Everyone can make a bolognese.

So I've been a bit ill. I don't get ill really. Not properly, visit-the-doctors, spend-days-in-bed ill. I regularly get a bit of a cold or whatever and feel a bit sorry for myself (and moan a lot, and make a lot of soup) but I still do everything I would normally do. I tried that this time, and ended up leaving work half way through a shift and calling in sick for the first time in three years. Ah well. The point of this preamble is not for sympathy, but to discuss food choices. I found myself becoming a child again. I was sitting on a sofa, under the same duvet I had when I was ill as a kid, eating tinned tomato soup. Boiled eggs mashed up in a cup. All it needed was white bread spread with margarine to go with it. Brilliant (yet terrible at the same time).

Now I'm feeling loads better. I've started getting bored at home, want go running, go to the pub. (I probably shouldn't do either of those things quite yet...) But I'm not ready to stop regressing. I've always loved spaghetti bolognese. We had mince most Tuesdays when I was growing up, and whenever I saw it defrosting I would always campaign for spaghetti bolognese. More often than not we'd have mince and tatties, as we had pasta on Mondays.  My mum was against having the same carbs two days in a row. Eventually she gave in to my campaigning with a weary “If you really want spaghetti bolognese, you make it.” As such, this is a recipe I've been honing since I was about twelve.

I'm aware there are lots of much easier ways to make a bolognese – often involving a well known brand of pasta sauce – but I've worked out this recipe throughout the last, erm, fifteen years?  For many of those years I was very skint, so this recipe can also make 1lb of mince feed at least four people.

A note on pasta... I will always call this spaghetti bolognese even though we often don't have spaghetti in the house. I use whatever shape of pasta we've bought in industrial sized bags. This week, penne. Most importantly, if you want your pasta to taste of something make sure you stir it into the bolognese while it's on the heat. You don't want a pile of pasta, then a pile of bolognese. The pasta will be horrible. Bolognese is a sauce and it's supposed to coat the pasta properly.

This is almost certainly not authentic.

My version of Bolognese

Ingredients:

1lb decent steak mince (I think that's probably about 450grammes?)

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon diced up/or a small pack of lardons

2 onions, finely chopped

a carrot, peeled and finely chopped

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

6 or so chestnut or button mushrooms, chopped

a red or orange pepper, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

a big glass of red wine

a tin of tomatoes

2 tablespoons of tomato puree

a splash of milk (optional, but I think it adds a bit of richness and helps bring it

all together)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried thyme/some fresh thyme

2 dried bay leaves

plenty of salt and pepper

-  First, in a big pan, fry off your bacon/lardons until it's going a bit crispy and tasty. Resist the urge to eat a bit of it out of the pan. (actually eat a bit of it, there's nothing better than fried smoked bacon)

-  Add the onions, carrots, celery and pepper, a big pinch of salt and give it a stir. Now shove a lid on and leave it for five – ten minutes. It should be on a lowish heat, so everything starts to sweat but not colour.

-  Add the mince and garlic, and stir it a bit then let it brown. Stir it occasionally for five minutes until there aren't any pink bits left in the meat.

-  Add the mushrooms and tomato puree, stir, then cook for another five minutes.

-  Add the red wine and turn up a bit to bubble off the alcohol.

-  Add everything else (tomatoes, herbs etc.), give it a good stir, turn it right down and pop the lid on. Now cook it for about an hour, stirring occasionally. 

-  Keep an eye on it – it should reduce and get quite thick. If you think it looks a bit wet, take the lid off for a while. Keep tasting it and checking for seasoning. (if you don't have an hour and a half to make your bolognese you can cook it on a higher heat for less time, it just won't be quite as rich. I'd still give it half an hour of simmering if you can)

-  If you've got four people round for dinner, cook your pasta and drain it, before adding to the pan with the bolognese. If you're freezing some of it, take some of the bolognese out and put it in some tupperware, then stir your pasta into the rest of it. Cook the pasta in the bolognese for thirty seconds – a minute.

There we go! Serve with grated parmesan, salad etc. It probably doesn't need garlic bread, but sometimes it's nice to have a carb overload. 

I promise to do more adventurous food soon. Probably when I've finished the antibiotics and stopped regressing.

Home comforts and cheap eats.

This is a rare post about soup. I make it almost every week but rarely put the recipe up, as it took me years to convince people that it wasn't the only thing I ate. But now, with autumn well and truly here, it is the perfect time for soup. It's healthy, cheap and very very easy. Make it now. Freeze some of it. Have it on night shifts when you're cold and sleepy. 

Split pea and ham soup

My mum used to use ham hock in soups all the time, but I don't remember them being enormous. I don't know if hock is just the Scottish phrase for it but never mind. My conversation with the butcher went like this:

Me: “Have you got any ham hocks?”

Him: “Do you mean ham shank?”

Me: “Is it the same thing? It's for soup”

Him: “Yeah it's good for soup.”

(produces a ham shank the size of my head)

Me: “Jesus it's enormous!”

Him: “Yeah you're going to have a lot of soup.”

And yet, it was only £2.80. And I go to a good butcher, where the meat is free range and brilliant. £2.80. Amazing. So I'm now concocting other recipes for this rather ugly but totally delicious cut of meat. Honestly, I don't buy cheap meat, but cheap CUTS of meat are the way forward.

So with some split peas from the back of the cupboard and the cheap meat this probably works out at about 35p a portion.

Ingredients:

a ham hock

half a pack of green split peas, rinsed

a carrot, scraped and roughly chopped

a couple of onions, peeled and roughly chopped

a clove of garlic, peeled and sliced in two

a couple of bay leaves

lots of water

pepper

normally I would have a couple of roughly chopped sticks of celery

too, but the celery in our fridge had gone bendy

1. I boiled the ham for a short blast on it's own before cooking as it's an insanely salty piece of meat. Some ham hock recipes I've seen say you should soak it overnight for this reason. That would require planning though. Put it in a soup pot, surround with water and bring to the boil for ten minutes. This helps to take away some of the saltiness, and any scum from the ham (no one wants scum).
2. Pour away that water and put the ham to one side. Wipe any scum from the pan.
3. Fry the onions garlic and carrots on a low heat in a little vegetable oil, then add the ham, bay leaves and split peas to the pan
   
   

   

   Ugly, isn't it?

4. Top up with a full kettle full of cold water. Probably a couple of litres. Bring it up to the boil, then lower the heat stick a lid on and leave it to simmer for ages, depending on the size of the ham. At least two hours but probably more.
   Go with your instinct on this. I did it for two and a bit hours but then we were due to go out for dinner, and I didn't feel like the ham was quite falling apart enough. We do have a rubbish electric hob though, which takes an AGE to cool down, so I just switched the hob off and left it while we went out. I would guess it probably bubbled away for about two and a half in the end.
5. Remove the ham and bay leaves and blend the rest of the soup. When the meat has cooled remove the skin and bones, tear up the meat and add as much of it back to the soup as you like. Use the rest for sandwiches or something. I've frozen some so next time we have chicken I can make a chicken and ham pie.
   
   

   

   A dinner plate full of ham!

   
   

   
   
6. DON'T ADD SALT. It won't need it. Even for a salt fiend like me.

The enormous piece of ham was a revelation. I'm already plotting recipes which involve ham hock and pearl barley.

A friend and fellow food blogger has just mentioned lamb breast as an equally delicious cheap cut of meat. Any others that I don't know about and should be cooking? It might just be the theme for this winter...

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.

Four meals, one chicken

Is there anything more satisfying than a Sunday roast? I love cooking a chicken, and then having chicken based meals for the rest of the week. I would urge you to always buy the biggest and best quality bit of meat you can afford, and you’ll taste the difference (and get lots out of it). And the chicken won’t have had a miserable existence before cooking.

I know cooking a chicken is hardly rocket science; I reckon it's the other bits that make it!

This blog will focus on the initial roast… but I’ll list the probable other meals at the end with brief instructions! The trick to eking it out is loads of veg; and good veg, not some over boiled carrots and broccoli. Get some nice stuff in season (I’m quite excited it’s asparagus season again) and put a little bit of effort in, and you won’t eat quite as much meat! You could always makeYorkshire puddings if you really want to stretch it further. If you add lots and lots of cheaper bits to your roast, you won't feel short changed.

Of course the real key is gravy… always gravy.

For the chicken:

I get all my timings for roasts from Delia. It’s about 20 minutes for every 450g and then another 20 minutes on top of that. It’ll need about half an hours resting time too (covered with tin foil or something), but that’s your gravy making time.

Cover it with butter, and stuff some on the breast under the skin. Shove a halved lemon inside the cavity, and season the whole thing with salt and pepper. Cook as Delia tells you: (I tend not to bother with the bacon she mentions)

http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/meat/roasting-times.html

 

 While that’s doing its thing you can make a start on your exciting veg. We’ve got some Jersey new potatoes, which I parboiled, then squashed slightly, before tossing them with chopped rosemary, garlic and olive oil, seasoned and shoving them in the oven for half an hour.

 For asparagus, break any woody end bits off, and then steam for a few minutes. It doesn’t need much more, but if you’re so inclined you can then chuck them in a hot pan with some butter and lemon juice. In an attempt not to make every vegetable incredibly unhealthy, I opted not to do that with this one! Steamed. Touch of lemon juice. That’s it.

My carrots, however, are another story. I made glazed carrots, which I have described in a previous post, but will copy and paste in anyway: Chop up the carrots in big slices, put a little drop of water in, a knob of butter and a teaspoonful of sugar. Boil until the water all but disappears and you’re left with a lovely glaze.

 How do you know the chickens done? Again I use Delia’s hints for this one: stick a skewer in and see if the juices run clear. Tip it backwards, and see if the juices that run out of the cavity are clear. Pull the legs away from the chicken a bit, of they give quite easily it’s good to go. Put it on a plate to rest, get your potatoes in the oven.  

Gravy:

Pour away most of the fat from the pan, and then put it on the hob over a medium heat. Add a spoonful of cornflour or flour and stir it in to the remaining fat and juices. Then whack up the heat and pour in a glass of white wine, mixing all the time. Make sure to scrape up any sticky bits of the bottom of the pan.  Add half a pint of stock or water (depending on your preference) and keep stirring, then let it reduce down. Taste and season. If you had thyme it would be nice to add some, I put in a little dried parsley (as my parsley hasn’t really grown yet…)

 While it’s reducing get your carrots on, and right at the last minute the asparagus.

And serve!A leg each with all the extras did us.

Once you’ve had your roast and it’s cooled, take every last little scrap of meat off the bones. All of it, you’ll be amazed how much there is. The bones will make a brilliant stock to make the best risotto or soup you’ve ever had. I’m not making that today, so will shove them in the freezer until I get round to it. (Maybe tomorrow, might write about it then)

Other meals (our menu for much of the week):

- Thai chicken and vegetable curry.

I have made my own curry paste before, but not for ages.  I like to add a bit more oomph to a shop bought paste by frying some garlic, chilli and ginger first. (Blitz it up in a little hand-held food processor: one of the best cookery inventions ever) Add to the wok a LOAD of veg; carrots, mushrooms, peppers, green beans and broccoli will be going into ours. Add two tablespoons of curry paste, let that fry off with the veg, then add a tin of coconut milk. Add some chopped up chicken, two dessert spoonfuls of Thai fish sauce (or to taste) and the juice of half a lime. Loads of fresh coriander. Happy days…

- Midweek mini-roast

Awesome. As long as you’ve got enough gravy to last two nights this feels like a proper treat on a dull Wednesday.  Just heat up a bit of chicken in the gravy to keep it moist. We’ll be having it with sweet potato mash for a change, and some probably slightly less exciting veggies, but it is midweek.

- Stir fry

Chilli, garlic and ginger, blitzed up.  Fried with some cumin, ground coriander and paprika (or whatever you’ve got in) and then loads of veg. Add a bit of chicken, lots of soy sauce and then mix in some cooked egg noodles. Add a bit of sesame oil after it’s cooked and you're done. Add more soy to taste.

I’d say that’s not bad going for a seven quid bird! Happy bank holiday one and all, I'm off to the pub.