Potato Surprise Pie

Just as surely as things that go up have to come down, it is also the case that, unless they are incredibly organised and have a bigger freezer capacity than I, people who go out and enjoy themselves 2 weekends on the trot end up with nothing in the fridge and a bit of a crisis - especially given that it's now officially 'Christmas' (having got the Husband's birthday out of the way) and my organisational skills have had to be turned to that rather than the day to day food regime.

I do have a meal plan for December. It's filled in with the many Christmas related events the children are involved with, the Husband's not inconsiderable absences through work-related travel, some parties (more! hooray!) and  a couple of food-related scrawls. I see "salmon?"  against tomorrow. And (rather obviously) "turkey" against 25th. But for the rest of the time? We are doing a lot, and not, apparently eating much.

Actually that's not quite true - closer inspection reveals "leftovers" written in for Monday with an arrow wiggling across the rest of the week (until tomorrow when we are supposed to be having salmon...).

Leftovers on Monday and Tuesday consisted of a rather luscious cauliflower and bacon cheese using up the remnants of various cheese from the weekend, and a sausage and sweet potato casserole, again using up sausages we didn't cook on the beach. The same was on offer on Tuesday, and by Wednesday we had Sausage Casserole left. Left overs from the leftovers, you could say. (I'd over achieved when I bought the sausages). 

Throw into the mix the fact that I've had to scrape together packed lunches and the fridge painted a rather grim picture this afternoon.

But a pot of cream, although a day out of date, was unopened and passed my 'does it taste off' test, and - hallelujiah! 4 slices of bacon. Potatoes an onion and some tired looking tomatoes, and dinner was born. A kind of take on a dauphinoise, I suppose, or a bacon hotpot.

I hesitate to offer a recipe - my dish is, shallow approx 20cm by 20cm, and I thinkly sliced 3-4 maris piper potatoes and an onion, then layered with the bacon and tomatoes plus a grated clove of garlic, salt and pepper and a mixture of 300ml of veg stock and about 100ml of cream, cooked for 40 mins in a hottish oven.

Coupled with some peas (from the freezer) and bingo.

Dinner. 

As I haven't done so for ages, I'm linking this up with Dom's Random Recipes challenge #46 for December. He challenged us to take a photo of our Christmas fridge and post it. Granted this is more the pre=Christmas fridge than the Christmas fridge, but still...Thanks, Dom.

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.

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!

 

Last night, Good Food saved my life...

A bumper issue - you'll see why!

Well, actually, most nights for the last couple of weeks, Good Food has been my saviour. That and jacket potatoes. I have been busy, busy, busy doing lots of things. The day job, the children (book day costumes, times tables etc), and also, quite exciting, some other bits and pieces . It's all been a bit of a roller coaster and I'm loving it, but it's meant that I haven't spent as much time and effort on what we're going to eat.





You see, one of the things that motivates me to cook different things is the boredom that crashes around me when I make the same things week in and week out. Meal planning helps me with this, but recently, when I've been tired and thinking about other things then tried to work out what we're going to eat I have found my mind is a blank, apart from a little voice screaming "No! Not Cottage pie AGAIN!".  

I have a large, and ever expanding collection of recipe books, and with more time on my hands, I'd happily spend hours flicking through, deciding what we're going to eat, but this hasn't been an option recently. That's where Good Food has come into it's own. I blow hot and cold about any magazine. I find that if you get more than a few issues, you start noticing things coming back round again. I've had a subscription to Good Food on and off for the last 10 years at least, but I'll have it and then leave it for a year or so. Some months are good, some are not so good. Every couple of years, I have a clear out an only keep those issues with recipes that I know I've cooked and will cook again. I'm pleased to say that I'm in a subscription year (a Christmas present) because the March issue has really saved me - it's certainly on that'll survive the next cull.

The first article that caught my eye was dedicated to 5 meals for under £25 - a working week's worth of main meals with no thought (and very little effort) required. What I really liked was that the meals involved cooking from scratch, but were quick and easy. This was going to be a post about cooking those meals specifically and whether or not it did cost me less than £25. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.  I didn't cook them in the order they specified. I made my own garlic bread, too (rather than using a dough mix), for the tomato soup with tear & share cheesy bread, and I didn't keep track of the cost. And anyway, my reliance the March Good Food mag has gone way beyond that one article and so this blog post has become my way of passing on all these brilliant meals to you. 

And don't worry that it's too late and the April edition is on the shelves already. (I know - it's ridiculous, isn't it, that we're less than 2 weeks into March, but I've had my gripe about that before, so I won't repeat that here) All these recipes are online so I've added in the links. Don't say I never do anything for you.

We loved Pasta with ham and Minty Pea Pesto - a kind of jazzed up macaroni peas.

very green - and very delicious

Piri Piri chicken with spicy rice (well, it turned into Reggae Reggae chicken because I had a half used bottle of Reggae reggae sauce in the fridge) was very popular, 

Loads of veg in that rice

and the Creamy Fish Curry was the perfect thing to finish up some disappointing white fish fillets lurking in the freezer. 

The only recipe that didn't work so well as far as I'm concerned was the Black bean beef meatballs with stir fried noodles 

but then I hadn't clocked that the recipe only required 300g mince, and I kind of fiddled around and added in too many breadcrumbs so the end result was all a little dry.

Tomato & harissa stew with cheddar dumplings   

was also a great success - particularly the dumplings, which were pleasingly cheesy but not at all heavy and appeased the courgette haters amongst us... 

Yes, yes, spot the out of season courgette. So shoot me

The Beef & Bacon meatloaf - sneaky secret ingredient half a box of stuffing mix - was a huge hit too, destined to be a regular 'quick fix' on our menu, I think (in so far as anything turns up regularly)

Meatloaf worthy of a packed lunch

Blue forewent roast for school dinner the next day JUST so he could have meatloaf sandwiches with the left overs - praise indeed. The sausage & fennel meatballs with lentils made a delicious Saturday supper, and sausage & stuffing toad in the hole with onion gravy, using up the other half of the pack of stuffing from the meatloaf, was just the ticket on a wet and rainy Friday night.

So there you have it - these were all pretty quick to knock up and very easy. Apart from the Chinese meatballs, I would make everything again. I commend each and every one of these recipes to you, and say thank you, Good Food!

Feeding the Ravenous Hordes - Chickpea Ketchup 'Chilli'

Sometimes I get a little annoyed with even my favourite food writers. The thing that gets on my nerves is when their idea of something doesn't accord with mine. What might constitute the contents of a 'store cupboard' for example.

Apparently, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall thinks fresh ginger is the sort of thing you might just have lying around in your fridge waiting to be used up. Hugh, let me tell you this. I buy fresh ginger, and freeze it in chunks ready for use. It goes very mushy on defrosting but that's fine because I'm usually mushing it up in pastes for curry. However, it's not just lying around ready to be used in emergency suppers. The days when you really haven't given any thought to what you might eat until it's actually tea time and the ravenous hordes are, well, ravenous. 

On the day in question, then, while I didn't have the ginger available to make the Ketchup Curry which appears in Veg Everyday in the Storecupboard Suppers section. I was inspired by the suggested alternative of ketchup chilli and knocked up my own version with chickpeas - and no ginger.

This, for me, really is 'store cupboard'. The fresh ingredients are an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a red pepper, which I nearly always have in (onion and garlic I use pretty much every day, and if nothing else, I chop up the pepper in lunchboxes). You wouldn't need to have the red pepper - and if you are proper swanky, you might have a jar of them knocking around actually in your store cupboard (I aspire to this but in reality, there never is a jar of beautiful red peppers in my store cupboard). I'll admit to having far too comprehensive a selection of spices, but cumin and paprika are ones that I use regularly and always have in. You could use hot smoked paprika or chilli powder depending on the palate of your ravenous hordes. It does use quite a lot of ketchup, but again, it's always in the cupboard and I'm sure you could use tomato puree or a can of tomatoes, depending on what you had to hand.

I served it as a topping for baked potatoes, with grated cheese and some left over soured cream. There was also some watercress. In a surprise verdict from my own ravenous hordes (and my fiercest critics), Blue loved it, while Pink wasn't so keen (I was anticipating the reverse). I liked it a lot.

Chickpea Ketchup Chilli

Serves 4

1 small-ish onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, also finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
olive oil
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cumin
2 x 400g tins of chickpeas, drained
10 tbsp tomato ketchup

Put a good splash of olive oil in a pan, and gently fry the onion and garlic for 5 minutes or so and add in the pepper, the paprika and cumin. Stir together then cook on a gentle heat for another 5 minutes or so, stirring every now and again, till softened. Tip in the drained chick peas and add the ketchup, plus a little water, stirring as you go, to make a sauce. Make sure everything is heated through, then serve as your store cupboard or fridge permits - on baked potatoes, with rice, on its own, even...

 

Braised Mince lives again - Chilli

Here it is again - remember that braised mince I was telling you about. So far it's turned up as lasagne and cottage pie in the last few weeks, and here it is again, this time as chilli.

This is a hottish version - if the kids were going to eat it, I'd use plain old smoked paprika, and probably a little less of it.

As well as your portion of braised mince (see the link above), you will need:

1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, ditto
2 tsp hot smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 cinammon stick
2 glasses of red wine
1 can chopped tomatoes
splash of mushroom ketchup (or Worcestershire sauce)
250g chestnut mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced
1 400g can of kidney beans
250ml stock

First, heat a splash of olive oil in a pan and fry the onions and garlic till softened. Stir in the smoked paprika, cumin, coriander and cinammon stick and cook for a minute or 2 before tipping in the red wine. Bring to the boil and simmer till the wine has reduced by about half.

Add the chopped tomatoes and mushroom ketchup, and simmer for a couple more minutes, then add the braised mince, mushrooms, kidney beans and stock, and then simmer it all gently for about 45 mins till it's thick and rich.

Serve as you like - tortillas, chopped avocado, grated cheese, soured cream all go down well as accompaniments . Or, if, like me, you'd forgotten that you were going to have chilli, some rice, salad and creme fraiche that was left over from the weekend's pudding will do. And the rest of the wine.

Sausage meatball pasta bake - the answer to bulk child feeding

You are so going to thank me for this.

On alternate Mondays, I have 4 hungry children to feed after school instead of the usual 2. I've mentioned before that it's a pretty quick turnaround as we're usually not back from school till just before 5, and then we have to be out again by 6.15 for Cubs. The food has to be easy, ready to go and crowd pleasing.

I actually made this for the post-Remembrance Sunday lunch, but we had to cancel as I succumbed to one of the many (or may be it's just one) nasty stomach bugs that's going round at the moment, and this was consigned to the freezer, along with the sausage and bean casserole that was the alternative dish, and the traybake Bakewell tart...

Pasta, meatballs, freezeable. I have yet to meet a child that doesn't like meatballs and you really can't have enough variations on them. This really is the answer to most post-school child feeding problems - certainly most of those that I am faced with. It started off as a John Torode recipe in a Good Food mag (September 2009 - a bumper issue as far as I'm concerned), but as is inevitable, has been tweaked to suit.

Sausage meatball pasta bake

Serves 6-8 mixed (and fairly hungry) adults & children 

150ml olive oil (I know - it sounds a lot, but you drain a lot of it off one way and another), 3 large onions, finely chopped, 2 garlic cloves finely chopped, 100g bread crumbs, or just mash up 100g worth of bread with a fork, 50ml milk, 500g beef mince, 500g sausage meat, 200ml red wine (or stock, if you haven't got any) 4 * 400g cans chopped tomatoes, 500g pasta - penne or macaroni is good, cheddar or other hard cheese to grate over.

Heat the oil in a large heavy based pan, and cook the onions and garlic, along with freshly ground salt and pepper, slowly, till they onions are soft but not coloured. Remove the onions using a slotted spoon, leaving as much oil as you can in the pan. Set aside half the onions and mix the other half in a large bowl with the breadcrumbs, milk, mince and sausage meat. Add in more salt and pepper if you want. If you do have some parsley available, you could add a good chopped handful in too. When everything is mixed together really well, shape into ping-pong ball sized meatballs.

Put a large pan of salted water on the stove, bring to the boil and cook the pasta.

While the pasta is cooking, put the pan with the oil in it (that's left from cooking onions) back on the heat and brown the meatballs in batches. As the meatballs are browned, remove to a plate lined with kitchen paper to absorb any excess oil. When all the meatballs are browned, put the reserved onions in the pan along with the wine/stock to scrape all the good bits off the bottom of the pan, then stir in 2 of the cans of tomatoes and the meatballs. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes. Drain the pasta then in the largest dish you can find, mix together the pasta and the meatballs and sauce. 

You can freeze the cooled dish at this stage - either as one massive dish or in portions as required. 

When you are ready to cook, pre-heat the oven to 180C. My dish looked a bit dry when I got it out of the freezer and defrosted it, which is where the extra cans of tomatoes come in, although you may decide you don't need it. The original recipe pours a white sauce over the pasta and meatballs, but Blue is no lover of white sauce, so I bubbled up the second 2 cans of tomatoes, tipped it over the pasta and meatballs, stirred it all together and grated some cheese on top. 

In the oven for 30 minutes = happy kids.   

Honey'd, ginger'd carrot soup and Quesadillas

Yes, folks, it's Saturday. It's been a pretty busy week what with one thing and another, and a busy weekend looming with the school bonfire & fireworks night this evening (and an afternoon setting up the 'tuck and glows' stall - the small child's capacity for glowsticks never ceases to amaze me) and Remembrance Day tomorrow, with my nearest and dearest (all 3 of them) parading and wreath laying at Church, then the scout leaders and families coming for lunch. 

Lunch today needed to be something fairly filling, and nutritious, given that supper will be bonfire burgers/hotdogs followed by sweets (for the kids) and copious amounts of a glass or two of mulled wine (for me).

The kids love quesadillas, which I have mentioned before - basically toasted cheese sandwiches made in soft tortillas, and it wouldn't be a November weekend without a pan of soup on the go. What to put in the soup today was easily answered by the surfeit of carrots that were lurking in the fridge. I had loads of little chantenay carrots left over from last weekend's casserole, and some ordinary carrots which had been superceded by a fresh bag purchased yesterday. I'd come across a Lesley Waters recipe in an old Good Food mag, and decided to pep it up a bit by adding some ground ginger. This, plus a small pinch of dried chilli, gave the soup warmth and depth rather than actual spiciness. And as I'd actually planned today's lunch rather than letting it evolve, I also had spring onions, a red pepper and a couple of avocados to turn the quesadillas into something that might make up for a dirth of veg this evening. 

The kids quite often enjoy helping chop the veg up for this, and Pink was my eager assistant today. I am still not a fully paid up member of the 'kids will eat much more if they are involved in the cooking' school of thought, having suffered some serious set backs on my road to child feeding-nirvana (the road I am still on - and will only consider myself at the end when I can get Blue to eat cauliflower cheese), and also because I have previously found it hard to share my kitchen. However, I am changing my tune. If nothing else, I find that the kids are more tempted to try things if they are allowed to chop and stir, feel and taste, and despite misgivings when the children were younger, it's a great opportunity to spend sometime together engaged in a common purpose. I'm discovering that all sorts of things come out without them even realising it.

Honey'd ginger'd carrot soup

Makes a good panful - would probably serve 6-8 depending on age & appetite and what else was on the table

Olive oil; 2 leeks, sliced; 1 tsp ground ginger; 1 pinch of chilli flakes; 850-900g carrots, topped and tailed and roughly sliced; 1/2 tbsp runny honey; 1 bay leaf; 2-2.5 litres veg stock, salt & pepper

 

yes, more orange soup...

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a large pan, chuck in the leeks along with the ginger and chilli flakes and cook over a reasonable heat for a few minutes, stirring quite frequently, till the leeks soften. Add the carrots and honey and cook for another couple of minutes, then pour in the stock, and freshly ground salt and pepper, bring to the boil and simmer with the lid half on for 30 mins or so. Once the carrots are cooked, blitz the soup till smooth, then serve.




Quesadillas
 
To fill 6 tortillas: 100g grated cheese, 8 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped, 1/2 red pepper, deseeded and finely chopped, 1 small tin of sweetcorn, drained.




 

Once you have assembled all your ingredients, put a large heavy based frying pan on a medium heat. Lay your first tortilla in the pan, and on half of it, sprinkle some cheese, spring onions, red pepper and sweetcorn.




 Fold over the other half of the tortilla and repeat with a second one so that the other half of the pan has a folded tortilla in it. 

By the time you've assembled your second tortilla, the first one will be ready, probably to turn. Now, I'm not denying that this is a but of a fiddle, but with a couple of spatulas/fish slices, you should be able to flip over the tortillas in turn to heat up the second side. Once the second side is done, the cheese should definitely be melted, so remove the first tortilla from the pan, slice, then remove the second one. Repeat.

I usually place my quesadilla slices on a wooden board covered with a tea towel till they are all done, to keep warm, although they don't tend to hang around long.

Braised Mince 2 - Cottage Pie

I feel like I've been majoring on the traditional recently. The un-fussy comfort food. That's because it's COLD. I feel less inclined to push the boundaries, or to expect the children to push their boundaries, when it's 'snuggle up in front of the fire' weather.

Today is no exception. Having spent the first few days of half term up north, being fed by my mum and generally not having to do a thing, we're back home, doing jobs and generally trying to get straight before the kids are back at school on Monday and we race through the next few weeks at an increasingly more frantic pace till we hit the Christmas break with a bang (or a whimper, depending on how it's gone). 

We have some old friends coming for lunch on Sunday, about which more of - perhaps - another time. For reasons that I may or may not divulge, what we will eat when they come has occupied most of the food-thinking part of my brain for the last few days. As a result, I haven't really planned what we are going to eat otherwise, relying on the freezer to provide until I can get myself sorted out. Yesterday, on our return, you'll be thrilled to hear that we had fish fingers and oven chips (although there were carrots, and cabbage out of the garden, to go with). Not wanting a re-run, and in slight desperation for this evening, I went freezer diving once the kids were in bed last night, and retrieved a portion of braised mince with a view to that most homely of meals, cottage pie. 

I can see a lot more of this type of food arriving on our table over the next few weeks: undemanding,  comforting and uncomplicated. Yes, I know that this recipe relies on you braising your mince first, but if you've done that in bulk and frozen in portions, it's a very straightforward dish to put together, relying little more than a bit of chopping and peeling.

I feel a bit of a fraud putting in a weight for potatoes here because I almost always forget and usually just do enough potatoes as if we were just going to have mash. This strategy doesn't always work - sometimes I have too much sometimes, it looks a little thin, but when I went back to the original recipe in Good Food for this, 800g is what they say for a cottage pie to serve 4 people.

Braised Mince Cottage Pie

Vegetable oil; 2 onions & 2 sticks of celery, finely chopped; 1 portion of braised mince (see my post here ), 2 large carrots, diced; 2 beef stock cubes, made up to 250ml with boiling water (or use the water the potatoes were cooked in if you do them first/at the same time); 250g frozen peas; Worcestershire sauce; 800g potatoes, milk & butter

Peel the potatoes, halve them, put in a pan, cover with water, bring to the boil and cook till tender. Drain the potatoes (use 250ml of the water to make up the stock of the mince mixture if you like) and mash with a splash of milk and a knob of butter. Set aside.

Heat 1tbsp vegetable oil in a large pan and add in the onions and celery. Cook for a few minutes over a high heat, then add in the mince, carrots and stock. Stir, then leave to simmer for 40-45 minutes when the mixture will be rich and thick. About 5-10 minutes before the mince is cooked, chuck in the peas and a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce depending on your taste. Grind in some salt and pepper too if you think it needs it. 


 
Spread the mince mixture out in a shallow dish and leave to cool as much as you can before adding the potato and spreading over the top. The benefit of leaving the mince to cool down is that it sets a little and the potato doesn't sink in to the mince when you spread it on top, but if you haven't got time, don't worry about it. Life, after all, is too short.

You need to bake your finished pie in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 200C/180C fan.

Serve with your favourite condiment.

Chai cake

It’s been a funny old week so far. The Husband left me in Wales (where we had been for a wedding on Saturday) early on Sunday morning to head to Heathrow and a week in the States, while I headed home via my father in law’s to collect the kids. The drizzle didn’t help anyone’s mood and I was relieved that they both slept in the car for at least some of the journey home. I won’t bore you with tales of tedious homework, a moshi- monsters birthday party, and an "entirely bought from the co-op because I couldn’t, frankly, be bothered," tea time, but let’s just say I was glad to get to my bed on Sunday evening.

 On Monday, the kids were out for tea and I thought I’d try a carb-free meal, inspired by a conversation I’d had earlier in the day with a friend. Grilled tomatoes and a poached egg. It was very delicious, but sadly didn’t stop me reaching for the oatcakes and cheddar later on that evening. The rest of the week’s meals has involved easy crowd pleasers. Toad in the Hole on Tuesday, Chicken & Red Pepper Fajitas on Wednesday, roasted tomato soup, garlic bread and pudding this evening, tea at a friend’s tomorrow... you get the idea.

However, today, a rare treat – lunch with some friends. Not ‘out’ – that would probably be too much excitement, but the prospect of some grown up company has been keeping me going this week.

I didn’t want to make anything too over the top, but it still took me some time to decide. While I’d like to have spent hours tinkering in the kitchen, it wasn’t really going to be an option, so in the end. I went with celeriac & pancetta soup (we have a lot of celeriac in the garden at the moment) and a big bulghar wheat salad, along with some good bread and cheese.

For pudding, though, something sweet, I had no such dilemmas. Ever since I read Sarah’s post at The View from The Table about her friend’s Seldom Seen Chai Cake, I knew I had to make it, and what better occasion. A grown up cake for a grown up (ish) lunch time .

This is a delicious warm ginger cake, infused through with the more subtle flavours of the chai  - more ginger, cloves and cardomon – and lifted with a tangy lemon and ginger icing. I have not always been fond of these kind of darker, more intense cakes, but my tastes are clearly changing. Last week, I made this coffee and raisin cake and, boy was it good – it did, as billed, taste a little like a gingerbread latte. So from coffee to tea – or rather chai. I’m fond of a good tea loaf, but this is in a different league. To be honest, I haven't had much experience of chai, but on the basis of this cake alone, I am persuaded to investigate further. There is a little bit of faffage, making the chai first and allowing it to cool, and grinding the cardamom seeds up, but it is worth it? Oh yes.

 

For the chai

350ml semi-skimmed milk

8 cardamon pods (bashed in a pestle & mortar)

1 clove

A cinnamon stick

2-3 slices root ginger

2 tea bags (regular tea)

For the cake

170g butter

2 eggs (beaten)

230g golden syrup

20g dark Muscovado sugar

20 cardamon pods (bashed, pods removed and discarded)

280g SR flour

2 tsp ground ginger

Pinch of salt

For the ginger icing

150g butter

150g icing sugar

Finely grated zest of a lemon and juice of half a lemon

1-2 tbsp ginger syrup (I used the syrup in the jar the stem ginger comes in)

1 ball of stem ginger (very finely chopped)

Make the chai: pour the milk into a pan and add the rest of the chai ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes, then remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 170C/160C (Fan) / Gas 3.5, and grease and line a 20cm cake tin

Strain the cooled chai into a measuring jug. You need 200ml so add more milk if necessary.

Melt the butter, golden syrup and muscovado sugar together, and leave to cool a little while you deseed the cardamon pods. Discard the pods and grind the seeds into a powder. Sift the flour, ground ginger and pinch of salt into a bowl and stir in the powdered cardamon seeds. Stir in the cooled butter/syrup/sugar mixture and the beaten eggs to the spiced flour followed by the cooled chai and mix well. Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake for 50-60 mins or until a cake tester comes out with just a few crumbs sticking to it. Turn onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.

To make the icing, cream the butter, lemon zest and icing sugar together and then slowly add the lemon juice and ginger syrup. When they're all combined to make a smooth icing stir in the stem ginger. Cover the cake with the icing, and serve.

cover the cake with the icing...

...and serve