Sunday 12 October - Beef Meatball and Guinness Stew and Caramel Apple Pie

A recipe for meatballs cooked in Guinness that I spotted in the Waitrose Magazine, that looks a bit different from our usual Sunday food, and seemed to be just right for the weather.

The recipe used ready made meatballs, but I made these using minced beef and some fresh breadcrumbs - the first stage was to brown them.

Then a sauce of onion, garlic, a bit of tomato puree and some Guinness and beef stock. Added to this the meatballs and some chunks of carrot and it was all left to simmer away.

To serve with this we also followed the suggestions in the magazine - cavolo nero cooked with garlic and chilli, and some puree of cauliflower and grainy mustard.

For me, the cauliflower was the nicest part, as I found the stew a little bitter from the Guinness.

For pudding, I decided to use up some of the beautiful apples I picked  the previous week - for a change I used Cox apples rather than the usual Bramleys.

I peeled the apples and sliced them very thinly.

A caramel sauce was made with butter and brown sugar melted together, and then cream and calvados were added and it was reduced until thick and smooth.

I made the pie up in the usual way, with a sweet pastry, but made layers of the slice apples and caramel before topping with the pastry lid - the sweetness all came from the apples and caramel so no further sugar was added.

We served this warm with some extra cream.

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