Friday 29 March - Japanese

Good Friday, so a nice few days off work to mess about in the kitchen. We decided on Japanese, as that is Georges favourite food.

I'm not very good at rolling sushi, so this was a bit of a half hearted attempt - we use smoked salmon to fill the sushi as I don't trust supermarket fish to be very fresh.

I did three different varieties - plain salmon, salmon and chive, and salmon and 'caviar'.

We served these as a starter with the usual accompaniments of wasabi, soy and pickled sushi ginger.

  

We followed this with chilli beef ramen - I used the Wagamama recipe for this, and the only change  I made was to add some sliced dried shitake mushrooms to the bowl.

The noodles and vegetables were placed in a bowl, and topped with some lightly cooked sliced beef - I used sirloin here - one steak was plenty for the three of us.

Finally, an oriental stock, flavoured with ginger, garlic and coriander, and with some chilli ramen sauce stirred through it, was poured into the bowls - and the slurping commenced!

Saturday 16 March - Tarragon Chicken

A visit to the fabulous butcher in Titchfield this morning, and we returned with chicken Supremes to make tarragon chicken with.

These were briefly fried, and then roasted for 20 minutes until cooked through.

The sauce was made with tarragon, white vermouth, chicken stock and finished with creme fraiche.
The chicken was served with crushed potatoes, green beans and carrots, and the creamy sauce.

 

We also popped to the allotment and came home with the first rhubarb of the year.

This was made into Rhubarb and Ginger Crumble ice cream - I based it on Delia Smiths recipe but made a custard base, and also added some chopped stem ginger to the mix. After churning the pre-baked crumble mix was stirred through.

To serve along side the icecream, we attempted to make some brandy snaps.

Tuesday 12 March - Baked Beans

Decided on making this earlier this morning, and for once was a bit organised and prepared for the main cooking.

A batch of cannelini beans were boiled for 10 minutes, then transferred to the slow cooker for 5 hours where they slowly cooked to perfection.

 

A batch of bread dough was put into the bread machine, but an experiment using fresh yeast which I activated before adding to the flour in the machine on knead only mode.

Once the dough proved, I shaped into rolls, popped into the fridge to slow prove and went and did a days work.

 

The baked beans were started on the stove top - onions, garlic, pancetta were sauteed then I added passata, tomato ketchup, dijon mustard, worcester sauce, some tomato ketchup and these dried chipotles which I soaked and chopped up.

The beans were added, and it all went into the oven with a topping of fresh breadcrumbs mixed with lincolnshire poacher cheese and butter. Once crispy it will be served with the bread rolls and a green salad with a sharp french dressing.

Saturday 2 March - Char Siu Pork

Another Saturday visit to the Chinese Supermarket in Portsmouth, so Char Siu Pork was on the cards, with an alternative of squid for George who isn't keen on roasted meats.

I have several recipes for Char Siu, but always end up going back to the Sophie Grigson one from her Meat book.

The main ingredients for the marinade are yellow bean sauce, hoi sin sauce and some horrible slimy red bean curd which gives the marinade it's amazing colour.

These are mixed with sugar, soy, garlic, and some rice wine, and the meat was left to marinade for as long as possible.

This was then roasted and drizzed with honey, and served with thai jasmine rice and some stir fried chinese greens and mushrooms.

For George I gutted and prepared 6 baby squid.

 

These were stir fried for a minute with garlic, chilli, salt and pepper and served with a pickled cucumber salad.

For desert, we made a big tub of mango sorbet, and served this with some fresh mango and lychees.

Wednesday 27 February - Cous Cous

We are planning on eating a bit less meat - more due to cost than anything, and found a different recipe for Cous Cous in my new Yotam Ottolenghi Book - Plenty.

The spices were different from my normal choices, and included star anise and chilli flakes

 Carrots and parsnips were roasted with the spices - I did this in my Tagine. Then pumpkin  was added and some further roasting took place.

 

Then cooked chick peas,apricots and some water were added before it was all finished with chopped preserved lemon and Harissa paste

 

Delicous, slightly different flavours from my usual recipe, and no one missed meat at all.

Sunday 17 February - Fresh Yeast

We found this pack of fresh yeast in Morrisons this morning - I've not seen this in the UK probably since I was at school when we learned to bake bread.

The trouble was, none of my modern recipe books had recipes using fresh yeast - even Paul Hollywood suggests using dried active  yeast, and Mrs Beeton wanted us to use liquid brewers yeast.

We decided that each pack would probably do 500g of flour, and followed our normal quantities for water, sugar and salt. The yeast was creamed with the sugar, warm water added and it was left to start working for 15 minutes.

We then started it off in the Kenwood with the dough hook, and left it to rise for an hour while we went out.

It was then shaped into two smallish loaves, so that Bob could take one with him this week, and baked for around 25 minutes. We didn't really leave the second rise quite long enough, so it did stretch slightly in the oven, but overall the loaves seem to be lovely and light, and I'm looking forward to using up the rest of the yeast this week.

Tuesday 12 February - Pizza

We found an amazing pizza cooking system when browsing in Lidl, that would enable us to cook 4 at a time in our oven. This involves 4 trays, stacked in a racking system.

This was also found to be very useful in a small kitchen for preparation purposes too, as we were able to keep all the trays from being spread everywhere.

We started with normal bread dough, which I started off in the bread maker as it's so cold at present I have no chance of dough rising in my kitchen.

This was rolled out to fit the trays (with the 4th portion becoming dough balls)

We all topped our own pizzas with a selection of our favourite things, and a tomato sauce made by reducing some tinned chopped tomatoes with some added garlic and dried herbs.

  

These then went into a very hot oven, until browned. The only thing I would do differently next time is to perhaps take them out of the oven and swap them round half way through cooking.

A very useful piece of equipment - will be good for biscuits too!