Friday 10 October - Black Pepper Chicken

Once again, a Friday curry night, and I had a hunt round for something different. I found this in a Reza Mahammad book - the heat for this curry comes from black peppercorns rather than chilli powder.

The first stage was to make a spice mix for the marinade - black pepper, cloves, cinnamon powder and cardamom seeds were ground to a powder.

This spice mix was added to ginger, garlic, cider vinegar, and salt and turmeric for the marinade.

The chicken pieces were added to this, and left in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Next, the whole spices, more peppercorns, cloves, whole cinnamon, cardamoms, cumin seeds and bay leaves.

These were fried along with sliced onions until the onions were lovely and golden.

Then some chopped tomatoes were added until soft.

Finally, the chicken and a splash of water, and all was braised until tender, before finishing off with some fresh coriander and a couple of slit green chillies.

Served with garlic rice, yoghurt and some ready made Indian snacks.

Sunday 5 October - Mushroom Risotto

We've been eating quite a lot of vegetarian food recently - this risotto is one of Georges favourites, but I added a bit of meat garnish to make it a bit more interesting.

I use both dried and fresh mushrooms, and use the soaking water from the dried mushrooms in the stock. This time I had a mixture of fresh chestnut and oyster mushrooms, and some rather posh mixed dried mushrooms that I'd bought at the Winchester Farmers market.

I fried shallots, garlic and the dried mushrooms.

 

The risotto was then made in the usual way, adding the rice, then some white wine, and adding the stock a bit at a time.

 

I then added the fresh mushrooms which had been fried in butter, and some grated parmesan.

For the garnish, some black pudding was cubed and fried, and some raw cured ham slices were also fried until crisp

The garnish was used to top the risotto, along with some more grated parmesan.

To serve with this, I made some garlic bread out of a loaf of ciabatta that I'd made and forgotten to serve up

Saturday 26 September - Steamed Suet Puddings

Bob is off to work in France for 10 days, so I decided to make his favourite - Steak and Kidney Pudding. George is off meat at present, so an alternative Mushroom version was made for him.

We went to the lovely butchers in Titchfield for the meat, and bought some beautiful braising steak.

However, there was a kidney shortage, and we had to go to Wickham to find some frozen kidneys from the butcher there.

 

I decided to cook the meat first rather than cook it in the pudding, so made a standard stew, frying the meat then adding onions, garlic, beef stock, red wine and simmering for a couple of hours before leaving it to cool

 This was then packed into a bowl lined with suet pastry.

The top was added, and the pudding was steamed for about an hour and a half before turning out.

For the veggie version a  huge amount of onions were fried until slightly caramelised.

Big flat mushrooms were softened in olive oil, these are the 'meat' in the pudding.

The onions and mushrooms were then layered into the lined pudding bowl and it was steamed in the same way as the meat version.

The finished pud - went down a real treat too, don't think anyone would miss having meat with one of these on offer.

Thursday 24 September - Fig Tatin

On offer in Lidl at the weekend were figs - so as usual I bought more than I could possibly need because they looked so beautiful.

I also had a pack of puff pastry to use up, so decided to make a tatin with them.

The caramel was butter, honey and vanilla pods cooked together.

Then in with the halved figs - cut side down. They were cooked until tender.

I left these to cool a bit before topping with the pastry and into the oven.

The tart was turned out and served with some creme fraiche.

Sunday 21 September - Cherry and Almond Cake

This was my second attempt at making this cake - last time I used a silicon baking tin and it was a bit of a disaster. I spotted a fine tin in TK Max and snapped it up in order to have another go.

A pretty straightforward all in one cake mix, but with some ground almonds and lemon zest added to the batter.

The cherries were quartered, and then washed thoroughly to remove the sugary coating that was on them, and these were then folded into the cake batter.

Once the cake was cooked, it was cooled before icing.

Finally the decorations, some toasted flaked almonds and reserved glace cherries.

Saturday 20 September - Involtini and Polenta

This weeks challenge in the Dinner Group was 'Hearty Italian' - so we decided to go for Involtini - beef olives basically in a tomato, wine and mushroom sauce.

I bought cheap frying steak for this, and bashed them out to tenderise them.

They were then seasoned and sprinkled with parmesan, chopped rosemary and garlic before rolling up.

These little rolls were browned in olive oil, and added to the sauce.

Onion, chilli and celery and fennel seeds were fried and then red wine was added along with some more chopped rosemary.

Finally in went some chopped tomatoes and it was all left to simmer.

The beef was served with some soft, cheesey polenta.

For afterwards tiramisu. Egg yolks and sugar were whisked together, and then in with some marscapone, and finally egg whites folded in.

Sponge fingers were dipped in a mixture of espresso and Tia Maria and then I made layers of sponge and the creamy mix.

This was left to firm up in the fridge, and then sprinkled with drinking chocolate before serving.

Saturday 13 September - A Birthday Meal

Bob had a bit of a milestone birthday this week, so we decided to cook on Saturday rather than go out to eat.

For a starter I remembered a ham hock that was in the freezer, and found a recipe by Tom Kerridge that sounded ideal to use it up.

The hock was simmered for several hours with carrots, celery, bay leaves, clove studded onions and a dash of vinegar.

Once the meat was tender, it was shredded away from the bone, and all the fat was discarded.

Gelatine was added to the stock, along with chopped tarragon, and some toasted mustard seeds. The meat was then packed into the serving ramekins and left to set in the fridge.

To serve with this some toasted bread, and some pickled beetroot.

I roasted the beetroot in foil, and then peeled - I picked a variety of different colours from the garden, although they all taste pretty similar.

This was again a Tom Kerridge recipe, the pickling liquid was a rather unusual mixture of red wine vinegar and redcurrant jelly, reduced to a syrup, and mixed with dijon mustard.

We also added some piccalilli to the plate for colour.

For the main course, a simply fried fillet of salmon, which was served on a bed of samphire, peas and asparagus.

I added a champagne and chive sauce from one of Rick Steins books to add an extra dimension to the dish.

I decided on lemon tarts for the next course, and was rather anxious about making individual ones as I didn't want the pastry to be too thick. I made a sweet shortcrust using egg instead of water to bind it, and was pleased to find it didn't shrink in the tins when it was blind baked.

No soggy bottoms on these, and apart from the cracks that appeared when they cooled down I was really pleased with the end result.

Finally, because it was a special occasion, the only way to finish the meal for me was with a lovely bottle of port, and a big piece of stilton.