Having the folks round for dinner – the full three courses.

I admit, to me, having people round for dinner is just an excuse to spend the day in the kitchen listening to music and cooking. So when we had my mum and dad round last night that's exactly what I did. The great thing about this meal was that loads of it could be prepared in advance, and then it was just a case of shoving in the oven for a while and forgetting about it.

The menu:

- Piedmontese peppers with home made bread

- Slow roasted shoulder of lamb with mash, gravy, roasted vegetables and something green

- Chocolate mousse (Make this first!)

The starter:

Obviously if you're making this you don't have to have home made bread, I just fancied making some on Friday. See here for bread making:

http://idontjustmakesoup.blogspot.com/2011/07/rosemary-and-olive-bread.html

For the peppers just cut a load of peppers in half, take out the seeds and put some finely chopped garlic in. Season, then put in a load of peeled tomatoes. Shove in as many as you can fit in.

(to peel tomatoes put them in a bowl and cover with just boiled water for a minute. Refresh in cold water and the skin should come away easily.)

Halve some anchovies and cross them over the top. Pour in a generous tablespoon of olive oil. These take 45 minutes to an hour in the oven, or just until the look like they're collapsing a bit. When they're done stick some basil leaves in. I made these early in the day and just covered them and kept them in the fridge. Shove them in the oven an hour before you're ready to serve.

Peppers before they go in the oven to get juicy and lovely

The main:

This is the easiest roast ever. Heat your oven up to it's highest heat. Rub a shoulder of lamb (or a bit of one) with olive oil and season it. Chuck in loads of garlic, rosemary, thyme and whatever else you fancy then cover tightly with tin foil. Shove in the oven, then turn it straight down to about 150 – 160 degrees. Forget about it for four hours. Your house will smell fantastic. It will just fall apart. So tasty. It's not an expensive cut either - less than a tenner to feed four hungry people. 

It'll start out like this...

...It'll end up like this!

For the roasted veg, cut carrots and parsnips into big chunks and toss them in some honey, olive oil, grain mustard and salt and pepper. Your oven will be on quite low, so they'll take a while (45 minutes?) but will be sticky and lovely. Then just make mash and steam something green (we had broccoli and green beans)

When it's gravy making time, take out the meat and put it on a plate. Cover it and leave it to rest, it'll stay warm for quite a while. Pour away most of the fat and take out any big bits of rosemary and thyme, but leave the garlic in. Put the roasting tray on the hob. Stir in a teaspoon of flour and start the all important process of scraping up all the sticky bits. Add a glass of wine and stir and scrape as that comes up to the boil. I used white wine for this, as I was making so much food I didn't want it to be too rich, but you could easily use red for a much richer sauce. Add a pint of stock, again I used vegetable so it wasn't too heavy, but you could use lamb for it to be much richer. Then just reduce down to half the volume. Make sure there's nothing sticking to the bottom, and all the lovely roast garlic is squished out of the skin, then just sieve it. Sorted.

I wasn't too good at taking photos for this one, as I was busy chatting to my ma and pa. But here's the meat after you've pulled the bone out: 

You can't carve this... just serve up big hunks of meat

The pudding:

Make this early in the day as it takes a while in the fridge. I'm not big on desserts, as I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but this is very tasty and nicely rounds off the meal. I won't type it out, here's the recipe:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/330616/really-easy-chocolate-mousse

We don't have four matching ramekins... or four matching wine glasses for that matter

 I grated a bit of dark chocolate over the top.

There you go! Lovely and very very easy meal, with no stress. Serve with bucketloads of red wine.

This week's soup: Curried carrot and parsnip. I'm making this up because I've got loads of carrots and parsnips left. It's the Lidl effect, you end up with big bags of veg and massive boxes of fruit because they've cost about 10p.

Adventures with a pheasant.

My cooking's gone all autumnal in the last week or so. Lots of heavy warming things, like split pea and ham soup, sausage cassoulet and lots of things with mash. I have to admit I'm quite enjoying it! This rather continues on the same theme.

One of the perks of being the annoying person who bangs on about food all the time is that people sometimes ask for recipe help. A lovely colleague of mine won a lot of pheasants in a raffle, and was asking for suggestions for how to cook them. I'd never cooked pheasant before, and admitted this straight away, but then Googled recipes and passed them on. In return, said lovely colleague brought me a pheasant. I think it rather confused everyone we worked with when she walked into the newsroom and plonked a pheasant on the desk but hey ho. Helpfully she had gutted it, and also skinned it (because it wasn't plucking very well).

So my challenge on Friday night was to find a way to cook it without it being tough as old boots! True to form I googled it, looked up lots of recipes, then ignored them and made it up.

So here it is:

Pot roasted pheasant with bacon and cream with boulangere potatoes

First job was the potatoes. I decided I couldn't possibly have mash for the third time this week, so wanted to do something slightly different. Boulangere potatoes are a bit like dauphinois although without the insane amounts of cream.

 

Slice an onion and some potatoes as thinly as you can and layer them up in a buttered dish with salt and pepper and a little bit of thyme. Dot some butter on the top and pour in about half a pint of chicken or vegetable stock. Cover with tin foil and put in the oven at about 180 degrees. It'll take about 45 minutes, but be sure to uncover it for the last fifteen minutes. 

First brown your pheasant all over in some butter in a big oven proof pan. (I still dream of le Creuset which would have been perfect for this, our roasting tin has a lid so I used that.) Put to one side while you prepare the rest.

Fry off some smoked bacon lardons before adding finely slice shallots, garlic, a stick of celery and a carrot.

Season well, then chuck in some thyme and a few bay leaves then a very generous glass of white wine - as much as you are willing to use for cooking rather than drinking. Let that bubble away for a few minutes to burn off some of the alcohol. Then add three quarters of a pint of chicken stock and a good slug of cream. Bring up to the boil, stick the pheasant back in, put the lid on and shove in the oven for about 25 – 30 minutes. After that leave it to rest for ten minutes in the sauce.

Take the pheasant out and reduce the sauce down for a few minutes, and you're good to go. If the pheasant cools too much carve it, and pop it back in the sauce to warm through.

Serve with greens (I love kale, so we had steamed kale with butter and pepper) It was very tasty! It was still a little tougher than I would have liked, I think I would joint it next time and effectively casserole it, it might help with the legs in particular, but it wasn't too bad at all. We had the leftovers as a snack today and the sauce is just unbelievable.

Curing the common cold – lamb shanks and hot toddies.

I don't get ill very often, but when I do I'm pretty pathetic. In the last few weeks everyone's been ill; My other half, my nephew, everyone at work. It was inevitable it would get me at some point. So come Friday I was bunged up, grumpy and generally feeling out of sorts. This is how I deal with it:

Day One: Pretend you're not ill. Go to work, power through, and just moan at anyone who'll listen.

Day Two: Take to the couch in a melodramatic fashion. Leave the house only to buy tinned chicken soup, vitamin C supplements and pain killers. Watch films from under a duvet, then have a hot toddy and go to bed in a grump.

 

Trying to cure the cold/flu

Day Three: Have a word with yourself. You've had enough wallowing time, now pull yourself together, and cook yourself out of your slump. Make soup and something really stodgy and lovely. You're still full of the cold and unlikely to be able to taste any of it, but that's not the point. (Do make sure you factor in plenty of time for hot lemon with honey etc.)

Lamb shanks in red wine with spring onion mash, carrots and kale.

It's a bit dark this picture isn't it?

For what you get in a lamb shank they are pretty cheap. They used to be much cheaper, but have become more fashionable. In a round about way, it'll do us two meals too.

First toss the lamb in some seasoned flour and brown it off in a hot pan. You don't necessarily need to add flour, but I find it helps to thicken the sauce a bit. You want the meat to have a decent colour all over it.

Put the lamb in a big casserole dish. I dream of a Le Creuset dish or equivalent which can go straight in the oven! But don't have one at the moment.

Slice a couple of red onions and two cloves of garlic and fry that off in the same pan you did the meat in then add them to the casserole.

De-glaze the pan with a bit of red wine to get any sticky bits off the bottom then add it to the casserole, along with another large glass of red wine, and a pint of stock (chicken or vegetable).

Mix in a tablespoon of tomato puree, and season with some salt and pepper. Then stir in some sprigs of rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf or two. 

Cover it and stick in a low oven for at least two hours at 150 degrees. It's done when the lamb just pulls away from the bone. For the last half an hour take the lid off so the juices reduce a little bit. I turned the meat once or twice to keep it moist.

Before...

Mine ended up being in for about three hours, as my Mum and Dad came round. It's a very forgiving recipe though...

After....

For the mash... er, make mash. Boiled potatoes, plenty of butter, a touch of cream and milk. To make spring onion mash stir in some finely chopped spring onions.

The sauce should be really rich, so I'm keeping the veg simple with big piles of restorative steamed kale and carrots.

What to do with the leftovers:

There ought to be loads of lovely sauce, and it transforms into the most amazing ragu-like sauce for pasta mid week. Once it's cooled just take any bits of fat off the top. Any bits of lamb leftover (our shanks were enormous... I do love my butcher) just pull it apart so it's almost shredded. Put your pasta on, heat up the sauce (and any shredded bits of lamb) and add a load of fresh spinach and halved cherry tomatoes. Pour the pasta into the sauce and stir it through on the heat for a minute or two and its ready to eat. Amazing midweek dinner, and makes your lamb shanks seem like really good value for money.

My hot toddy recipe (no idea if it's authentic):

- Put one measure of whisky in a mug. It doesn't have to be the nicest in the world, but something half decent will do.

- Take a slice of lemon and half it. Squeeze the juice out of one half of the slice into the whisky. Stick a couple of cloves into the other half of it and put that in the whisky.

- Top up with water that boiled a couple of minutes ago then add a teaspoon of honey. Give it a good stir and drink it while it's still quite hot.

Yum. It soothes the throat, and knocks you out. What's not to love?

September salad making, and some store cupboard pasta sauce.

Blimey isn't it warm?? In the space of a week I've gone from hearty roast and crumble making to craving salad! So today, on my day off, after hanging out washing in the garden, putting on suncream and generally lying around reading in the garden I decided to make a nice refreshing salad for tea. Chorizo and halloumi salad, here goes.

If you don't love halloumi then, frankly, what the hell is wrong with you? It is amazing stuff.

First chop up some chorizo and fry in a little oil until it releases all the paprika-oily-goodness. Shove that in a bowl, and add the juice of about half a lemon. Rinse a tin of green lentils or puy lentils. Throw them in the bowl. If you want this to be veggie-friendly don't bother with the chorizo, but it is really nice.

Slice some red onion into fine half moons, and chop up a clove of garlic. Add this to your chorizo and lentils. Chop up some tomatoes into big chunks. On the subject of tomatoes, check these out! I grew them myself, from seed. 

I've never grown anything I could actually harvest before... anyway I digress, put these in the bowl too. Now stir through some spinach leaves. Taste the mixture and season; add some olive oil to dress it, and plenty of salt and pepper to taste. Add some roughly chopped parsley.

Chop your halloumi into big chunks and fry in the pan you did the chorizo in.

Serve big chunks of halloumi on top of a big bowl of lentil-ly chorizo-y salad. Yum.

Today's added extra: Home made cherry tomato pasta sauce.

Because we didn't have a heat wave for the first three weeks of this month we haven't been eating an awful lot of salad. This means I have an entire packet of cherry tomatoes that are about to give up. To stop them going to waste, I've decided to turn them into a pasta sauce for another day. Very easy to do, and much nicer than shop bought pasta sauce.

Just finely chop an onion, a stick of celery and a couple of cloves of garlic, then fry them on a low heat until they've gone soft. Add the cherry tomatoes and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Add a teaspoon of sugar and let it cook down for a while. Don't add any herbs, but do season liberally with salt and pepper. This is a good base sauce, and when you go to use it later you can add the herbs of your choice, such as a good handful of fresh basil. (Or some fried chorizo, chilli and peppers, or a good dollop of crème fraiche to make creamy or... the list is endless really)

Keep in a sterilised jar in the fridge, with a layer of olive oil over the top to keep it fresh.

This is not just a stir fry (and Turkish lentil soup)

Last time I bought steak from the butcher, he very kindly gave me some off cuts he had leftover (it pays to go when he's just about to close). They've been sitting in my freezer for some time while I worked out what to do with them – not quite big enough for steak and chips but I wanted to do them justice!

I decided to do a stir fry – but try and make it a bit nicer than my usual chuck everything in the wok and hope for the best.

Bit blurry as I was stirring at the time!

First, do all the prep! It really is the key with stir fry – as it only takes five minutes to cook.

Blitz up a glove of garlic, a chilli, and about an inch of peeled ginger. Crush together some cumin) and some coriander. (All a bit fusion, I'm guessing this wouldn't be that authentic but I love cumin

Finely slice into strips all your veg; whatever you've got really. I used carrots, peppers, broccoli, mushrooms and courgettes.

Prep everything before cooking

Cook your noodles according to the packet! I used rice noodles. When they're cooked rinse through with cold water to keep them separate. Put to one side.

Mix together a teaspoonful of cornflour, with two tablespoons of rice vinegar and a tablespoon or two of soy sauce. I have some new soy sauce from a Chinese supermarket which is INSANELY dark. Really tasty, but turned everything a bit brown with only a few tablespoons of it! If you do live/work near a Chinese supermarket I would recommend buying a big bottle of soy sauce – the little bottles in the normal supermarkets just don't really compare.

Have some finely sliced spring onions at the ready, and some sesame oil. (I'd run out of spring onions unfortunately!)

Season your steak with a little soy sauce, then fry on a really high heat in the wok for two minutes on each side. This is really nice sirloin so I want it to be a bit rare, and it will be heated through at the end.

Put to one side and allow to rest while you make everything else. Heat some oil in the wok (it doesn't need cleaning after the steak) Once it's quite hot throw in your garlic/ginger/chilli mix then the spices. Add all your veg. Stir before adding the soy/cornflour mix. Keep everything moving around, then add the rice noodles. Whilst everything is heating through, slice the steak into strips. 

Taste it – and add more soy sauce if you think it needs it.(depends on the quality of your soy sauce really)

Chuck in the steak, sliced spring onion and a drizzle of sesame oil – and it's done!

This week's soup is Turkish lentil. I rarely put my soup recipes on here, but thought this was good enough to share. When we were in Istanbul we had this and I thought it was lovely, I've since googled, tasted and guessed until I came up with a reasonably authentic version. It's really cheap, and really easy!

Finely chop an onion and cook in some butter on a low heat in an enormous pan until it goes a little golden, but not caramelised. Stir in a good teaspoonful of paprika. Add a small cupful of red lentils, and half a small cupful of bulgur wheat. Stir this around until it's coated with the butter.

Add a couple of tablespoons of tomato purée, and a couple of pints of vegetable stock, and a good pinch of chilli flakes (if you like spicy food). Simmer until all the lentils have broken down (about half an hour). When it's cooked, crumble in a teaspoon of dried mint, and the juice of about half a lemon. Season to taste. It's that easy. And trust me, it's lovely. Eat with pitta bread if you're trying to be authentic!

My packed lunches for the rest of the week

 Whilst making this I mostly listened to: the new Laura Marling album. I think she's ace.

Easiest. Dinner. Ever

Gosh, hasn’t it been a while? My apologies for the lack of recipes lately. August was crazily busy and (mostly) very good fun. Lots of good eating – but none of the cooking was done by me. Fabulous wedding in Ireland with a seven course meal (I think, I lost count), a beautiful tapas meal cooked for my birthday, and a late birthday lasagne and enormous cake. All lovely.

But now it’s time for me to start contributing again. This is a bit of a cheat. Anyone can do this recipe, or variations of it, but the fact is it’s really really nice. And if you don’t already have a version of this in your repertoire, you should, because it tastes much better than you’d expect from just a bit of chopping.

So here’s my recipe for roasted chicken legs with Mediterranean vegetables, and a lemon and pine nut cous cous.

To tart up this dinner I made foccacia earlier today, according to this recipe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/rosemary_and_sea_salt_12392

But added my own toppings. I made a couple, one with olives and rosemary, another with chopped garlic and basil and some lemon juice. It was all good fun! But I’m not one for typing out someone else’s recipes so click on the link above.

Stick your oven on to preheat at around 190 degrees.

For this you will need a bucketload of Mediterranean type veg. I had a courgette, an aubergine, a pepper, a couple of small onions, a handful of cherry tomatoes and a few cloves of garlic. Chop everything up into big chunks and put it in a roasting tin. Chop the garlic roughly and scatter it over the top, then if you’ve got any basil tuck half a dozen basil leaves in amongst it too. (Rosemary works well with this; the first time I had a variation of this meal at a friend’s house it was made with rosemary and the smells were brilliant).

Now slosh over a good load of olive oil (erm, maybe 6 tablespoons? I have no idea) and about half as much balsamic vinegar.

Now put a couple of chicken legs on the top of it and season liberally – the salt will help the chicken skin to go crispy, but the meat will stay moist because of all the steam from the vegetables. I’m a big fan of chicken legs (or any meat on the bone really) as it is so much tastier than chicken breasts, which go dry very easily.

Shove in the oven for about forty minutes. I lifted the chicken and gave the vegetables a good stir around half way through.

It also helps to baste the chicken with some of the lovely juices from the bottom of the pan – but you only need to do this once. 

You don’t have to have this with cous cous – it’s nice with roasted new potatoes or just steamed new potatoes. But this time we were having easy dinner.

Toast some pine nuts in a dry frying pan (keep an eye on them, they burn easily) and chop some parsley. You’ll be able to tell if the chicken is nearly ready because the juices will run clear when you poke it with a skewer or sharp knife. At this point, cook some cous cous according to the instructions on the packet, then stir through the pine nuts, parsley, the juice of half a lemon, another slosh of olive oil and some salt and pepper. 

A bonus from this recipe is that you will have chuffing LOADS of roasted veg leftover. This makes a lovely pasta sauce for another day. Just cook some pasta, warm the roasted veg, add a dollop of crème fraiche and stir the whole lot together. Again, you wouldn't expect it to be so good, but it’s awesome.

Pork chops with warm bean salad

So the football season’s started again, which means I have significantly more free time of a weekend. Yesterday I took advantage of this by cooking a cracking meal.

Despite the fact it’s supposed to be summer, it’s grey, cold and miserable so I fancied something properly comforting.

First, get a couple of proper meaty pork chops, skin on and bone in. Make up an easy marinade with the grated zest of half a lemon, a finely chopped clove of garlic, some finely chopped rosemary, olive oil and salt and pepper.

 Rub this into the meaty bits of the pork chops on both sides, and leave them to one side to soak it up. 

Get potatoes ready for roasting by chopping them up and boiling them in some salted water until nearly cooked. Then toss them in some salt and pepper with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Cook them in the oven for a good half an hour.

Make a dressing for your bean salad with two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, four of olive oil, a finely chopped clove of garlic and some salt and pepper.  Shove it all in an old jam jar ready for shaking up just before serving.

Use any old beans for the salad, I had haricot. Shove a tin of beans and some chopped spring onion in a pan with a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Put on a low heat and shove in a good few handfuls of spinach. Put a lid on and leave it on a low heat for five minutes. The spinach should start to wilt down. You can add any old veg to this really, I put in some cooked green beans too. Give it a stir around. And when you’re ready to eat stir through the dressing you made earlier. Don’t leave it on the heat for too long, you don’t want the beans to break down or the spinach to overcook.

I was quite a fan of this, I reckon it would go well with a barbecue too; it’s really tasty and a bit different.

Rub some salt well into the fat and skin to try and encourage it to turn into crispy crackling. 

 

Heat up a roasting dish on top of the hob until it’s pretty hot, and put in a splash of vegetable oil. Put the pork in let it sizzle for a couple of minutes, the skin should start to crisp up. Now flip it and shove it in a really hot oven (about 220 degrees) for about ten – fifteen minutes until crispy.  Turn it once while it’s cooking.

My crackling didn’t work out too well this time, I don’t think my oven was hot enough, so I ended up just taking it off.

Take the meat off the roasting dish and leave it to rest for five minutes. Deglaze it with the juice of half a lemon and a touch of water, and scrape up the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan. It’s not a gravy, but the juices are well worth pouring over the top of the chops. Now plate up!

It was a shame about the crackling, but nonetheless it was a really tasty meal, as well as a welcome distraction from the start of the football season. Expect more regular blog posts for the next ten months!

Whilst making this I mostly listened to: Laura Marling.

Rosemary and Olive Bread

I make a pot of soup once a week. It’s my cheap and healthy lunch for at least three shifts a week at work, and helps avoid inadvertently spending a fiver in M and S food every lunch time. I was trying to change this to salads for the summer, but they don’t keep as well (I’ll often take a few days worth of soup in to work at once) and so just aren’t so easy.  So I go for lighter soups instead.

I try not to have bread all the time, (carbs etc. etc.) but sometimes it just can’t be helped.  I was having a lazy afternoon yesterday so decided to make some bread. It’s a pretty stress free, relaxing process.

The basic recipe I use is the one below, so see that for specific amounts:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

It’s nice to make plain bread, but, predictably enough, I like to add stuff. 

Blitz up a few sprigs of rosemary (leaves only) and half a dozen olives. You don’t want a paste, some chunks of olives are nice.  Put this in the bowl with the strong flour, yeast and salt and give it a good mix together.  Then make a well in the centre and add the oil, and the water in a couple of batches. I use my hands to mix it together, as bread dough is like glue so you want to be cleaning it off as few things as possible.

Then on a well floured board knead it for at least ten minutes. Kneading means pushing, squashing, rolling, generally beating all hell out of it with your hands. It’s a messy process, your hands will be covered, but rub them together to get the dough off and try and get it included.  The thing is, a slightly sticky dough will actually rise much better than a dry one. It really is important to knead it for as long as you can be bothered, do ten minutes then add another minute.

It's a pretty messy process

Lightly oil your bowl and put the dough in (by now it should be all in one piece and a bit elastic), and cover with a damp tea towel and put it in a sunny spot for an hour.

 It will start this size:

And end up about double the size:

Now “knock it back” or lightly knead again. I find putting it on the board and punching it a few times to knock a load of the air out of it is a good start. You don’t need to mess around with it for anywhere near as long as before. Then either shape it into loaves or rolls. I decided to go for rolls this time. 

Put on some oiled trays and leave for another hour. (I'm not bothered that they're a bit rustic. They're for dipping in soup)

They should double in size again.

Preheat the oven at 210/220 degrees and then pop them in.  Loaves will take longer than rolls, these were ready in about 25 – 30 minutes.

Test them by knocking on the bottom, they should sound hollow.

Put on a wire rack to cool. I don’t have a wire rack, I do have an oven shelf on a chopping board.

And they’re good to go! I will be making some soup later; just mushroom, so ridiculously easy.  If anyone’s bothered just ask, and I’ll put up that recipe too.

So this week, I will be having mushroom soup with rosemary and olive bread, yum!

In other news, I love this cookery programme and I love Grace Dent’s TV reviews, so I strongly recommend you watch The Good Cook on iPlayer, and read this review:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jul/23/the-good-cook-grace-dent-tv-od?CMP=twt_gu