Monday 9 October - Salmon and Spinach

There was very little cooking involved in this, but a surprisingly delicous meal for an Autumn Monday night.

Salmon fillets - I simply seasoned these, drizzled a dash of white wine over and topped with slices of lemon, before baking in the oven for 15 minutes in a foil covered dish/

A quick, low fat tartare sauce - low fat creme fraiche was warmed in a pan with some chopped parsley, some capers and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Served with some spinach which I simply stir fried along with the water clinging to it after washing, and tiny piece of butter. We added some sweet potato mash alongside.

Friday 6 October - Pumpkin Chickpea and Banana Curry

I am really not a fan of bananas, but in this curry they are amazing. I first cooked this about 30 years ago from a Vegetarian food magazine and lost the recipe, but have since managed to find it online.
We have a large number of Butternut squash this year on the allotment, so any way we can use them up is a bonus - they are actually nicer than pumpkin in this recipe as they are not as soft when oooked. This is a very simple curry, using curry paste - I found an elderly jar of tikka masala paste in the cupboard so used that here.

The squash was cubed and then tossed in the curry paste, and then fried off.

The base of the curry was onions, garlic and ginger, and I added a couple of the lovely hot red chillies that we have grown this  year to spice things up a bit.

Then in with some spices - cumin, coriander, cinnamon and turmeric and some chopped tomatoes - we are just finishing off the last of this years tomatoes from the greenhouse.

Some stock was added, then the chick peas and the squash were added and it was simmered until the squash was tender

Finally the sliced banana was added and it was warmed through.

We served with some brown basmati rice, some shop bought roti and some low fat yoghurt that I strained through a jcloth and mixed with some grated cucumber and mint sauce.

This was by no means an authentic Indian meal, but a very delicious Friday supper none the less!

Starting Again

This blog was started with the intention of keeping a record of weight loss. It's turned into an interesting record of what we eat, but I'm now a fatterandfiftysomething.

I've recently been diagnosed with high cholesterol, and decided that I didn't want to start taking drugs to manage this from the outset - so the diet is starting again, and along with that I'm hoping to update this blog more often.

Remains to be seen how things go as I'm hopeless at sticking to things, but hopefully I can produce some edible food, lose a bit of weight and become a bit healthier along the way

Saturday 26 August - Chicken and French Lentils

This was a Michael Caines recipe that popped up on my Facebook page. Although on first reading the recipe looked really complex, I decided to make all the components in advance, and reheat to serve - after all I'm sure this is how it works in restuarants!
We also adjusted the recipe so that we could make use of our new toy - George persuaded me to buy a Sous Vide wand a few weeks ago, and we've had great fun playing with it recently.

We started by preparing the chicken - I had bought supremes from the butcher, as it's impossible to buy skin on chicken breasts in supermarkets. We removed the wings, and then I wrapped them in clingfilm to keep the shape a bit more, before using a vacuum sealer

These were then cooked in the water bath (or plastic box) for two and a half hours.

 

While the chicken cooked, we prepared the other ingredients.

Lentils were gently cooked with carrot, onion, garlic and some smoked streaky bacon

 

Once cooked, the vegetables were removed, and the bacon chopped up and stirred back in - this was reheated with some parsley and a spoonful of butter when ready to serve

Celeriac was cooked in milk and water, then whizzed to a puree with some butter - again to be reheated for serving

Cubed vegetables - parsnip, butternut squash and some more celeriac were cubed and browned in oil and butter, and tiny onions boiled, halved and dry fried - I placed all these on a tray, and we finished them off in the oven to serve.

Finally a sauce - the recipe called for reduced red wine and veal jus - I used red wine and beef stock (out of a tin!), but it was a bit thin, so whisked in some cold butter at the end.

Once the chicken was ready, we removed it from the water bath, and browned the skin in bit of oil and butter, before slicing up to serve.

To serve, the puree was plated up and topped with the lentils and sliced chicken. The veg and onions were dotted round the plate, and it was finished with the sauce.

Tuesday 4 July - Jerk Sweet Potato Cakes

Bob is currently building a website for Black Ass Jerk Co, and came home from a meeting clutching a jar of Jerk Paste

Jerk paste is normally something that we make from scratch, but we thought we would try this out for a midweek meal. As we are eating very little meat at the moment, I decided that we would have a play with some Caribbean flabours, and make some sweet potato cakes with jerk flavouring. To serve with it some rice and peas, and some Green Plantains that were an impulse buy when we passed a market stall at the weekend.

The sweet potatoes were cubed, and tossed with a couple of tablespoons of jerk paste and a dash of olive oil, then roasted in a hot oven for about 20 minutes until soft.

They were then mashed, along with some flavourings - chopped coriander, fresh red Scotch Bonnet, spring onions and roasted garlic.

The mixture was chilled, then formed into small cakes, which we dipped in egg and polenta, before frying. It was quite a soft texture, so the smaller cakes are easier to manage, and less likely to fall apart when cooked.

For the rice, coconut milk was boiled along with garlic, thyme, allspice berries, spring onion and a scotch bonnet chilli - for about 20 minutes, to infuse the mik with flavour.

We then added this to the rice cooker, along with some drained black beans, and some soaked basmati rice and left to cook.

 

I had to search the internet to find out what to do with green plantain, but found out that a 'double cooking' was the way to go.

The plantains were peeled and sliced into one inch pieces.

These slices were then fried for a couple of minutes on each side. We then bashed them flat with a mallet

The flattened pieces were then fried again until crisp

No one missed meat at all, the jerk paste was absolutely delicious - had obvious pieces of the ingredients that you could see. I would certainly buy this rather than making my own in future.

Saturday 27 May - Vincisgrassi

I bought a new book last week, called The DIY Cook by Tim Hayward. It caught my eye, and as it was cheap I picked it up to have a read. It turned out to be just the sort of cooking I love - making all the components of a recipe from scratch. I spotted this recipe for Vincisgrassi, which is essentially a lasagne, but a bit more special. The pasta element is so easy now that we have an attachment on our kitchen aid, that this didn't seem too daunting to start with. The main components were a slow cooked ragu, and a mushroom bechamel, plus the homemade lasagne noodles. A main ingredient in the recipe was truffles, which unsurprisingly are not available in Gosport at any time of year - however, I was given a jar of Black Truffle paste for Christmas, so it was an excuse to open that.

The ragu started with a sofrito of carrot, celery, onions and pancetta, fried slowly in butter and olive oil.

The meat was a mix of beef and veal mince, fried quickly in a hot dry pan - red wine,garlic, cinnamon and cloves were added and the wine was boiled down.

The meat and soffrito were combined, along with a small amount of tomato paste, and some fresh chicken stock, and it was left to simmer gently for three hours before finishing with some double cream.

For the bechamel sauce, some dried ceps were added to warm milk until they were soft, they were then drained, chopped and fried off with some fresh chopped button mushrooms to drive off all the water.

The mushroomy milk was made into a bechamel sauce, and the chopped mushrooms added back into this with some seasoning.

Then for the assembly.

First a layer of pasta, topped with a thin layer of ragu

Then more pasta, parma ham, some of the bechamel, parmesan and fresh mozzarella, and some of the truffle paste.

Finishing with sauce and cheese as the top layer, this was then baked until golden and hot.

I made a garlic and rosemary bread to serve with this

The only other thing we needed was a fresh green salad. We had enough left over to freeze for another day. This was a recipe I really enjoyed cooking, and was certainly worth all the effort.

Saturday 6 May - Gumbo

Every so often I realise how few recipes I am adding to this blog, but we tend to be creatures of habit, and often eat the same, or similar dishes so it's not often that we cook something completely new. I was browsing facebook yesterday, and an article popped up by Yotam Ottolenghi, about Gumbo. His recipe didn't greatly appeal to me, as there was no okra in in, but it gave me the idea to have a read up, and to try and make some. As an added bonus, it was a beautiful day, so we took the ferry over to Portsmouth where I knew I'd be able to buy some Okra. While we were there I also bought some plantains and Scotch Bonnet chillies so we can make Jerk chicken for tonight.

As we needed to make a chicken stock, I bought a couple of whole chickens - we jointed them, saving the breasts for tomorrow, the legs and thighs for the Gumbo, and everything else went into the stock pot.

I read up on lots of recipes, and the main things that make a gumbo are the roux, and also the basic 'Holy Trinity' of Cajun cooking, celery, green pepper and onions. I decided that in this instance I needed to overcome my fear of cooked celery as it is vital in this dish.

For seafood I bought raw prawns, and also added some tiny dried prawns, chopped up very small. Polish sausage is the easiest to find here so thats what we used for the smoked sausage.

As I was about to start cooking, I realised that many of the recipes mentioned Ancho Chilli powder, which I didn't have - a bit of googling thought made me realise I could make my own by grinding up Ancho chillies in a coffee grinder (although I would recommend NOT putting your contact lenses shortly after doing this..)

The sliced sausage was fried, and then removed from the pan, and then the flour was added to make a roux. This had to be cooked and stirred until quite brown.

Then in went the chopped vegetables, chilli powders, tabasco and then the okra, which was sliced up to release the sticky edges

Then the fresh chicken stock was stirred in, and the whole chicken pieces were added.
Once cooked, the meat was removed, and stirred back in, along with the smoked sausage and raw prawns.

 

This was served over boiled basmati rice. Absolutely delicious, and will certainly make it again but maybe try some different seafood next time.