Saturday 30 November - Hairy Bikers Cookathon

A Facebook page I belong to 'What's For Dinner Tonight Mum' has set a monthly challenge where we vote for a Chef or food writer, and on the designated night we all cook recipes from the winner and the photos of our food are tweeted to them.

Tonight was the first time I've taken part, and the chosen chefs were the Hairy Bikers.

My main course was pork in pastry.

Pork fillet was coated in seasonings and chopped rosemary and sealed  quickly.

 

The cooled pork was wrapped in German cured Black Forest Ham and then in pastry that was covered in grated emmental cheese.

 

This was rolled up, eggwashed and baked until the pastry was crisp. We served with vegetables and goose fat roast pototoes - I also made a red wine sauce as it seemed it would all be rather dry, and this worked very well.

After that something not too heavy was required - Flan -or Creme Caramel Spanish style.

The main difference was that a cinnamon stick was steeped in the milk before adding to the vanilla and egg mix.

 Poured over caramel and baked in a bain marie in the normal way.

We served it with cream and fresh fruit - lovely after a heavy main course.

Monday 11 November - Gnocchi Meatball Bake

I decided to make this after a post on the Facebook food group I belong to - Tracy Mearns had posted a photo of some that she made and it looked delicious.

For the meatballs I used half a pack of pork mince and mixed it with a handful of dried breadcrumbs, a handful of grated parmesan, some oregano, salt and pepper and added an egg yolk to bind it all together. I made marble sized meatballs out of this, and fried them for about 20 minutes in a splash of olive oil. I find the longer you cook meatballs the more delicious they end up.

In the same pan I made a basic tomato sauce - chopped onion, garlic, a tiny bit of dried chilli and some fresh basil were fried until soft.

Then I added one carton of chopped tomatoes and the same amount of water .

I cooked it all for about half an hour, then added the cooked meatballs and simmered again for another half hour

I then cooked one pack of fresh Gnocchi for about 3 minutes, drained it and stirred the meatballs and sauce in. Then into the serving dish where I added more fresh basil and a torn mozzarella

This was then baked in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.

 

Three of us managed to eat all of this!

Tuesday 5 November - Tuoni e Lampo

This is a current favourite of ours - chickpeas and pasta basically, but with lots of yummy things added.

I started by soaking the chickpeas overnight, and then they were left to cook all day in the slow cooker - this does smell dreadful, but takes the stress out of cooking them! I always cook double and freeze the ones I don't need.

The recipe I base this on uses tinned tomatoes, but I have a freezer full of home made passata from our summer tomatoes, so I used some of this instead.

  

To start, finely chopped celery (bleugh), onions, carrots and garlic were fried, along with some chopped pancetta. Sometimes I use fennel instead of celery - depending on what I have in the house.

 Then to this the passata was added, along with the cooked chick peas and a bouquet garni, and it was all left to simmer for an hour or so.

While this was cooking I made some bread, quite a wet dough, spread out and studded with olives.

Once the chick peas were tender in went the pasta- I like very fine pasta in this recipe, so small macaroni, or this fabulous pasta I found in Waitrose 

 

The pasta was cooked in the sauce for about 15 minutes - slightly longer than if cooked in water - and then the final touch - olive oil that had been gently heated with rosemary, chopped garlic and dried chillies was poured into the chick pea and pasta stew.

 

The stew was served in large bowls, with loads of parmesan sprinkled over it.

and of course, lots of olive bread to mop up the sauce.

Monday 4 November - Liver and Bacon

We went to visit our favourite butcher at the weekend, and came back with some rather lovely lambs liver, and some smoked streaky bacon. Good Monday night food!

I dipped the liver in seasoned flour and fried it for a couple of minutes each side.

Then I added lots of sliced onions and the bacon cut into largish pieces and slowly cooked them until the onions were lovely and soft. A tablespoon of flour was stirred in then some beef stock ( I used a beef stockpot) and once thickened the liver went back in for a few minutes until cooked (but still slightly pink, and not leathery!)

This was served with mashed potatoes with cooked green savoy stirred in along with lots of butter and pepper.

Cheap, and perfect for an Autumn evening.

Saturday 2 November - Sticky Toffee Apple Cake with Apple Ice Cream

Lots of apples to use up, and not much to cook for supper as a brisket was slow cooking, so we decided to make a nice pudding. The apple cake we have made before, but we also found an apple ice cream to serve with it in a Skye Gingell Book.

The ice cream started with raw cox and russett apples which were blended along with a lemon until smooth.

Sugar and double cream were added to the puree along with a glug of Calvados and it was blended again briefly.

 

The mixture was then churned until frozen and popped into the freezer while the cake and sauce were made.

The cake was a James Martin recipe - the only change I made was to use Cox apples instead of Bramleys as that's what we had in the house.

The apples were cooked in butter and water until soft and then beaten until smooth and some calvados was added.

The puree had a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda added to it before it was beaten into a basic sponge mix made with eggs, brown sugar, butter , golden syrup and flour. The cake was decorated with thin slices of apple - the thinness was very important - last time we made this cake the apple slices sank as they were too thick and heavy.

 

Once the cake was cooked it was left to cool while the caramel sauce was made.

The sauce was equal quantities of butter and brown sugar, melted together and then double cream and calvados were added to it.

We served the ice cream and cake with the sauce poured over, and sprinkled over some caramelised almonds to add a bit of crunch.