Pork burgers & sweet potatoes.

A super quick, super healthy, super easy, super delicious dinner. SUPER!
If I had been bothered I would have made a tomato sauce, but for some reason the meal still didn't feel dry or incomplete. To keep the burgers moist and give them a lovely texture moosh together a slice of bread (any type, I used wholemeal cos that's what was lying around), one egg and a splash of olive oil into a smooth paste and mix into the pork mince.
To clear the fridge out a bit I also chucked in a yellow pepper, a red onion, coriander, spring onions and a few spices. Chop everything as finely as possible so the burger holds together well.

Bitches be jealous of my mad chopping skills.

Why are sweet potatoes regarded as being so much healthier than white ones? This bad boy had such a high sugar content that it was leaking caramel as it baked.



To make up for being lazy and not making a sauce some tomatoes were roasted. Salt, pepper, olive oil, oven, done.


To make sure you've seasoned correctly, cook off a small amount of burger mixture. Raw pork doesn't taste too good.



Beautiful golden coins of sweet potato and deep red beetroot discs. All these colours mean it's healthy. But also delicious - healthy is good but being tasty is as equally important.

Gnocchi with veal ragu.

Gnocchi, in my opinion, is the best pasta ever. That's probably because I can take or leave spaghetti, orecchiette and farfalle but, hey - these little potato dumplings are fantastic. I adore the way they obediently float to the surface of the water when they're ready.

Usually we would just buy gnocchi ready-made, just like normal pasta, but also just like normal pasta it is very enjoyable to make from scratch.
In my madness, I didn't leave nearly enough time to make these properly and calmly, which is why they look exceptionally lumpen and misshapen. However, it matters not - a blanket of veal ragu and parmesan masked most of the dumpling's 'hunchback of Notre Dame' ugliness.

Gnocchi, of course, would be very easy to convert into a vegetarian meal. You could have them with a simple tomato sauce, or pan-fry in butter until crisp and melt over some mozzarella along with some basil and tiny fragrant tomatoes.

Hummus, pitta bread and spiced beef patties.

With the abundance of steak mince that arrived yesterday it made sense to make something with it tonight.
Since we had pizza yesterday it seemed a bit wrong to have pasta, which unfortuently ruled out the obvious and easy options of lasagne, bolognese and meatballs.
Instead the mince was turned into little patties to go with hummus and pitta bread - two things we eat often, so I was glad to have the oppertunity to make them from scratch. The meat was coarsely ground, which made it perfect for the job of making sure the finished product had lots of texture.
If you can't find sumac, it can be replaced with some lemon zest.

Serves 4
Ingredients:
1kg steak mince
1 shallot
3 cloves garlic
coriander
sumac
paprika
1 red chilli
salt
mustard seeds
breadcrumbs
1 egg

How to do it:
1. Finely chop the shallot, coriander, red chilli and garlic.
2. Lightly toast the mustard seeds in a dry pan.
3. In a big bowl combine the mince, shallot, coriander, garlic, chilli, mustard seeds, spices, salt, egg and breadcrumbs.
4. Shape into tiny burgers or 'sausages', kofta-style, and cook in the oven, a pan, or on the barbeque.


You can of course omit or add any flavourings you wish. These would also work with minced lamb.
Another variation would be using pork mince (with red chilli, coriander, garlic and ginger) and rolling them up in big lettuce leaves with a chilli, lime and nam pla dipping sauce on the side. Yum!
Go vegetarian - for a chickpea overload, make little falafels instead of the meat patties.




Hummus is very rewarding to make from scratch, because it requires only a few minutes of your time, costs pennies and is absurdly easy to do, but what you get out of it tastes fantastic. Remember the salt - chickpeas are a delicious but bland canvas and need to be seasoned well. This recipe is hummus at its most basic, and can therefore adapt to any additions you may choose to throw at it - black pepper, coriander, paprika, chilli...

Ingredients:
chickpeas
garlic cloves
lemon juice
tahini
olive oil
salt

How to do it:
It couldn't be simpler - go blender-happy and blitz the stuff into oblivion!
Well, okay, not quite. I blended the chickpeas, garlic, salt and tahini first for a bit and gradually added the lemon juice and olive oil. This ensures you get the texture you like best.
I didn't put any measurements down, because it's one of those things that does not require a recipe. You just blend away, and taste as you go along until you're happy with it.
I ended up using five cloves of garlic and the juice of 1 & 1/2 lemons, when I thought it would only come to about two cloves and half a lemon.
Point is, it's all down to personal taste so just go with it!


And lastly, onto the pittas. I used Jill Dupleix's recipe, which can be found here.
I'm assuming I rolled them too thickly, because they weren't slightly hollow as pittas should be. Also, I added some coriander to them to echo the coriander in the meat which is why you can see some weird dark green flecks in the dough.
They tasted really good though, and I would urge you to try making them - people are very impressed but they're so easy to do! I'll just have to remember to roll them thinner next time!


All in all, a very successful dinner. I felt all glowy and ethereal from cooking all day. I love being in the kitchen when it's quiet, just slowly and calmly working through everything.

Banana bread & my first attempt at risotto.

The family members that went to England (two siblings and both parents) returned today.
I wanted to cook something nice.
Possiblities were narrowed somewhat as dinner had to involve a whole cooked chicken that had been lurking in the fridge. Serving it whole was out of the question because it wouldn't stretch to seven people. A salad seemed too dull, sandwiches too pedestrian, a pie too boring. So funnily enough I settled on a dish that many find repellent in it's blandness, but seemed slightly exciting to me as I had never cooked it before. I have eaten risotto half-heartedly many times, yet never once made it myself.
I shredded the meat and used the carcass to make the chicken stock. I had no peas so instead sliced green beans into tiny rounds which were added with the shredded chicken to the risotto. Alongside, we had asparagus that had been brought from England. I forgot to add saffron.





Don't you hate it when bananas go brown before you have a chance to eat them? There were five like that in the fruit bowl this morning so I baked banana bread. We haven't had it in a while, so it was lovely to make it again.
Banana bread is pretty hard to get wrong. Case in point, I completely made up this 'recipe' today and it turned out beautifully. This recipe is not very sweet, so tweak the sugar content to your liking. I used five bananas to save them the fate of being chucked in the bin, however three is around the right number.
The riper the bananas the better.

Makes one loaf.

Ingredients:
3 bananas
3 tablespoons natural yoghurt
1/2 cup granulated or muscavado sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 free-range eggs
100g butter, melted
2 cups self-raising flour
salt
cinnamon

How to do it:
Preheat oven to 350°F/gas 4
1. In a large bowl mash the bananas with the yoghurt, sugar, and eggs.
2. Stir in the butter, vanilla, salt and cinnamon.
3. Fold in the flour.
4. Pour mixture into a loaf tin lined with greaseproof paper. Bake until a skewer comes out clean.





This weekend was good.
My first loaf of bread and my first risotto.

Meat, meat and more meat. Oh, and some asparagus too.

Today was a fantastic day.
We went to Loch Lomond and frolicked on the beach and climbed trees and threw rocks into the water and clambered along rocky paths and climbed a small hill and smelled some wild mint and then stole some of said wild mint to plant in a pot and had a pub lunch and laughed when sibling no.2 fell down twice in a row and attempted to skim stones and sat in the sand and fell asleep in the car on the way home. It was fun.
It was also sunny and warm so we broke out the barbeque and had a protein-fest consisting of burgers, chicken and sausages. Along with that there were little pastry half-moons filled with feta cheese (M&S I'm afraid), asparagus with olive oil and chorizo, salad and olives. There were a few leftover baked potatoes from the other night (I was telling the truth when I said I hadn't eaten anything interesting recently), and the flesh was scooped out and mixed with spring onion and cheddar, and then baked in the skins. There were two profiteroles each for dessert.


Everyone was thoroughly confused as to why we had such a feast today. Mother basically read me her will as half of the family is travelling to England tomorrow and told me it was a possibility that they may die a horrific and fiery death on the motorway. So I am now doubly confused. Why the sudden paranoia?

I despise it when people pronounce chorizo as 'cho-RITZ-oh'. It drives me bloody insane.

Italian beef stew.

Well, I say Italian, but it's nothing authentic.
This is a great way to make the most of a so-called 'inferior' bit of meat - after a few hours of cooking it becomes incredibly flavourful and everything melds together wonderfully.
There's also the added bonus of it being incredibly easy to do. Even though it takes a good 3 or 4 hours to cook, you're don't have to be anywhere near the stove during that time. It'll just bubble away quietly while you do other things. All in all this requires just 20 minutes of hands-on time.

Ingredients:
1 kilo of braising steak, cut into chunks
3 medium red onions, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
olive oil
salt + pepper
1/2 bottle of good red wine
1 tin of tomatoes
1 beef stock cube
3 bay leaves
4 large carrots
and an optional sprig of thyme, rosemary, oregano, whatever you have to hand

Serves 8


How to do it:
1. Chuck the onion and garlic into a big pot with the olive oil. Add a pinch of salt and cook over a low heat until softened.
2. Turn up the heat to medium and add the meat to the pot.
3. Add the wine, tinned tomatoes, stock cube and herbs. Grind in a fair amount of black pepper.
4. Top up with water and leave to simmer away for as many hours as you can, but a minimum of three. This makes the meat incredibly tender.
5. An hour before you plan to serve, add the carrots into the stew. You could also add mushrooms.



Today we had the stew with crushed potatoes and buttery pan-fried leeks.
It's also great with pasta, or even just some crusty bread to mop up the meaty juices.

P.S. I hate how stew always looks like dog food in photos. Delightfully delicious dog food, but dog food nonetheless.

Chilli con carne pt. 2

Wanted to make guacamole. Cut one avocado open and it was brown. Cut the second one open and it was brown. Dammit.

Ah well. We had salsa, grated cheddar, sour cream, tortillas and rice. Some disgustingly decadent individuals even had a mix of chilli and rice within a tortilla.
Personally I find the texture of the mince with the tortilla too soft, and with rice too same-y, so I compromised and toasted my filled tortilla (chilli, cheese, salsa) in a dry pan. I had it with salad and dipped the wrap into sour cream. It was okay - I guess I'm just not that into chilli. Except of course two days later, when the flavours intensify and everything is just a heck of a lot better. The photo is unfortunate in the way that the lovely black beans in the chilli aren't visible.
And is it just me or does that blob of delectable sour cream look a little like an albino fried egg?

A very basic salsa recipe:
Chop two tomatoes, a red pepper, a little coriander and one spring onion finely. Make garlic paste by crushing one small clove with salt under a knife. Mix everything in a bowl, squeeze some lime juice over and mix again.

Chilli con carne.

There was a load of mince to be used so I decided on chilli for two reasons:

1. Apart from some initial chopping and getting everything together etc., it's a very easy meal - plonk it all in a pot and simmer for a good few hours. Okay, that may be oversimplifying things but you get the jist ;D
2. The whole family likes it. With seven of us, there's going to be at least one person (usually me) that doesn't like what's on offer. We're all very good and eat it anyway, but it's nice to have something that everyone looks forward to.

So here's the first ever recipe I've posted on the blog. I don't use measurements because a) something like a chilli is really all about your own personal taste and b) I actually have no idea what the measurements are... indeed, the ingredients vary too depending on what there is to hand! Tinker with this recipe to your heart's content. Oh, and if you have it handy, a single square of 70% dark chocolate is always good to add in.

Ingredients:
Steak mince (1kg)
Chopped tinned tomatoes (two cans)
Two medium red onions (finely chopped)
Three cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
Olive oil or vegetable oil
Beans (kidney beans, turtle beans, whatever you like)
Cumin
Smoked paprika
One dried smoked chipotle chilli
Soy sauce
Worcestershire sauce
Tomato ketchup
Chilli sauce of your choice.

Serves 8.

How to do it:

1. Add your oil to a large pot (enough to coat the garlic and onion). Put the pot over a medium heat and add the finely chopped onion and garlic. Stir until softened. Add the mince. (You can brown the meat if you want but I don't bother since I'm using such a large amount.)

2. Once no more pinkness is visible in the mince add the two tins of chopped tomatoes, a glug of soy sauce and a generous shake of worcestershire sauce. Stir to combine then top up with water. (I leave the chilli to simmer for about three hours, so I add a lot of water. You may want to add less) Adjust the heat so everything starts to simmer.

3. Add your spices and seasoning - today I used cumin, smoked paprika, a smoked dried chipotle chilli, a little chipotle sauce, a squeeze of ketchup and, of course, salt. Play about with whatever flavours you wish.
4. Add in your beans.

5. Leave to simmer gently for as long as possible - the longer the better - because the flavours will get better and the meat will be tender. Remember to stir everything together every so often so it doesn't all burn onto the bottom of the pot.

6. When it's thick and a lot of the water has evaporated it's ready. Serve with guacamole, salsa, tortillas, rice, sour cream, cheese... whatever you want. You could also have it with corn chips, or cornbread (chopped green chilli and cheddar in cornbread is delicious).

Lamb.

I stuck a lidded pot full of lamb (on the bone of course), whole garlic cloves and whole shallots, in the oven three hours ago. And my, my, my, it is smelling gooood.
After rifling in the fridge for a bit I settled for carrots, new potatoes and beetroot to be roasted alongside the lamb. There was also a monster celeriac lingering in the fridge drawer that really had to be used soon, so it was promptly sliced very thinly, and layered in a buttered baking dish. Some cream was chucked over, a few lumps of butter dotted were over the surface, and into the oven that went. Sort of like a celeriac dauphinoise I suppose, as there was no cheese involved.
Celeriac & I have a fraught relationship, as it's smell when raw is reminiscent of some vile medicine I had to force down as a child. How unfortunate then that I still have celeriac-odour lingering in my hands, despite having washed them three times. It's also the bane of everyone's veg box, sitting there all lumpily like the prize no-one wanted at a fair. Poor, poor celeriac. It's not really it's fault that it happens to be a hideous root, desperate to be loved as much as the humble potato.

The photo really isn't up to much, so I'll describe it instead: the beetroot stained the carrots an amazing vivid purple, the celeriac was delicious and creamy (I'll have to take sister no.2's word for it since I didn't eat any), the beetroot was outstanding and went surprisingly well with the lamb, but the best part was the roasted garlic and shallots which we squidged out of their skins. They were mellow and soft and utterly beautiful.



10.00pm: Mother just made a chocolate and beetroot cake to take into work tomorrow. Why must I be tempted with cakey wafts of goodness coming from the kitchen? Ugh.