enjoyed tart tatin, with it’s unctuous and gooey fruits and pleasingly crisp base/top, and it’s the time of year when dried fruits are often on offer in the supermarkets.

Herby cheese and onion push together bread

I remember this from growing up, but didn’t know where it came from. A bit of googling suggests it was probably from Nigella Christmas. The original recipe calls for snipped sage leaves.