Sunday 27 September - Finnish Pea and Ham Soup

Spotted this on The Hairy Bikers programme last week, and George said he liked the look of it. I can't often get him to eat either peas, or soup, so thought this was worth a try.

I started by soaking the gammon hock, as I find they can be rather salty.

 

The peas were also soaked, and then boiled for 10 minutes.

The Gammon was then simmered for an hour with some mace, an onion studded with cloves, and a couple of bay leaves.

Then in with the soaked peas, and some chopped onion and carrot and it was cooked for another hour or so until the peas were soft.

The meat was shredded, and the peas and broth blended together ( it took a while to locate the cloves to remove them as the whole onion had broken up during the cooking). As it was blended a big spoonful of English Mustard and a dash of cream were added. I'm not keen on mustard, but this really lifted the flavour of the soup.

This made a delicious thick soup - nothing else really needed for a meal, although we served it with some home made rolls.

Friday 29 August - Crab Cakes with Chilli Jam

I've always wanted to make crab cakes, but most recipes I've looked at include just silly amounts of white crabmeat. However, I found a lovely looking recipe in a Sarah Raven book that just called for crabmeat, so I bought a couple dressed crabs, plus a few extra claws.

We started by making the chilli jam to serve with them, this also had the advantage of using up lots of our homegrown tomatoes.

Our own chillies also went into this-they are lovely and hot this year.

Chillies, garlic and ginger were processed along with half of the tomatoes.

Red wine wine gar and fish sauce were added, and then the rest of the tomatoes roughly chopped, along with some sugar. Then it was all cooked until lovely and thick and sticky 

Plenty of this left over for another day too.

For the cakes, the crabmeat was mixes with mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, hopped herbs and chillies, and some Worcester sauce and lemon juice.

It was all bound together with an egg yolk, before forming into cakes and into the fridge to firm up before we coated them in egg and breadcrumbs.

They were then shallow fried, before being served with chips and the chilli jam.

Tuesday 25 August - Swedish Meatballs

We were inspired to make these by a visit to IKEA . Although we've never had meatballs there, they seemed to be popular there so we thought we'd have a go. Although there were frozen ones on offer, we decided to have a go ourselves, although this vital accompaniment was purchased on the way out

I googled lots of recipes, and the main differences were whether to add dill or not. I decided to add it ( a decision that George wasn't happy with.

Lots of dill and parsley were finely chopped.

These were added to a fairly basic meatball mix- pork, eggs, dried breadcrumbs, some milk and salt and pepper.

I rolled this mixture into fairly small balls, and they were fried in olive oil.

The sauce was made, by adding flour to the fat left in the pan, along with a spoonful of the jam, some beef stock, cream and lemon juice.

then the meatballs went back in, and were simmered for a while to heat through.

Served with mash, and more of the jam, and I thought they were delicious - teenagers may prefer them with no dill though.

Tuesday 18 August - Ma Po Tofu

II had never heard of this, but it was requested by George who is a bit of a Tofu fan - it's basically a spicy pork mince stirfry, with cubes of tofu added at the end.

The recipe started in the same way as many stirfries do - ginger, garlic and spring onion were added to the wok.

Then in with some  lean pork mince and some roughly chopped fermented black beans

Once these were all fried together, some spicy chilli bean paste was added and cooked for a few minutes.

Then the cubed tofu - I had pressed this for a while to get rid of excess moisture to stop it falling apart.

Finally in went some cornflour and stock, flavoured with soy, sesame and some sugar

Garnished with spring onion, and served with lots and lots of steamed rice

Friday 3 July - Filipino Pork and Mango Curry

This is a book I've had my eye on for a while, but I finally found it at a reduced price on Amazon and snapped it up.

I had a quick flip through, and found this recipe for Filipino Pork and Mango Curry - this sounded very different from our usual Friday Night curry and had to be worth a try.

The spices were also a bit different from any other curry I've made - the recipe just called for curry powder, I used half hot and half mild, along with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Chopped onions were fried with garlic, ginger and chillies, before adding the spices

Then in went some soy sauce and some wine vinegar (the recipe called for red, but I could only find white in my cupboard)

The meat we used was a pork loin, this was cubed and fried, and then added to the onion base along with a cup of water, and simmered.Finally cubed mango was added - I used a pack of frozen mango, as the fresh ones I'd bought were all brown when I cut into them.

This was all simmered and served with steamed jasmine rice, and our favourite cucumber salad.

Will definitely be making this one again, George isn't keen on pork so may try it using chicken instead.

Monday 15 June - Macaroni Cheese

Why would I blog this one - everyone knows how to make this!

I always have the ingredients in for this, and if I don't really feel like cooking I'll go for this. Has the added benefit that of course everyone likes it!

To start off I made a bog standard roux - no measuring here, I just added things until it looked right

Then in went lots of grated cheese - Monterey Jack and Cheddar - (it was USA Week in Lidl!)

To add a bit of extra flavour I added tabasco , lots of dijon mustard and some Worcestershire sauce

This sauce was stirred into the pasta, and the topping was added - I made breadcrumbs with grated cheese and a dash of olive oil and sprinkled these over before baking until all bubbly.

Very simple, but very, very good!!

Sunday 14 June - Jerk Chicken

It's barbeque weather at the moment, and I like the idea of using it to cook the meat part of a  meal, rather than a general pig out on lots of different types of meat.

I decided to do Jerk Chicken as it's one of Georges favourites, and it was just the two of us for the evening.

The Jerk marinade was made with fresh scotch bonnets and spring onions, ground up in the mini processor with various spices - whole allspice and black pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon and lots of fresh thyme - soy sauce, brown sugar and lime juice bound it all together.

The resulting paste was massaged into chicken breasts - I used skin on bone in breasts. Note the gloves, essential for contact lens wearers handling fresh chillies!!

After marinading for around 8 hours, it was cooked slowly over charcoal.

To serve with this I made an old favourite in this house - rice and peas. However, I made it in my trusty rice cooker, and it worked very well indeed.

The soaked basmati rice and a tin of kidney beans had spring onion, chilli, all spice, and coconut milk added, and then it was just left to cook.

Finally, to serve up, I fried some slices on plantain in coconut oil

Delicious - and VERY spicy!!