Corned Beef Hash - with added veg

"Doesn't it look like dog food, though?"

I'll accept those comments now, here, before I even start this post. Yes, come on, get them all out in the open. I know you're thinking them, and to be fair, I'd probably have to agree with you, although I don't feed my dog the kind of dog food that you're talking about - which is possibly why I am able to tolerate corned beef. In fact, I'd go so far to say I really rather like it. Which is pretty contradictory given my usual mantra of fresh, local, organic. So I'll accept that criticism too.

Finished? I'll get on with the main event.

While I've never been ashamed to eat a slice or two of corned beef, tinned potatoes was somewhere I had always drawn the line (well, I'd drawn the line before the tinned potatoes) until we went on Scout camp last summer. I was converted, and for the rest of the summer, corned beef hash became one of our regular camping meals, corned beef, tinned potatoes, tinned sweetcorn. Cheap, filling. Serve with tabasco for the adults, brown sauce or ketchup for the kids. Those with harsher tongues amongst you might whisper "Trailer trash", but I say don't knock it till you try it.

I had corned beef hash on the menu from last week but in the general disarray that my week became, it never happened. On the plus side, the tins of potatoes, sweetcorn and corned beef were sitting nicely in the cupboard ready to be used up, and I supplemented with some brussel sprouts that our allotment neighbour picked for us, and two rather sorry looking leeks. 

That's the great thing about this - you can use up anything in it. I've made variations of this with fresh potatoes too, and with bacon instead of corned beef.  Anything goes, really.

Corned Beef Hash

serves 4

1 tablespoon oil
1 red onion, peeled and chopped
2 leeks, sliced and washed
2 handfuls of small brussel sprouts, trimmed
340g tin new potatoes, drained and sliced up
1 tin corned beef, sliced up into chunks
1 small tin sweetcorn, drained

Heat the oil in a large frying pan, then add in the onion and cook over a medium heat for a few minutes. Add in the leeks and then the brussels sprouts and cook for a few minutes till softened.

Tip the veg into a bowl, then put the pan back on the heat with a little more oil if necessary, and add the potatoes and cook over a reasonably high heat to get them a little browned and crunchy. Add the veg back into the pan, along with the corned beef and the sweetcorn and stir till all is hot.

Serve. With tabasco, ketchup or brown sauce to taste.


 

Mass catering - Chilli for 20 - and getting published

Another day, another ridiculous quantity of food to prepare: chilli for 20.

It's for the Scouts (of course) - the Husband is off later today on 'winter camp'. "Rather you than me", I say, (under my breath of course), and plan a distinctly more comfortable weekend. I did, however, agree to cook a chilli for the Scouts to take with them to have this evening once they have arrived and pitched camp (and, hopefully, lit an enormous camp fire. Fingers crossed they are actually prepared, and someone remembers to take some dry wood).

Before I share with you how easy it is to knock up chilli for 20, let's just ponder a moment the fact that the Husband and 2 (I think) of the other leaders are planning to give up a weekend taking 17 kids camping in the middle of January. My hat goes off to them.


 I think the Husband is wonderful anyway (I married him, of course I do) but it takes a special amount of commitment to do the extra for a voluntary organisation like Scouts. This is his last hoorah with the Scout troop he's been involved with for some years. It's a great group of leaders (we're going to miss you so much when we move) - all of them in their late 30s/early 40s with demanding jobs and young families, but they are prepared to give up extra time to run the scout troop here. There are adult helpers too - as I've said before, none of them with any appreciable 'time on their hands', but all busy with families, jobs, studying - who are prepared to give their time to run a thriving active Scout group. 

I think (like all volunteers, in whatever field) the fact that they do this deserves some recognition. So, apart from the fact that I think you are all at least a little but bonkers for even contemplating camping this weekend, here's to the Overton Scout Leaders. I'll be thinking of you this weekend as I sup a glass or 2 of wine at the annual non book club Book Club meeting.

And if they can give up their time doing this, the least I can do is cook them a chilli.

I'm also quite excited because I had a variation of this published in the UK Scouting magazine recently. Get me.

Chilli for 20

Put your enormous pan on the heat...

An enormous pan
1 good slug of sunflower oil
4 onions, peeled & finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled & finely chopped
1 tablespoon each mild chilli powder, ground cumin & ground coriander
2kg beef mince
4 red peppers, deseeded and chopped into chunks
1 kg mushrooms finely chopped (I pulsed them in a food processor - small is good when feeding mushrooms to children, I find)
5 beef stock cubes made up to 1.2 litres
1.6 kg tinned chopped tomatoes
salt & pepper
1.6 kg tinned red kidney beans



Put your enormous pan on the heat, add the sunflower oil and when it's hot, chuck in the chopped onion and garlic, and sweat for 10 minutes or so. 

Add the chilli powder, ground cumin and coriander into the onion, stir well and cook for another couple of minutes. 

Take the pan off the heat.

Heat a frying pan and brown the mince in batches over a relatively high heat. My pan is non-stick so I didn't need any extra oil, but you might want to use a tsp or so of oil for every chunk of mince you brown. AS you brown the mince, add it in to the onions in the enormous pan.

Once all the mince is browned and in with the onions, put the enormous pan back on the heat, add red peppers, mushrooms, the 1.2 litres of stock, the chopped tomatoes and a good grind of black pepper and a couple of good pinches of salt. Bring it all up to a simmer, and cook for 20-30 minutes, then add in the kidney beans and simmer for another 20-30 minutes, checking to see if you need any more liquid.

Tape on the lid and tuck into the back of a minibus ready for eating later on.

Good luck, guys! I'll pray you don't get too much weather.

Undermined by the veg box - PSB and chorizo pasta

So all those good intentions, about using up everything in my cupboards? Yeah, right.

Not looking much like chickpea curry, is it?

The week started off well enough, with the meals I'd intended over the weekend and on Monday, but Tuesday's chickpea ketchup curry and dahl went out of the window following a car fail (don't ask). The fact that we had leftovers in the fridge from both the lasagne and the sausage casserole, meant that when I finally got round to preparing tea for my 2 starving children (home eventually with the help of a bungee, 2 old bootlaces and a good friend), I couldn't be bothered to cook. Well - would you?

The other thing that happened was that I forgot to cancel the veg box. Usually, I wait and see what's in the veg box every Tuesday, and then go from there. However, as my plan for feeding us revolves around what I already have, it makes more economic sense to be able to choose my veggies for the next few weeks, rather than wait and see what turns up.

But, you know, I'm glad - GLAD, I tell you, because if I hadn't had the veg box this week, I probably wouldn't have got any PSB.

Purple Sprouting Brocoli.

My favourite.

So instead of writing Tuesday off as an exercise in fridge control and simply shifting that night's planned meal on to today, I am now down not one but 2 meals on my plan, because instead of either chickpea ketchup curry or chilli, tonight we are having PSB and chorizo pasta. With fried eggs for those that want.

You don't need a recipe (do you? There isn't one, I'm afraid). I haven't weighed out any amounts (my greed is driving this) although for 3 of us, I'm using 9 little chorizo sausages - about 180g, relatively thickly sliced, which I'm gently frying as I type this - mmm can't you smell the garlicky, smoky paprika? The pasta is on to boil and I'll steam the PSB florets over the pasta water for the shortest possible time so that they are just cooked but not at all soggy and limp. My veg box had about 4 big stalks of it - so I trimmed off the biggest leaves and split them up into the florets.

In a moment I'll be frying the eggs in the pan that the chorizo was cooked in. 

Hungry?

Just as good on a thick slice of bread as with pasta

Meal planning with a purpose

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you had a great Christmas and all that.

So here it is - 2014. One of the really good things about the Christmas break was that I stopped thinking too hard about the move to Wales: not that thinking about it was bad, but in the run up to the holiday, we were mostly doing lots of practical stuff around sorting out our current house, and doing all the Christmas stuff, with a view to dealing with the "where will we move to" bit after Christmas, and I think it was stresssing me out a bit.

Anyway, we had a lovely Christmas, and we've just come back from a whistlestop tour of suitable houses to rent (all 3 of them) which shortlisted themselves to 2 on the basis that one of the landlords wouldn't countenance a dog. While nothing is agreed on paper, this makes me feel a lot happier (not, obviously, the bit about Fred). I also had the opportunity to dine in a number of cafes in the Cardigan area, and stick my nose into various foodie emporia, and my friends, I am officially excited by what I saw. Watch this space.

As a result of this, not only am I happier, I am filled with renewed energy to make it happen.

So filled with energy in fact, that I tackled one of the cupboards this afternoon. In many ways, I only have Dom at Belleau Kitchen, and his last Random Recipes linky, to thank for this, but I've made several references to my hoarding tendancies in the past, and the fact that we could probably survive a nuclear winter on the contents of my cupboards, and the time has come to put this to the test. I know I could pack up the cupboards and move the contents with me to groan and mutter in another cupboard far away (would they groan and mutter in Welsh, I wonder?), but I've set myself a bit of a challenge to see if I can get rid of it all (in a constructive way) - even the bottle of pomegranate molasses, Phil...

So, I have cleaned out my fancy pull out cupboard, thrown away the tin of blackcurrants that went out of date in June 2009 (oh the shame), and I have planned a week's meals based on the the tins and what I have in the freezer (in my aim to get first from 2 small freezers to one).

So here is what we will be eating:

This evening (Saturday) - casserole - using up a pound of stewing steak that was in the freezer. Also rhubarb from the freezer, which I am stewing. Some will go into a type of Eton Mess using up the end of a tin of meringues that's been knocking round on top of the cupboard, and the last of the Christmas cream...

Sunday - Lasagne - will use up some of a kilo of mince that I have in the freezer, that I need to braise first, but it will also do for Wednesday's chilli, and some meals over the next few weeks. Also will use up the remains of a box of dried lasagne pasta, and a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes

Monday - Sausage casserole - 4 sausages in the freezer and a can (one of many) of cannellini beans, and one of chopped tomatoes

Tuesday - chick pea ketchup curry and dahl - chickpeas, ketchup, red lentils

Wednesday - chilli - in addition to the mince, this will use up chopped tomatoes and kidney beans

Thursday - corned beef & sweetcorn hash - using up a tin each of potatoes, corned beef and sweetcorn (this is the last of my camper van meals)

Friday - fish fingers, oven chips and peas (frozen from the garden in the summer. The fish fingers and chips are using up ends of packets in the freezer - there are times when everyone needs a bag of frozen chips, OK)

And I'm sure we'll be able to get through these remnants of the summer of camping some how...

There does of course need to be some shopping, but having planned the meals and worked out a shopping list, it is significantly smaller than the usual 'first shop of the month' would be.

I've been so enthused, that I have even re-ordered the shelves so that all the necessary tins are now to hand and organised for each meal. ready for me to use as intended, on one separate shelf of the cupboard.

Sometimes I even surprise myself.

Extreme dog walking - and doughnuts, Roald Dahl style

The recent weather hasn't been kind to anyone. We've got away relatively lightly, considering, with a couple of fence panels down, and I know that there are plenty of people who've suffered real hardship. I say this before I descend to the trivial, and suggest that it's really not been a great time to be a dog owner. 

Heading out to do battle with the elements day after day, well, it's not really what you sign up for. Yes, you know you'll be out every day - that's part of the joy of dog owning. But when the weather is relentlessly grim, driving rain, howling wind, there's a little voice inside saying "Why me? Why did I do this thing, and commit myself to this daily drudge?". And then you have to pull yourself together and work out where to go that means you will not get (a) crushed by a falling tree (b) blown away to Wiltshire (c) drowned in a mire and (d) whether to even try persuding the rest of the family to come with you. 

It hasn't been easy, I tell you.

Of course there's not much use bleating about it when your dog of choice doesn't give a stuff about the weather, and indeed, seems to find the wind and rain extra invigorating - for a start he can't hear you screaming at him to come back, as he joyfully follows whatever scent trail has tickled his nostrils through the fields. And when you're a springer spaniel, frankly, the muddier the better. 

I've become accustomed to it over the 3+ years that Fred's been in our lives, but when you get an extended period of miserable weather such as we've had recently, well, it gets you down. 

We had a glorious winter's day yesterday, frosty, sunny, but when I got up this morning to resumed gales, my heart sank. And reader, I quailed. I took the coward's way out and dashed up the nearest field to give Fred the briefest of opportunities to do what a dog needs to do, before returning home, promising that "when the weather clears later" I'd take him out properly. Later. 

How then to fill a morning? Pink received Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes for Christmas. It's a set of recipes compiled by Josie Fison and Felicity Dahl, the great author's wife, based on dishes from his children's books: there's Wormy Spaghetti (from The Twits), Lickable Wallpaper for Nurseries (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Scrambled Dregs (James and the Giant Peach) and Bunce's Doughnuts (Fantastic Mr Fox). 

And so, seamlessly from dog walking to doughnuts.

Any resemblance to her mother is purely coincidental

I've made doughnuts once before in my life. It was a long time ago. We were friends with another family who lived a few streets away. They were eccentric and fabulous: the parents, both incredibly committed doctors, working in tropical diseases, and paediatrics, and 4 children, a girl a year or so older then me, and 3 boys. When we met them, they had returned from a long stint working in Malawi. They were absolutely their own people. Generous, kind and completely unreliable. I remember one Sunday they were due to come for lunch. Time passed and they didn't appear, so my father and I went round to see what was up (no anxious texting). We knocked, and the husband flung the door open with a wide smile. "Come in, come in! What can we do for you? Would you like some lunch" Completely oblivious to the fact that it was they who should have been at our house. 

One afternoon, my brothers and I found ourselves at their house with no parents in evidence. The circumstances have escaped me, as have the reasons for making doughnuts, or most of the specifics of the endeavour, but I recall that an instruction in the recipe that we were following required us, for some reason, to the "throw the dough".Where or why we were supposed to throw the dough, I have no idea, but in our infinite wisdom, we decided to take the instruction literally. 

I'll leave the scene that followed to your imagination, and I can't even remember what the resulting confections were like, but it's a memory that's stayed with me, and popped back into my head when Pink and I saw this recipe. Fortunately, no throwing is required for these babies, and apart from the deep frying at the end, it's a pretty child friendly recipe. Pink made the dough pretty much all herself with a bit of input from me. 

Even better, as the time came for the dough to go in the fridge, the rain miraculously cleared so the dog got his walk after all. 

As for the deep frying, well it's something that I've long had the fear about. I don't think I've ever really had a go, and I was a bit reluctant to attempt this recipe on that basis, but in the end, I took a deep breath and got on with it. Just like the dog walking, in fact. And it wasn't as scary as I thought it might have been. So this afternoon, dog walked, and while the Husband and Blue went off to the allotment to get some veg for dinner, Pink and I stayed home and fried us some doughnuts. 

There's no gender stereotyping in our house, no siree.

They weren't the greatest doughnuts I've ever eaten, but they were perfectly satisfactory as the fruits of a wet day's labours in the kitchen.

Cinammon Doughnuts

100g soft brown sugar
50g soft unsalted butter
1 large egg
450g plain flour
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinammon
pinch of salt
2 tbsp hot water
1/4 tsp vanilla essence (or equivalent)
75ml milk

oil for deep frying
caster sugar for rolling the doughnuts in after frying

(Oh & do check out my lovely new scales...)

Make the dough by creaming together the sugar and butter. Whisk up the egg a little then add gradually to the creamed butter & sugar.

In a bowl combine the flour, cinammon, salt and baking powder then stir into the mixture, along with the hot water, milk and vanilla. I was all out of extract, so used vanilla bean paste instead..

This combined easily in the Kenwood to a stiff smooth dough. Wrap this in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Lick the bowl/walk the dog*.


When your dough has refrigerated, divide it in half and leave half in the fridge while you roll out the other half and using 2 cutters, one smaller than the other, cut out your doughnuts. The book suggests using a 6 cm and a 3 cm cutter. Mine were 8 cm and 5 cm. Roll the dough to about 0.5 cm thickness and cut out to your heart's content. Re-roll the scraps and keep cutting.

When we got fed up of re-rolling, we just left the smaller circles as they were, ready to fry as hole-less doughnuts.

Fill your pan to about 5 cm with vegetable oil and bring to temperature - you need it to be 190C (375F) and this is NOT something the kids can be involved with. 

Fry your doughnuts in batches, turning once, till golden brown. I found that mine sank to the bottom when I dropped them in, then rose to the top and needed a little longer before being flipped over. 

Once cooked, drain on kitchen paper and toss in caster sugar.

Eat while warm. And try not to lick your lips. Mmmmm.

_________________________
* delete as applicable

Turkey melts

Yes, another post about what to do with the leftover turkey. Not from me - this is the first time I've posted since Christmas, but just generally, there are tonnes of ideas about what to do with the leftovers. And rightly so. Even having reduced my Christmas food shopping list to a minimum, bearing in mind that we weren't entertaining anyone on Christmas Day itself, my fridge is groaning with food.

I weighed up the pros and cons of buying a truly local bird, or getting a free range Copas turkey from the local butcher. In the end, the butcher won. I like buying meat from him. It's always great, he gets great fish for me too, and what's even more valuable, he tolerates my indecision when I have failed to meal plan, sympathises with me generally about life, and occasionally allows me to owe him if I've forgotten my purse. For all these reasons, he wins out when such choices have to be made.

I ordered the smallest turkey I could - which still ended up being 4.8 kilos. Very tasty it was, if I do say so myself. There seems to have been a mind shift about cooking turkey - gone is the requirement to be up at 5 a.m. to 'put the bird in', leaving it to cook for hours on end. I stuffed mine with a made up mix of sausage meat, grated onion, finely chopped parsley and the zest of 2 lemons, covered the breast with streaky bacon, and sat it all on some roughly chopped onion, bay leaves and rosemary which all helped to add flavour to the gravy. It took less than 3 hours, and sat comfortably under some foil while I sorted the rest of the meal out. Marvellous.

The Husband and I agreed that we would take a practical approach to the leftovers this year. As the big move draws ever nearer, there's no room to be stashing things away in the freezer - I'm meant to be emptying it - so we decided that we would keep the leftover meat in the fridge, and if it didn't get eaten in a few day, well, we'd just (gulp) throw it away.

But strangely, I've been even more zealous in my attempts to use it up than I would normally have been.

We had the traditional cold version of the turkey dinner on Boxing Day with my father in law and his partner: cold turkey, cold sausages, cold cranberry sauce, cold gravy - but hot bubble & squeak (yum).

Yesterday, turkey sandwiches for lunch.

Today, turkey melts. This idea came to me while I was writing an online article about using up turkey, and I thought I'd give it  go. Turns out, it was definitely a good idea.Not only was it a slightly different way to eat up a bit more of the turkey, it also used up some of the cheese. Now, as an aside, while the concept of 'too much cheese' is not one I am necessarily familiar with, it would be fair to say that there is currently rather a lot in the fridge.

8 soft tortillas
250g chopped turkey meat
4 spring onions, finely chopped
grated chedder, crumbled blue cheese, whatever you have

Heat a non stick frying pan, and lay a tortilla into it. Sprinkle some chopped turkey, spring onion and cheese over half the tortilla

 and fold the other half over the top of it. You should then be able to get another on in alongside depending on the size of your pan and the wraps you are using.

Warm till the underside is toasted brown, then flip over and toast the other side till the cheese is melted. Leave to cool a little, then serve.

I can also recommend making this omitting the spring onions (and, if you've run out the turkey)  including any cranberry saauce you happen to have lying around. Spread your half tortilla with the cranberry, and sprinkle over some turkey and crumbled/slice cheese. Camembert is good for this, as is Cambozola.

Toast on both sides as before, then devour. Mmmmm.
 

As a result, we're now down to one dish of leftover meat. And tonight - it's turkey pie. At this rate, we may avoid curry altogether.

Pork & lemon meatballs - because we don't need to think about the turkey till next week...

You'll have noticed that there hasn't been much about Christmas here. 

It's not that I'm not bothered, not excited, but I'm not planning to do anything different or fancy, and as it's just us here for Christmas Day, and I don't want to have the place groaning with leftovers, I have tried not to over-cater or over-engineer anything.

I'm also quite fancying the approach Alexander Armstrong and Giles Coren took in their '12 Drinks of Christmas' programme that I happened to watch last night - line up 12 festive drinks, and let everything else take care of itself. I won't of course, but it did cross my mind...

I never really read the Dr Seuss books when I was growing up, but the Husband did, and his mum introduced them to our kids - Blue in particular - and there's a bit in How the Grinch Stole Christmas that I really love. It's this bit ('it' being Christmas):

"It came without ribbons. It came without tags. 

It came without packages, boxes or bags. 

And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. 

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. 

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. 

What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” 

I've been concentrating on getting the exhausted children through the last few weeks of school - there have been projects to finish, carol concerts, school discos, the usual end of Autumn term madness - and what with everything else that's been going on, I haven't really had time to think about anything other than the basics, even less blog about it.

 

So on the catering front, at least, I'm taking the 'Grinch' approach. Or perhaps not the Grinch's approach, but that of the Whos - whose Christmas the Grinch was trying to spoil. 

It will be Christmas whether I manage to make cranberry sauce or not. 

Whether the mince pies have homemade mincemeat in them - or the mincemeat from the jar I found at the back of the cupboard which looks perfectly edible but has a use by date of 2009 on it (may be I'll pep it up with some brandy...). Indeed whether the mince pies are homemade in the first place ("Recipe Junkie in bought mince pie shock..." I can see it now).

Whether the Christmas Cake looks like something Mary Berry would be proud of - or not - thanks to Pink's enthusiastic marzipan modelling last night.

Particularly loving Pink's attempt to turn a polar bear into a reindeer...

We will be together, at home, and we will have a lovely time, whether we eat like kings, or not.
 
And anyway, all of that stuff isn't till next week. 

For now, we need to eat normal food; food to keep us going as we wade through the end of term. It would help if I'd been meal planning, but that's gone by the wayside too, so yesterday I was scrabbling around in the freezer and found some pork mince. It's ages since we had meatballs, and the kids love them, so with a little help from Nigel Slater, meatballs it was.


Pork meatballs with mushroom sauce

4 anchovy fillets
450g pork mince
65g breadcrumbs
zest of a lemon; juice of up to 1 lemon (see Method)
handful of flat leaf parsely (leaves only especially if stalks are a bit woody), finely chopped

2 tablespoons (about 15g) grated parmesan
plain flour for dusting/rolling in (the meatballs, not you)
40g butter
olive oil
4 largeish chestnut mushrooms, peeled if necessary and finely chopped
200ml chicken stock
50ml (approx) cream

Mash up the anchovy fillets in the bottom of a large bowl, then mix in the pork mince, breadcrumbs, lemon zest, parsley and grated parmesan and mix together, adding the lemon juice as necessary to bind it all together.

Cover a plate with plain flour.

Using a tablespoon as a rough measure, make your meatballs - I got 14 out of this mixture - flatten slightly, then put in the flour, rolling around to coat lightly.

Heat the butter and oil in a large frying pan, then brown the meatballs on both sides for about 4 minutes - I did this in batches. Once browned, set the meatballs aside, then chuck the mushroom into the pan and cook for a few minutes, then return the meatballs to the pan and cook for another 5-6 minutes, turning occasionally.

Tip in the chicken stock and bring the pan up to bubbling, scraping any bits off the bottom of the pan, then drizzle in a bit of cream. I just had some in the fridge, and I didn't measure it out, but it wasn't much - just enough to turn the sauce from 'stock' to 'sauce' if you see what I mean.

When everything's hot, serve. We had it with a mixture of wild and red rice (cupboard clearing) and some steamed kale.

 And in case I don't get the chance again, 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!