Why slow cookers are like the Mersey Tunnel. And the joy of Dumplings

From the age of 4, until I was 14, we lived on the Merseyside coast, north of Liverpool. Not quite as far as Southport, and certainly not as posh as Formby, where all the footballers live nowadays (so I hear). I remember the first time I was invited to go to the other side of the Mersey with some friends who had a cottage on Anglesey. Notwithstanding a trip away to a little cottage on my own without my parents, the real excitement was the prospect of going under the River Mersey. I was soooo excited, but a little apprehensive. Excited because I’d see all the fish swimming around – but nervous because the friends had a jeep type vehicle and I was sure that one of the features was a flap in the dashboard which opened up. What happened if the water came in?

Of course, no one had taken it upon themselves to explain that I would be going under the Mersey IN A TUNNEL. 

There I was, considering a drive that was almost beyond imagination: I could see us in their mustard yellow Diahatsu, a vehicle that must have been purchased solely for the purpose of driving across the sea bed, fearlessly traversing the sandy bottom of the Mersey over to the Wirral. Much influenced no doubt by watching ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’, I did not allow the reality of what I knew of the Mersey from frequent dog walks along the Waterloo/Crosby shoreline (where severed feet still in boots – I kid you not – , foul-smelling rotting cuttlefish, and used condoms and hypodermic needles were more likely to be washed up from the grey and murky waters) to sully the mental picture that became more and more vivid each day as the trip approached. I anticipated ‘bobbing along’ while many brightly coloured and interesting fish swam passed me; perhaps a shipwreck or two would be there to divert attention and may be even (I am fairly sure I was not quite in double figures) a mermaid…

Imagine my disappointment.

We descended into the mouth of the tunnel. I held my breath in anticipation, hardly daring to look. But where was the water? The fish? The mermaids?

Hidden behind a wall of concrete. Damn those tunnel builders who didn’t have the imagination even to make their tunnel out of reinforced glass. Still, I got over it pretty quickly - I had the 'holding your breath over the Menai Bridge' competition, and chips at Conwy castle, to look forward to...

This happens to me a lot. My imagination runs wild, and then I have to not be disappointed by reality. Take slow cookers.

We were given a slow cooker when we got married. It was one of those weird presents that we weren’t really sure about, and it looked as if it might in fact have been a ‘regifting’. Not that I mind about re-gifting, in fact, I do quite a lot of it myself these days, but we were younger then, and it was our wedding...

I didn’t use it for ages, the Husband went off on an operational tour straight after we got hitched and I stayed in London, but 6 months later, moved out into Army land with a ridiculous commute back to work, I read something about how it was the miracle kitchen gadget, reducing time and effort spent in the kitchen, meaning you could come home to a casserole or curry after a hard day at work. 

“Oh how good is that?" I thought. "I must give it a go”. 

At the time, we were eating a lot of Egg Surprise, cooked mainly by the Husband who had a much less arduous commute (when he wasn’t in a war zone), so the possibility of being a good little wife and producing a delicious dinner as well as doing a hard day’s lawyering up in ‘town’ – well, it was irresistible. 

But just as no one told me about the tunnel, no one told me that I’d still have to do all the prep. I couldn’t just chuck in onions, mushrooms, meat, a stock cube into the crock pot, flick a switch and disappear, to come back at the end of the day and find a casserole. Oh no. I still had to peel the onions; brown the meat; make up the stock...

So the slow cooker went back in the cupboard – I was already getting up at 6 to catch the train. I was damned if I was getting up even earlier to get the dinner on.

Time passes, however, and while it took me quite a long time to throw off that particular disappointment (longer than getting over not driving across the actual bottom of the Mersey) and realise the benefits of the slow cooker I am now a total fan (even if you do have to peel the onions and brown the meat first).

Less time in the kitchen means more time on the beach for him...

Even more so now that we’ve moved. There is so much lovely countryside and coast out here; so many markets and farm shops to visit. Spending 20 minutes in the morning getting the slow cooker on repays itself many times over. Yes, you have to put the effort in early on, but then you are free, free as a bird (well, sort of), for the rest of the day. Of course, having children puts paid to lazy mornings in bed, I’m no longer engaged in some dreadful commute to work, and really, to some extent, it’s all a ‘smoke and mirrors’ psychological trick, that makes you THINK it’s much less effort. But the fact that you can leave the food and it won’t burn the house down does work in it’s favour. You know what I mean.

The versatility of the slow cooker has become more apparent to me too since we moved. Not just main courses, but I made a delicious gammon ‘chowder’ the other day for lunch, and in something more akin to the witchcraft I was originally anticipating, the Husband has, in recent weeks, produced a steamed pudding of much gloriousness – sticky glazed banana gingerbread no less – from the humble depths of the of the crock pot. I cannot tell you how good it was.

Versatility aside, my main thing to cook recently in the slow cooker has been beef casserole. Do the prep, chuck it all in early, spend the day walking the coast path, throwing stones in the sea for the dog or mooch round a market, before returning home, dinner done. And in the quest for easy carbohydrate, I have discovered that 45 minutes before you want to eat, you can knock up some dumpling dough, pop the dumplings in the top of the crock pot, and leave them to cook and bingo. 

Easy Slow Cooker Beef Casserole & Dumplings

Serves 4

Plain flour

Salt & freshly ground pepper

A bunch of fresh thyme, leaves only

400g stewing steak

Rapeseed oil

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

2 rashers of bacon (not essential, but a tasty addition), de-rinded and chopped

2 medium-large carrots, peeled if necessary and diced

½ a swede (use your judgment – you’re looking for about the same quantity as of carrots) peeled and diced

150g chestnut mushrooms, quartered

100ml of Guiness or a glass of red wine if you have

350-500 ml beef stock

½ tbsp cornflour

150g self raising flour

75g vegetable suet

2 tsp Dijon mustard

Some fresh thyme leaves, roughly chopped if necessary

Salt & freshly ground pepper

5-7 tbsp water

Heat your slow cooker on the low setting.

Put about 4 tbsp plain flour into a bowl and add some salt & pepper and the thyme leaves. Stir together, then add the cubed meat, coating in the flour.

Gently sweat the onion and garlic in a  frying pan, in a tablespoon of oil for 10 mins or so, then scrape into the slow cooker. 

Add a little more oil if necessary to the frying pan and gently fry the bacon for a couple of minutes till starting to colour, then add in the carrots and swede and cook for 5 minutes before adding to the crockpot, then cooking the mushrooms in the same way.

Brown the meat in batches in the frying pan, using a little more oil if necessary and adding to the crockpot as you go.

If using Guiness or red wine, tip this into the frying pan and scrape up any crusty bits, add in the stock and bring everything up to the boil before tipping in to the crock pot till the meat and veg is just covered.

Put the lid on and go off to enjoy your day…

45 minutes before you want to eat, flick the slow cooker setting to high.

Mix the cornflour with the same amount of cold water till smooth, then stir into the casserole. Replace the lid while you make the dumplings.

Mix together the flour, suet, mustard, thyme and salt & pepper, then add the water slowly to combine to a soft (but not sticky) dough.

Divide the dough into 8 and shape into balls.

Take the lid off again and pop the dumplings on top of the casserole, before replacing the lid and leaving to cook for 45 minutes. 

The real genius of this of course is that there’s so much veg in the casserole that with the dumplings to provide carbohydrate you need to no more (although I won't complain if you add in some steamed PSB as a flourish at the end). So the only disappointment is that if the slow cooker has already got the casserole in it, where’s the steamed pudding going to come from?

Blue reviews "The Burger" (Ka-pow)

When I was at Britmums a few weeks ago, one of the bits and pieces I picked up was The Burger, published by Love Food, an imprint of Parragon books. It's set out comic book style, billed as "An Action Packed Tasty Adventure" and I picked it up with the intention of cooking with Blue. Blue loves burgers, and while I (luckily) have no problem at all getting him to read, I thought the book's style would particularly appeal to a 9 year old boy.

So here we are, on a rainy afternoon in the school holidays, Pink off giggling with 2 friends at a sleepover, and Blue and I cooked burgers. Actually, Blue did most of the preparing and making the burgers, and the only thing I really did was putting them on a hot griddle and actually cooking them (I had visions of griddled boy which prevented me from giving him free reign with the cooker). And mighty fine burgers they were too - but let me say no more, and hand over to Blue, who was the chef today.

"I like the whole set out of the book and it's very encouraging for children to read 'cos it's like a comic book.

I chose to make the blue cheese stuffed burgers because they sounded appealing to me because I like blue cheese - A LOT.

They were easy to make although it was a bit tricky to squidge the meat up over the cheese,

They were blimmin' brilliant and the best burgers I've ever had."

So there you have it - praise indeed from the child who talks longingly of the one time we ate at Burger King. The burgers were easy to make and tasted delicious.

I was a bit doubtful at the idea of simply stuffing seasoned mince with some blue cheese, but my lovely butcher's mince did Blue proud, and they tasted really good The only disappointing element was the buns, which Blue chose in an unsupervised trip to the local Co-Op. The book has its own burger bun recipe, and while it would have been a step too far today, we will definitely try making our own next time.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Burgers

Makes 4 

550g minced beef - the best quality you can justify 
freshly ground salt & pepper
70g blue cheese, cut into 4 chunks
oil
4 burger buns
lettuce leaves
tomato slices
red onion slices 

Get your toppings ready first - so if you haven't already done so, slice your tomatoes and red onion up (slice the onions as thinly as possible). 

Put the mince in a bowl with some freshly ground salt and pepper, and gently mix it all together.

Divide the mixture into 4, roll into balls, then use your finger to make a hole in each ball, and stuff the cheese inside. Squidge the mince back over the top of the cheese to seal in, then flatten the meat into burger patties.

Heat a ridged griddle pan over a medium to high heat, wipe over with a little oil, and cook the burgers for 4-5 minutes on each side until brown and cooked through.  

Put the burgers into the buns, add the lettuce, tomato and onions, and perhaps some mayo or ketchup, and eat immediately. 

Courgettes - a Retrospective

I was going to call this post "Courgettes - I've had a few" then realised that I'd already used that post title last year.
 
That's the thing about blogging, isn't it? Trying to make things new and different, when the inevitability of having a veg patch means that if it's August, there will be courgettes - and pretty much nothing else. I've been burbling away here for over 2 years now, which means that this is the third year I've moaned about the courgette situation.

This week has been a quiet chez RJ. The kids have been at my mum's, and the Husband and I have been working away and doing exciting things like cleaning the carpets. 

We've also been eating lots of courgettes.

A griddled courgette salad on Sunday to take to a post-camp BBQ - based on this recipe from Veg Everyday, the courgettes are griddled and spiked with a dressing of chilli and lemon juice. There's some mint in there, and spot the crafty (skinned) broad beans that I snuck in. Very tasty indeed. Not like eating courgette at all really.

On Monday, thanks to some frozen crab meat I found lurking in the freezer, we had courgette, crab and chilli pasta. No picture, I'm afraid, other than of grated courgettes in the pan, which I am sure you can do without, but the idea came from this blog among other.

On Tuesday, we had a Spanish style omelette with potatoes & shallots from the garden as well as courgette.

On Wedesday, we had courgette (well, marrow, really) and chorizo tart - you know the score: smear some puff pastry with pesto, layer on some thinly sliced courgette and some pieces of chorizo and bake. Or over bake, as I managed to. Still. It was quite tasty.

And Thursday. What courgette-y delight to Thursday bring? Well, my friends, mindful of the fact that the Husband's eyes had well and truly rolled heavenwards when the courgette tart appeared on Wednesday (I mean, he grows them - what does he expect??), I cast caution to the wind, and visited Kev the butcher for some steak.

We ate it rare, with chips, garlic and parsely mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. And no courgette whatsoever. Bloody lovely it was too.

And what did I do with the rest of the courgette? Chutney. That's what.

BBQ Ribs for the best weekend ever

We have a great local butcher. 

The other week, I was in there and had my head turned by some mighty fine racks of ribs he had in the chiller cabinet. I bought 2 racks, intending to feed them to the children as a playdate tea, but I got my weeks wrong, and the ribs went in the freezer.

This can only have been a good thing, as it meant we could BBQ them last weekend in what will surely be pretty high up on my list of "best weekends of the year" - even though we've only had just over half the year.

 
Yes, we had a hot, sticky and fairly slow journey to darkest Suffolk on Friday night, but once we were there, well, everything was brilliant. The site is very much 'of the moment' - plenty of bunting and hand written signs around, low density camping. A few Dorset bell tents to rent, the option to camp in the woods, Swattesfield Campsite is one I would definitely recommend if you like low key relaxed camping. It's just quite a long way from Hampshire for the weekend...




The weather was awesome, the campfire burned bright at night and the Pimms flowed. The children were occupied in the woods that surrounded the camping area, and the adults were mostly occupied with a wood fired pizza oven that was on the site (of which, more in another post), and we had a gourmet BBQ on Saturday night. And then Murray won Wimbledon as we chuntered back down the M11 in the sweltering heat of Sunday afternoon. Pretty much perfect.

So back to the ribs, which were our contribution to the gourmet BBQ. Ribs are great at any time, but marinaded and cooked over hot coals, they take on a smoky loveliness that can't be beaten. Not the cleanest and tidiest things to eat, but, you know, who cares?

The marinade is based on the one Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall includes in his fantastic Meat book. In a fit of whirlwind organisation, I managed to decant about half the ingredients into their appropriate amounts into various small containers, and then just chucked in the bottles of anything else I needed into the van, but forgot the recipe - not even in scribbled form, so once the time for marinading came round, I had to wing it. 




I should say that Pimms had been consumed at this point, but not too much, and so I'd take this as a guide rather than as a definitive recipe. Just keep tasting as you go...

For 2 racks of ribs - approximately 24 ribs in total. I didn't count. I was drinking Pimms.

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons dark muscovado sugar

3 tablespoons ketchup

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

freshly ground salt and pepper

sherry vinegar to taste - probably about 3 tablespoons

Mix everything together and marinade the ribs for a good hour or 2 - longer if you can.

Cook on a suitably heated BBQ (let your friendly BBQ king take over at this point, if this is not you). They will take 10-15 minutes, may be 20 depending on how much meat they have on them.

Serve as you like. We had potato salad and a rather fancy broad bean (double podded no less, at the insistence of Mrs L) and chorizo couscous. We do like to camp in style...

I'm linking up to the Four Seasons Food challenge hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Chez Foti which has BBQ as the theme this month.

If it's meatloaf, we must be camping

Well, not always, but meat loaf is fairly synonymous with a camping trip in the RJ household.

This is a recipe I picked up from the Good Food magazine, and the original recipe is on the website: Cold meatloaf with squashed tomato salsa. With the emphasis on the cold. This is what we usually take to sustain us on the Friday night trip, especially if the trip is likely to be a bit longer than average. There's also usually enough left over for sarnies over the weekend too, and the 'chutney'/'salsa' that you make to go with it is a perfect foil for the loaf. It's got lots of herbs in, which count towards your 5 a day, always helpful when camping tends to major on the meat and carb end of the food spectrum.


This weekend we're heading off to Suffolk. It's madness, I tell you, via Farnborough to pick up the Husband who can't finish work till around 5, then the all the joys that the M25 clockwise on a Friday night with a good forecast for the weekend will bring, till we peel off on the M11 or A12 - haven't decided which, and a final obligatory skirmish round the back lanes once we leave the main road. The last thing we need is complicated food. And yes, we could stop and buy tea at a Little Road Break, or wherever, but frankly, a bit of good food, and everyone's spirits are lifted, just in time to fight with the awning and get the cork out of the wine bottle sharpish once we arrive.

There is a perfectly good reason for travelling so far - we're camping with my lovely school friend and her family. Normally there would be a third family camping but my other school friend (mum in said family) has recently had a knee op, so instead of camping somewhere relatively centrally for all 3 families, this time we're going to camp near her house.

I'm very excited. The campsite is in Cool Camping. There's a pizza oven we can use. Camp fires are allowed. Apart from the long journey, it's sounding practically perfect. And then of course, there's the forecast. But let's not tempt fate...

Camping Meatloaf with red pepper and tomato salsa

450g pork sausages
500g beef mince
50g breadcrumbs
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
large handful of flat leaf parsley
3 large stalks of rosemary, leave only
2 eggs
salt & pepper

Salsa
2 red peppers
sprinkle of smoked paprika
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil 
2 tsp sherry vinegar 
1tsp caster sugar

400g cherry tomatoes

Leave plenty of foil to overhang

Start with the meatloaf. Line a 2lb loaf tin with silver foil, with enough overhang to wrap the loaf in eventually once it's all cooked and cooled (you'll thank me for this tip later!!). Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160 fan.



Finely chop the onion, garlic and herbs - I whizz it all up in a food processor. - then split the sausages and empty the meat into a large bowl with the mince and mash it all up together with the onions and herbs and breadcrumbs, eggs and some salt and pepper.


Empty the mixture into your lined loaf tin and squish it in, leaving the loaf mixture nice and mounded on top.





Deseed the peppers and slice them fairly thinly. Spread them out on a baking tray, toss in a tablespoon or so of olive oil and sprinkle over some smoked paprika.

Put the loaf in the oven with the tray of peppers on the shelf below and cook for 30 minutes, during which time, quarter the cherry tomatoes and peel and finely slice the garlic.

After 30 minutes, remove the tray with the peppers on it, stir in the tomatoes & garlic, the sherry vinegar and caster sugar and put back in the oven for another 40 minutes or so till the meat loaf is cooked and hot all the way through (test with a skewer) and the peppers and tomatoes are all soft and squidgy and a bit caramelised.

Pour off any juice that has collected round the meatloaf and leave to cool. Squidge up the peppers and tomatoes and put in a sterilised jar or container suitable to take with you.

Once cool, wrap the meatloaf up in the foil and seal the jar with the peppers. Great in rolls, served with the salsa and with potato salad (which you also made in advance!). And don't forget some good cake...

Dinner sorted (cake included!)

Happy Camping!

The herbs are a great addition to this loaf and add a little extra greenery. I'm linking up to Karen at Lavender and Lovage 's lovely Cooking with Herbs Challenge.