Sunday 28 April - Portable Pasties

Bob is working away this week, so needed something to take on his long drive and to eat on arrival
 -  so pasties seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

I used beef skirt, which I chopped up into fairly small pieces.

 

 

This was mixed with cubed onions, potatoes and swede and lots and lots of black pepper.

 



For pastry I used standard shortcrust made with half lard and half butter. This was rolled out and generously filled with the meat and vegetables.

 



 





The pastry was then sealed and crimped, and glazed for the oven.

 

 

 

 

Finally these were baked - in a hot oven for 10 minutes, and then turned down low for around an hour to gently cook the filling.

 

 

 

 

 





Saturday 27 April - Chinese

Another new cookery book arrived from Amazon - Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop -
this is another Chinese cookery book, as we are finding that this style of cooking always goes down well here. This meant a visit to the Chinese Supermarket to find some of the more unusual ingredients for the dishes we chose to cook.

First we made braised chicken with chinese mushrooms - this was a nice one to do as part of a meal as it didn't involve frantic stirfrying at the last minute!

Chicken thighs were chopped up and braised with some soaked chinese mushrooms and some ginger and spring onion

 

 

 



 

 

For the second dish, beef in black bean sauce - this jar of sauce took some finding in the supermarket, but we found the correct one eventually...

 

 

 

 

The beef was sliced and marinaded in rice wine, soy, and potato flour, before being stirfried with some peppers and the sauce added at the last minute along with some chopped coriander.

 

 

For a change from rice, I picked up some fresh egg noodles, and these were simply stirfried with some spring onions and chilli

 

 

Friday 12 April - Moules

After watching an episode of The Hairy Bikers this week where they cooked shellfish, it made us yearn for mussels. So Bob was dispatched by bicycle and ferry at 730 am to the fish sheds in Old Portsmouth.

I decided to go for the simple option of cooking them in wine and shallots, but adding a spoonful of creme fraiche at the end to enrich the sauce.

Firstly we made some of my ciabatta style bread to serve with them, but also to try out my new scotch scraper which arrived in the post.

I made a standard bread dough in the Kenwood Chef with a dough hook, but added a fair glug of olive oil to it, and much more water than you think you could possibly need - this resulted in a very wet dough, which was then left to rise for an hour or so, until double in size.

 

 Once the dough was risen it was poured onto a sheet covered with some semolina sprinkled over it - I didn't kneed the dough again at all, simply shaped it using my new toy, into two loaves.

 

These were then left to rise again, before baking in a hot oven for about 25 minutes.

 

Now for the mussels - we bought 2 kilos to allow for damaged ones - although there were very few of these.

The mussels were cleaned, and rinsed thoroughly.

 

I tend to use Sophie Grigsons method for cooking them, this involves the shallots, garlic and some parsley being cooked with wine and water for about 15 mins, and then add the mussels.

The mussels were cooked for about 5 minutes, then transferred to a serving dish (this was the first time we had used this! - Thanks Andy)

 

Finally, a spoonful of creme fraiche added to the cooking juices with a handful of chopped parsley was poured over the mussels and they were served along with the crusty bread.

Tuesday 9 April - Pigs Cheeks and Lentils

This is another dish from my new Diana Henry Book - Food From Plenty - but in my usual way I messed about with it a bit.

Pigs cheeks are very cheap in Morrisons, and have become a bit of a favourite in this house.

We skin them before cooking, to remove the membrane that can make them curl up

 

They were then dusted with flour and fried until golden.

Then popped in a pan, with some cider and chicken stock, and gently simmered for a couple of hours, until tender.

The lentils were were I changed the recipe a bit, as we don't eat celery in things... so I used some chopped carrot and leek, and sauteed before adding the lentils, cider and stock

To finish off, the pigs cheek cooking liquid was reduced, and dijon mustard and creme fraiche were added and these were served on a bed of the cooked lentils.

This should have had parsley to garnish, but we didn't have any...


To serve with this, a sort of fougasse inspired by Paul Hollywood last night, but made to my own recipe.

Saturday 6 April - Tinga Poblano

I wanted to try something different, so opened a random book  - this is one I bought a few weeks ago and have yet to try anything out of it - Food From Plenty by Diana Henry.

The recipe we selected was Tinga Poblano - a slightly different take on chilli.

First stage was to roast a tray of tomatoes until charred and slightly dried out

I then pushed these through the mouli (this wasn't in the recipe, but the tomatoes were rather poor quality)

I added a drained box of chopped tomatoes to complete the sauce and add colour.

A chopped chorizo was fried until golden - the recipe didn't specify what type of sausage to use, so I used the cheapest one from Lidl

In the remaining fat a cubed piece of pork shoulder was also fried, and added to the chorizo.

Then onions were also fried and added, along with some chopped garlic, dried oregano and fresh thyme. This was then covered with chicken stock, and simmered until the meat was tender.

Finally, the tomatoes were added along with 3 dried chipotle chillies that had been soaked, seeded and chopped.

The whole lot was simmered away again for another 20 minutes.

We varied the serving suggestions a bit and to the bowls of rice and stew we added chopped avocado tossed with lime juice, some crumbled feta, chopped coriander, creme fraiche and some cooked black turtle beans.

 A nice change from our usual chilli and definitely one to do again.

Tuesday 2 April - Cauli Cheese and Crispy Chicken

I used to have a recipe book called The Almost Vegetarian, which was a Sainsburys book by Joceline Dimbleby - this has since gone missing, however, one recipe I cooked regularly from the book I think I can remember.

It's a cauliflower cheese, but with some extra bits added to it, making it a bit special.

The roux starts with garlic and sundried tomatoes, before adding the flour, and then the sauce was finished with half milk and half natural yoghurt and some grated parmesan.

 

 The sauce was poured over the cauliflower which I steamed for 4 minutes, and topped with fresh breadcrumbs mixed with parmesan  and olive oil, then baked until golden.

To serve with this we made some crispy chicken - bashed out chicken breasts were dipped in flour, and then a mixture of egg, mustard and chopped tarragon.

And then into some panko breadcrumbs.

These were then shallow fried until lovely and golden.

Monday 1 April - Cannelloni filled with Onion, Sausage and Asparagus

I had spotted ricotta in Lidl this week, and while searching for a recipe for Cannelloni with spinach and ricotta I spotted this unusual recipe in an old book I have 'Pasta Classica'.

It involved quite a lot of work, but as it was a Bank Holiday I had time on my hands.

The first stage was the tomato sauce - this was made with tinned tomatoes as the fresh ones are rubbish at the moment. celery and carrots were added to the recipe, and once cooked it was pushed through the mouli to make a smooth sauce. Half of this was placed at the bottom of the serving dish.

The pasta was rolled out in a pasta machine and cut into squares, which were then cooked for a couple of minutes and left to drain.

 

The filling was made with skinned sausages - we found these in Asda, and have them quite often as they are delicious.

The sausage was fried with some onions, then sliced button mushrooms were added. After a bit more frying blanched sliced asparagus was added along with some grated parmesan.

This filling was fried for a few more minutes, and then used to fill the pasta squares which were then rolled up and placed in the serving dish.

 

When all the pasta was filled, another smear of tomato sauce went on top of them.

 

Finally bechamel sauce over the top - the only change I made to the orginal recipe was to add some grated parmesan to this sauce.

It was then baked in the oven until golden.

This was served with some salad and crusty bread. Everyone cleared their plates, but one for a special occasion due to the time involved.