Scrambled Soya

The snow over the last few days has thwarted some of the plans I have had over the Christmas period and meant that I have needed to stay closer to home than first thought. Today was no exception as I was able to get out a short walk however although the main roads near my house had improved, traversing the side roads nearly resulted in a number of slips that would have seen me end up flat on my back if I had been less lucky.

After I got home I stuck my new Christmas Present on the playlist; it was Genesis' last studio release 1997's Calling All Stations which features vocalist Ray Wilson and lots of languid songs like "Shipwrecked", "If that's what you need", "Uncertain Weather," and "There must be some other way" that matched my tired midwinter mood. The album is a little bleak but very atmospheric and despite being disliked by many I think it is a key part of the band's often brilliant and multifaceted catalogue.

As I watched the weak winter sun caress the crisp snow covering the back garden I realised that I needed to make something quick and easy that was comfort food so as to make me feel a bit more motivated. The inspiration for this recipe came from a trip to Verdo Lounge Café in Sutton Coldfield in the summer. This café has a wonderfully innovative approach to its recipes and often puts interesting twists on traditional dishes using spices and sauces as is evidenced in their excellent 'Dirty Beans on Toast' dish that is found on their breakfast menu.

I followed Verdo's example by making some scrambled eggs with my beans on toast that included soya milk and paprika in the ingredients. I did this by first beating together two eggs in a bowl with a whisk and then in a saucepan melting twenty five grams of margarine while also adding half a tablespoon of paprika to the melting margarine. Once the margarine was melted I added the beaten eggs and two tablespoons of unsweetened soya milk. I turned up the heat on the saucepan and stirred the mixture vigorously with a wooden spoon.

I saw that despite the extra heat the mixture was not thickening, probably because there was not enough egg in the pan. This said I poured the yolk and white of another egg into the mixture and slowly but surely it began to thicken and the eggs and paprika absorbed the melted margarine and soya milk. Once this happened I served the scrambled eggs by putting them on top of some baked beans, that I had laced with paprika, and toast.

The use of the paprika gave this traditional dish a really distinct flavour and adding a much needed warmth to it. The meal was made healthier through the use of the soya milk, as opposed to full fat dairy milk or cream, and the melted margarine also added a richness to the eggs that helped make this snack into more of a main meal.

Above: the scrambled egg was nearly ready to serve when it had absorbed all the soya milk and melted margarine.

Perfect food for a winter's day with some beans on toast.

Festive Foccacia

The weekend before last I was starting to feel in a festive mood as we had put the Christmas decorations up and to match the upsurge in festive cheer that had started to seep through my body I decided to make some Focaccia Bread with a particularly seasonal twist.

There was more Jethro Tull on the playlist while making this bread; this time it was 1987's "Crest of a Knave" which beat Metallica to a Grammy Award for best heavy metal album around the time it was released.

Focaccia Bread is something that reminds me of my childhood as my parents would often buy it from the supermarket to have as a side dish to a salad. The key to making decent Focaccia is to make the dough soft and give it plenty of flavour and with this in mind I mixed together fifteen ounces of wholemeal bread flour, a tablespoon and a half of yeast and two teaspoons of dried sage. As with all the best breads it is important to get some flavouring into the mix early on by mixing it with the dry ingredients and this was the reason why I added in the sage at this time.

I next added in six teaspoons of olive oil with nine fluid ounces of cold water and stirred the whole mixture until the dry ingredients had become part of the wet ingredients and there were no loose parts of the dry ingredients left in the mixing bowl. 

I then kneaded the dough heavily for about five minutes until I had a soft piece of dough that was as easy to shape as Plastecine.  I placed the dough on a greased baking tray and made an indent in the middle of it that was around five centimetres deep and two or three centimetres wide. Either side of the indent I used the other end of a wooden spoon to poke holes in the bread that I filled with dried sage. I also added raw red onion to the indent in the dough and then glazed the bread with Olive Oil using a brush.

I then cooked the bread in the oven for around twenty five minutes at 190 degrees (or 200 degrees if you don't have a fan oven). The bread had a real taste of Christmas Dinner about it with the sage and onion and the wholemeal bread flour provided it with a more savoury taste than it would have had if I had used white bread flour.

Above before putting in the oven the bread was strewn with onions and olive oil.

Sliced and ready to serve.

Kurly Kale

Friday night had been an evening of excitement and luxury; we had checked into a plush hotel, that incidentally fifty years earlier had been the venue where my late great aunt had held her wedding reception, and that evening I had night that involved a four course meal and lots of quality conversation with new colleagues all in the name of the work Christmas Party.

The next morning after a suitably fortifying breakfast and a walk round the picturesque grounds of the hotel we went our separate ways; variously to do Christmas shopping and have a haircut and much needed rest. When I returned home I had a short rest and then thoughts turned to a making a meal to revitalise me. As I my circumstances have changed recently I have begun to split my weekends between my hometown and the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield. One of this town's many qualities is that it has a good number of curry  houses and therefore the evening's meal was one I wanted to remind me of those places. As those I was cooking for were vegetarians no meat was allowed and although the best curries in my opinion need to contain meat I found a decent compromise in a Kale and Green Lentil Curry.

As darkness began to fall and flocks of gulls wafted south over the house on the late afternoon breezes I began preparing the food. The album I listened to Jethro Tull's was underrated 1982 offering Broadsword and the Beast. It was unfairly criticised by reviewers on its release for its over reliance on synthesisers but this is unfair as the synth work is atmospheric and fits well into the band's overall sound. The album also shows a willingness for the band to evolve from earlier records; a hallmark of all the great bands. The version of the record I chose to listen contains the original album which includes the defiant title track, the frosty, claustrophobic "Clasp" and the hard-rocking "Seal Driver". It also has a number of excellent bonus tracks including the festive "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" and the bouncy, earnest "I am your gun".

There are really two parallel approaches to preparing curries that ultimately converge into one; the first is the cooking of the main ingredients, the second is making the curry paste and the final part is combining the main ingredients and the curry paste. I first placed around two hundred and fifty grams of green lentils in a pan of water with a teaspoon of powdered Turmeric. I put the pan on the hob, brought it to boil and let the lentils and Turmeric boil for twenty minutes.

While the lentils and Turmeric boiled I sliced up around twenty green beans into small pieces and topped and tailed a carrot before peeling it and dicing it. After the lentils had been boiling for the requisite time I added the carrots and green beans to the boiling pan with one hundred and twenty five grams of pre-washed Kale, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and two teaspoons of coriander. I left these items to boil with the rest of the contents of the pan for another twenty five minutes.

Next I prepared the other part of the curry; that is the curry paste. I took two shallots and three cloves of garlic and cut them up finely. I put them in a Le Cresceut on the hob and fried them with some olive oil on a medium heat for around five minutes with a teaspoon of cumin and one of coriander. I find that the tastiest curry pastes are those where the fresh ingredients are combined with the spices early on in preparation. Next I added two tablespoons of tomato passatta and stirred them hard into the garlic, shallots and herbs. I turned the hob down to the lowest light possible while I waited for the ingredients in the pan to boil for a sufficient time.

Once the contents had boiled enough I poured them into the Le Cresceut with the curry paste and then combined the ingredients. After it all had been heated through it was ready to serve with some white rice I had boiled up. Despite the lack of meat the curry still had plenty of strength and taste with the Kale adding a robustness to the dish the combined well with the varied spices.

All the ingredients in the Le Cresceut warming through

Ready to eat with a side order of rice

Spanish Omelette Incident

It wasn't just recipes for Mojos that I picked up when we went to Fuerteventura in October; there were plenty of other dishes that inspired me during our time out there and one of these was a Spanish Omelette. It was a regular meal of choice when we dined at the hotel in Fuerteventura.

This weekend was a good one; I caught up with some good friends on Friday after I had driven to their place straight from my new job, on Saturday I had some enjoyable frames of snooker with an old workmate who now is employed in a well-deserved role at a quality organisation and the weekend was topped off today by having a walk with my travelling companion to Fuerteventura. Even though we had an enjoyable walk the weather was cold and we were hungry by the time we had finished it. Therefore we decided that to buck us up we would have something to eat that reminded us of our holidays.

As I was cooking I decided what music we should listen to while I prepared the food and I chose Steely Dan's well-produced, highly polished and perfectly sung album " Can't Buy a Thrill," which includes the jazzy funk of "Do it again," and the ever popular "Reelin' in the years,"

Spanish omelettes differ from others in that potatoes are one of their primary ingredients. For this omelette I peeled three white potatoes and sliced them length ways into circular pieces that were about 5 centimetres wide and 1 centimetre thick. I then steamed them in a steamer so that they were subsequently soft enough to fry in a frying pan without them burning. The potatoes took about fifteen minutes' steaming to be soft enough to add to the frying pan. I checked they were soft enough by putting a fork through them.

While the potatoes were steaming I topped and tailed two white onions and then sliced them up into 1 centimetre by 1 centimetre pieces. I fried them lightly in olive oil and after they had started to become translucent, which was after about ten minutes, I added the potatoes to the frying pan that I had previously steamed them. I stirred the mixture regularly to stop it getting stuck to the pan or burnt. I also added a tablespoonful of dried basil to the mixture and a pinch of black pepper.

In the meantime I whisked five eggs together in a bowl and as soon as they were properly whisked together I added them to the onions and potatoes. I tilted the pan a little to be sure that egg mixture covered all parts of the pan and fried the mixture on a medium heat for five minutes while ensuring it did not stick to the bottom of the pan by regularly thrusting a wooden spatula underneath it.

After around five minutes I placed the frying pan containing the omelette under the grill checking it regularly; once the egg yolk atop it had dried and the omelette began to brown I knew it was ready.

I served the omlette with some baked beans, another Spanish Staple Food, and it certainly revitalised us after our walk. The potatoes gave the omelette both an unexpected sweetness and made it much more substantial than many omelettes are.

The omelette in a frying pan not long after its grilling

It was delicious with baked beans.

Finding my Mojo

October this year was a month of marking time for me; it was my last month working in a job that I had been in for the last four and a half years where I had worked in the company of some wonderful people. It had also been the first time I had taken a holiday abroad for over ten years.

The destination of choice was the island of Fuerteventura which is part of the Canary Islands which are situated off the coast of sub-Saharan Africa and belong to Spain. Apart from perfect weather and relaxing surroundings the island has some excellent cuisine which although bearing some similarity to Spanish cuisine also has a style of its own peculiar to the Canary Islands.

One of the dishes that was served at each evening meal we attended at the hotel was a sauce called mojo sauce which is both spicy and flavoursome. I enjoyed it so much I purchased while in Fuerteventura a recipe book that detailed many of the mojo sauces made in the Canaries. The sauces tend to fall into two categories; red sauces or green sauces and are made using sweet peppers and any number of spices.

The weekend after we landed back from Fuerteventura I was entertaining a number of guests and decided to test out my own variation on the mojo recipes on them. I took two sweet peppers, one red and one orange, topped and tailed them and sliced them lengthways. I removed all the seeds and proceeded to cut the peppers into squares. Sweet peppers are similar in texture to the peppers that are usually found in the supermarket except that in shape they are longer and more pointed.

Next I topped and tailed five cloves of garlic and then cut them into fine pieces. I put the garlic and pepper into a bowl and mixed them with a tablespoon of cumin, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar and a tablespoon of olive oil. I then added this mixture to a blender and blended it on a medium setting until the mixture transformed into a orange paste. I removed it from the blender and served it in a bowl.

The fact I had not cooked the ingredients gave the mojo a strong taste and a lot more flavour to it. I chose to serve it with cheese and biscuits where it complimented well the range of types of cheese and the biscuits I offered to my guests.

Glowing bright; this mojo tastes as fiery as it looks.

Mock Mash

A couple of Wednesdays ago I needed some quick comfort food to perk me up after a long day at the coal face and I elected to cook a variation on the traditional sausage and mash dish that we all know and love. The reason for this variation was that I had four sage-flavoured vegetarian sausages that needed eating.

My spirits were lifted before I started cooking the meal by the arrival in the post of Demon Records' excellent reissue of Elvis Costello's 1979 album "Armed Forces". The original album is good enough on its own with tracks like "Accidents Will Happen" " Green Shirt" "Party Girl" and "Oliver's Army" but it is made even better by the bonus tracks including essential b-sides such as "Clean Money" and "Tiny Steps". Needless to say it went straight on the CD player while I cooked.

I first peeled and thinly sliced two white potatoes, which I steamed whilst I cooked the sausages in gravy. A steamer has the advantage over a traditional pan to boil vegetables on the hob as once the water is up to temperature the vegetables you cook get done more quickly than those that are boiled.

While the potatoes were steaming I peeled and then cut an onion in half lengthways. Next I cut into long thin slices and fried it in my Le Creseut dish in a small amount of olive oil with some white pepper until the onions turned a little translucent. When this occurred I knew it was time to add the sausages and I cooked them on a medium heat until the started to turn a dark brown. Once they had changed colour in this way I made half a pint of gravy using a vegetable stock cube and half a tablespoon full of plain flour. I was able to manage the risk of getting lumpy gravy by adding boiling water to the stock and flour a little at a time and stirring it gradually so as to get a thick gravy.

After adding the gravy to the onion and sausages I let them stew on the hob for around ten minutes so as the sausages and onion absorbed a reasonable amount of the gravy. Meanwhile the potatoes were soft enough to be mashed; the trick with getting good mashed potato in my opinion is to use no milk and instead mash the potatoes with two ounces of margarine. In this way you get mashed potato that is not too sloppy and also very rich and tasteful.

The rich gravy and mash combined with the substantial sausages made this some good quality comfort food to put me in the right frame of mind for the next working day.

The new ones are the best: a classic dish is given a new twist with the vegetarian sausages.

Treatloaf

Part two of Saturday's baking programme was to make a loaf to take to the barbecue that evening. The loaf I was to make turned out to be an orange and raisin loaf as the raisins in my cupboard needed eating more than the sultanas did. The key difference between the loaf and the cake in the previous entry on this blog is that the loaf uses slightly more drier ingredients and does not use any eggs.

I greased a loaf tin that was ten centimetres wide, sixteen long and around seven deep. Again the reason for the extensive greasing was to ensure that the loaf came out cleanly when cooked.

I first mixed eight ounces of flour with one ounce of margarine and then six ounces of raisins and four ounces of caster sugar into a bowl. The effect was to create a very dry mixture that looked colourful talcum powder. I added some further colour to the proceedings by grating an ounce of orange rind into the bowl.

I set the bowl to one side and in a measuring jug I squeezed the juice of half an orange and added enough milk to make the cocktail up to quarter of a pint. I added some much needed dampness to the to the mixture in the bowl by then adding the orange juice and milk and not stopping stirring it until all the dry ingredients had absorbed it. Once I had done this the mixture was ready and I poured it into the cake tin and cooked it for one hour on 170 degrees (180 if you don't have a fan oven). Again I used the skewer trick to be sure it was ready when I took it out of the oven.

The use of fresh orange was the key to this loaf as I find raisins a bit bland on their own when used in baking. Here the raisins provide enough texture while the oranges gave a tropical flavour to the loaf. Certainly the guests at the evening's barbecue must have agreed in some way as most of the loaf was consumed.

Glowing loaf- the loaf fresh out of the oven.

Cake Bush

Yesterday I was in preparation mode as after being on hand at a local pub on the Friday night to celebrate the birthday of one of my oldest friends I decided to cook a cake and a loaf for two other friends who were having a belated birthday celebration at a barbecue that evening.

I chose Kate Bush's super 1989 effort "The Sensual World" to listen to while I prepared the cakes. The album's strengths lie in the atmospheric use of uillean pipes on many of the songs, David Gilmour guesting on guitar on some tracks and above all some consistently top notch song writing by Kate. The song "The Fog" made the album an appropriate selection also as I had spent most of the week driving to work in fog and latterly walking in it with my dog that morning.

The first cake I made was a Madeira Cake. I started by greasing with margarine a twenty centimetre wide cake tin that was around five centimetres deep. I cannot overstate the importance of greasing a cake tin thoroughly so as to stop the cake sticking in it after it has been cooked.

I broke three eggs, after first getting them to room temperature, and whisked them together in a bowl. Next in a separate bowl I creamed together five ounces of margarine and five ounces of caster sugar. I made sure that the ingredients were mixed together by mixing them so thoroughly that very few of the grains of sugar were left loose in the bowl.

After the margarine and sugar were mixed together I added the beaten eggs and two ounces of self-raising floor into the bowl and mixed the ingredients together until there was no loose egg yolk or flour showing in the bowl.

Some variations on this recipe use lemon essence in the cake mixture but I prefer the real thing and with this in mind I squeezed the juice of half a lemon into the mixture and then added the remaining flour to it which I folded into the mixture leaving it with the consistency of a thick paste.

I added the mixture to the cake tin and then cooked it on170 degrees (180 for non-fan ovens) for one hour. I knew the cake was ready when I took it out of the oven, pierced it with a skewer and the skewer came out clean.

I took the cake to the barbecue that night where it was able to compliment the excellent Spanish Food and delicious barbecue prepared by my friends. The light sponge and lemon certainly in my mind helped provide good support to the tasty pork belly, flavoursome chorizo and the sausages that I consumed.

The next instalment of this blog will cover the orange and sultana loaf so watch this space...

Golden Brown: fresh out of the oven.

There was not much of the cake or the loaf left by the end of the barbecue- a good sign :-)

New Jerusalem

The last four days have been good ones; the sun has shone, I've played a round of golf, seen plenty of good friends in super surroundings, enjoyed some relaxing walks and been away from the office. The generally sunny weather has meant a lot stickiness and mugginess hanging in the air as well, not good weather you would think for making soup however the soup I prepared on today was an exception to the rule.

I had been a long walk in a sun that had succeeded in burning my neck and making my dog collapse with exhaustion in a meadow at various points but we made it back by mid-afternoon even though I could have stayed out all day.

One of David Bowie's slightly weaker efforts, 1984's "Tonight" was on the media player and it contained some summery music in the form of a slightly tired cover of the Beach Boys' song "God Only Knows".

The key ingredient of the soup was a selection of six Jerusalem Artichokes that I had picked up  from the local market the previous week. You will be hard pressed to find this vegetable at your local supermarket and I would certainly recommend looking at your local market stall to pick it up, one good reason why you should not always rely on the big supermarkets for your food.

Before starting work on the artichokes I topped and tailed two white onions and then diced them. The onions were so strong that I had to put on a pair of goggles while preparing them! Next I topped and tailed six cloves of garlic but I did not cut them up in any other way. After melting four ounces of low fat margarine in a large pan on the hob I added the onions and garlic and let them stew for around fifteen minutes until the onions became soft and translucent.

While the onions and garlic cooked I prepared the Jerusalem Artichokes by peeling the dark brown skin from them and then cutting them up into small rectangles. I added them to the pan of onions and garlic with a pint and a half of chicken stock and a quarter of a pint of milk. I let the ingredients simmer away for around half an hour before taking them off the heat and then blending them when cooled.

After the blending I added half a pint of plain, low fat Greek Yoghurt to the pan and stirred it in thoroughly with the rest of the soup. Once I had warmed the soup through I served it with some chives to garnish that I put on top of each bowl of soup.

The margarine and the garlic gave the soup a real tangy and sweet taste that offset the strong flavour of the Jerusalem Artichoke, which tasted much like watercress. Despite it being a warm dish I found it to be very refreshing especially when consumed sat in the garden as the evening sun beat down.

Ready to eat and garnished with chives freshly cut from the back garden.

Salmon Saturday

The second part of our eve of Tour De France meal was a dish that I had not cooked for a while and was long overdue pride of place on my menu- roast salmon. This was a dish that had first came to my attention as a young child when I saw an advert on the TV which extolled the virtues of roasted Salmon Steaks with a side helping of watercress mixed with yoghurt.

For my dish however I substituted salmon steaks with salmon fillets. The reason for this was that salmon steaks tend to be festooned with bones and you spend half your time picking the bones out of the steaks which in turn detracts from the taste experience of the salmon.

The album of choice for cooking which I had earlier in the day picked up second hand from Poundland, ironically for the sum of £2.00, was Radiohead's patchy 1993 debut "Pablo Honey". Although some of the tracks clearly illustrate that the band was still finding its feet before having a tilt at greatness, the melodic singing and biting guitar of "You", the evergreen "Creep" and the confident, surging "Anyone Can Play Guitar," show that some of the ingredients of their classic second album "The Bends" were already in place. Funnily the enough the album was released around the same time that I saw the advert for the salmon steaks.

I prepared the fillets by putting them on a foil sheet and sprinkling fresh Thyme on them and thick circular slices of red onion as well as the juice from a whole lemon. I then wrapped the salmon in a foil parcel and left it to one side while I prepared some new potatoes. The trick with new potatoes is not to peel them fully but instead to cut out any black or brown bits and then wash them thoroughly. Once the potatoes had been prepared I boiled them on the hob with fresh mint to give them a fresh flavour of summer.

While the potatoes were cooking on the hob I cooked the salmon in the oven for twenty minutes at 180 degrees,or more like 170 degrees with a fan oven. I also prepared the watercress by first washing it thoroughly and then adding it to a bowl with a tub of low fat, plain Greek Yoghurt. In readiness for the meal I put the bowl of watercress on the dining table next to the bottle of Bordeaux red wine.

Next I sliced finely five shallots, after first topping and tailing them, and cooked them lightly in five ounces of melted margarine. After the shallots had softened slightly I sliced thinly two ounces of spinach leaves and added them to the margarine and shallots. The spinach soon shrank and became part of the mixture which meant the spinach butter sauce, as I dubbed it, was ready.

I served the salmon with red onions and the lemon by splitting it between two dinner plates. I then added the sauce exclusively to the salmon and kept the potatoes and spinach on a separate part of the plate. The reason for this was that the spinach and potatoes, as a result of the mint, had a very fresh taste which contrasted with the rich taste of the salmon and the sauce. Certainly the mint and spinach helped us cool down from the high temperature caused by the Mediterranean- like weather while we were consuming the delicious salmon.

Together with the French Onion Soup this meal served to set us up well for the following day's unique opportunity to see the Tour De France first hand as it passed through a nearby village and got us in the mood for the Tour De France themed barbeque afterwards.

Just like on TV twenty years ago but without although the bones in the fish

Tour De Food

Last weekend I was away up north in Huddersfield for a Tour De France themed barbeque and also to watch a stage of the Tour as it came on a route near the town. The night before we went to see the Tour and have the barbeque we settled upon a spot of home cooking followed by an early night.

There was only one choice for the starter- French Onion Soup. As I was away from home I didn't have the usual wide range of cooking facilities so I started by frying in a wok two thinly sliced white onions with three ounces of melted margarine. I stirred the onions constantly while they were being fried and once they were translucent I added the leaves from five shoots of fresh Thyme together with half a pint of red wine.

I let the wine boil vigorously until it was absorbed by the onions and the Thyme. In doing this I ensured that the onions were soaked with lots of flavour. I then added a pint of beef stock to the wok and let it stew.

While the soup stewed on the wok I cut some white baguette into thick slices and put thin slices of Gruyere cheese on top of it. I then shared the soup out in bowls and put a slice of baguette with Gruyere atop it on each bowl so that the bread floated on top of the soup. Next I heated up the grill and put the bowls underneath it until the Gruyere had melted on top of the bread. Now the soup was ready to eat.

I've made French Onion Soup on a number of occasions and often utilised vegetable stock or chicken. However the beef stock made a real difference this time round and gave the soup a more earthier taste which complemented the rich Bordeaux Red Wine and Gruyere cheese I used in the recipe. The main course for this meal will be on the blog very soon...

  Rich Gruyere cheese on top of a baguette floating on a rich soup containing Bordeaux Red Wine all of which equal a dish that is as French as the Eiffel Tower.  

                                        

Sweetness and white

On Friday I felt pretty shattered after what had been a challenging March which contained some high points that included learning to drive a tank, quiet nights in with an important person and attending the wedding of a very good friend I have known for the passed twenty-six years. It had also been an intense month in my professional life and left me with some food for thought about my plans. I was therefore glad when the end of the working day came on Friday and my heart was gladdened by a phone call that meant I would have a special guest come for tea that evening.

I decided to bake some sweet potatoes and on my return home I found three large sweet potatoes in the pantry and topped and tailed them before washing them and placed them on a greased baking tray. I then added them to a pre-heated oven and cooked them in my fan oven at 210 degrees (220 degrees for non-fan ovens) for forty-five minutes.

While the potatoes cooked I top and tailed two red onions and sliced them finely into thin strips. Next I took three cloves of garlic and topped and tailed them. I then cut the garlic into small chunks around half a centimetre wide and two or three millimetres thick. I then fried the onion and garlic on a medium heat in a deep frying pan with some olive until the onions became transparent and the garlic was soft enough to cut with the edge of a tablespoon.

When the onion and garlic was ready I turned off the heat and left it on the side to cool down. I then added a tub of sour cream with chives, that was sourced from the local grocery in a rough part of town, to a serving bowl. After the onion and garlic cooled down I added it to the serving bowl with the onions and garlic.

By the time I had prepared the onion and garlic mixture the potatoes were ready. I took them from the oven and sliced each in half- lengthways. I then filled them with the mixture and served them. At this point my special guest arrived and we sat down to our meal. The sweetness of the potatoes was offset well with the sour cream, onion and garlic mixture which, with its thick consistency, transformed the meal into a flavoursome and filling main course.

Filled with sour cream, chives garlic and onion with some steamed carrots as a side helping.

Fritter and taste

The third weekend in January was very much one that was all about overcoming illness and generally taking it easy. However as the weekend wore on I began to feel a little fitter and on the Sunday evening I felt well enough to make some simple but tasty food in the shape of some sweetcorn fritters.

I first had sweetcorn fritters over Christmas when visiting a Thai takeaway restaurant out of town with some new company. I was impressed by their taste and despite feeling like I was about to fall to sleep at any time I resolved to work hard to make my fritters as tasty and flavoursome as those I had sampled over Christmas. I also wanted to ensure the fritters came out successfully this time round as  I once tried to cook potato fritters at a cookery class as a schoolboy and failed epically on that occasion.

I took a nine ounce can of sweetcorn and drained the water from it using a colander. I then put half of the sweetcorn in a food processor and blended it on a medium setting in the blender. Next I place two ounces of plain flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, a well beaten egg and three tablespoons of soy sauce into the blender and blended the ingredients again on a medium setting.

I added the contents of the blender to a mixing bowl with the rest of the sweetcorn and two teaspoons of ground coriander. I then took a medium-sized frying pan and covered the bottom with olive oil which I then heated lightly. After the oil had reached the right temperature I added three separate pieces of the mixture, each was about three centimetres by three centimetres, and fried them for around five minutes until the underneath had solidified and began to brown.

The key part of preparation was about to follow as I used a wooden spatula to flip the fritters and fry the other side. The test with the turning of the fritters is to make sure the underneath is solid enough that when it comes to be flipped it does not fall apart. After frying the fritters for five minutes on the other side I served them as a starter to my main course of artichoke and tomato frittata.

The fritters were everything they had promised to be and more as the sweetcorn and egg made them substantial without being too filling while the coriander and soy sauce provided a taste as authentic as that to be found at any Thai or Chinese Restaurant.

Golden Brown- these fritters certainly turned out better than those I made at school several years previously

Let the Barley Grow

The penultimate weekend in November saw me make a typical winter soup to match the cooler weather that was now starting to arrive my area. In times gone by Pearl Barley was a staple ingredient of many winter soups made in this country and I decided to honour that tradition by making a soup using this interesting foodstuff.

I peeled, top and tailed and diced two carrots, two white onions and a leek which I proceeded to gently fry in some olive oil in my Le Cresceut dish with six ounces of Pearl Barley and the leaves from five stalks of fresh Thyme. I stirred the ingredients constantly for around fifteen minutes so as to ensure that they did not stick to the bottom of the dish before adding a pint of chicken stock to it and letting the ingredients stew on a medium heat for a further half an hour.

After this I let the dish cool, blended the contents, reheated it and then served it. Despite having no actual meat in,other than an essence of chicken with the stock, the presence of the Thyme and Barley brought back memories of the rich chicken casseroles made by my Grandmother in years gone by. This in turn in my mind pushed the clock back to the tastes and smells of meals produced in the kitchens of Old England.

Chicken Casserole Puree anyone?

Parkin of the North

Towards the bank end of November having digested the memorable, albeit a little over-complex, fiftieth anniversary episode of Doctor Who I elected to make something suitably fortifying to keep my energy levels up in the form of Parkin.

I had rediscovered my love for Parkin the previous summer when I received some from some good friends based in Shipley as part of a Yorkshire Hamper that they very kindly got me for my birthday present. I tried with this recipe to emulate the excellent Parkin I found in the Yorkshire Hamper.

I stirred together in a mixing bowl four ounces of self-raising flour, four ounces of porridge oats, four ounces of caster sugar and one teaspoon of ginger. Next I stirred in four ounces of margarine, which I had first allowed to get to room temperature so it was easier to mix in, which made the mixture resemble a thick paste. In order to soften up the ingredients a little I added a tablespoon of Golden Syrup, a beaten egg and a tablespoon of milk and stirred them all into the mixture. Once all the elements were properly stirred together I put them in a high-sided thoroughly greased baking tray and cooked them for 20 minutes at 170 degrees, or 180 degrees for non-fan ovens.

After turning the Parkin out onto a wire rack and letting it cool I cut it into medium-sized squares to prepare it for consumption. Its taste was sweet due to the syrup and sugar but also a little stodgy due to the flour and the oats which made it perfect material to fuel long winter walks with my dog.

                                     
                                          Thick, full of oats and ready to eat.

Risotto from the East

Yesterday was a funny old day but one that was typical of how I have spent a lot of January days over the years as during the preceding week I had picked up a bit of a chest infection that had caused me to have a rare day off work and this weekend had still laid me low and disrupted my plans.

Apart from a quick and necessary trip to the hairdressers and a short walk round the block with my dog to try and get my bearings, I was stuck inside. However this didn't stop me from trying out a new cooking project and to help me overcome illness I opted for a risotto using several infection- busting ingredients.

I needed some bright and positive music from my record collection to help me get in the right frame of mind to cook and looked no further than Stevie Wonder's 1976 masterpiece 'Songs in the Key of Life". The album is one the best of all time and you cannot help but love Wonder's infectious enthusiasm for the music and lyrics that comes across throughout its duration. It has everything from infectious funk ("I Wish" "As") to strong and emotive ballads ("Have a talk with God" "Joy Inside My Tears").

I peeled and cut finely a two inch by one inch piece of Ginger Root and then finely sliced two large Garlic bulbs after first topping and tailing the Garlic bulbs. These powerful and tasting fresh ingredients were just the sort of thing to cut through my blocked- up synapses. I then took a bunch of Spring Onions, washed the dirt from them and then cut the bottom parts and the superfluous long stems forming the top parts off them.

I added the ingredients to a frying pan I had first covered the base of with sunflower oil and fried them for around fifteen minutes with half a teaspoon of black pepper, two teaspoons of ground Coriander and the juice of one Lime. Having eaten at numerous oriental restaurants over the years I have found that Lime is a key ingredient of many dishes.

After around fifteen minutes I added eight ounces of risotto rice and stirred it thoroughly into the other ingredients for one minute. I also at this time poured half teaspoon of Soy Sauce into the ingredients. I then added half a pint of vegetable stock and mixed it continuously into the other ingredients. I repeated this trick with a further three half-pints of stock until the rice became soft and bloated but there was still enough liquid in the pan for the ingredients to float in.

The risotto was now ready and I served it with a side dish of Prawn Crackers. The unique, soft taste of the Prawn Crackers coupled with the strong flavours of the Spring Onions, Ginger, Garlic and Lime plus the rich rice and stock made this a dish with plenty of strength and also protein to help me start to shake off my traditional January illness.

The Risotto featuring some tasty Prawn Crackers

 

Boxing Day Clever

On Boxing Day it's a tradition in our house to have my grandparents over for a meal. As they're both in their eighties and my granddad is now diabetic it has become a little more difficult to prepare a healthy meal for him that he can still enjoy.

However this Boxing Day I was able to achieve this objective. The albums that provided the soundtrack to the preparation were Scott Walker's early seventies country rock excursions "Stretch" and "We had it all" which I had recently bought on a CD reissue which grouped them both together. Although some of it was cheesy MOR music the presence of Walker's un-matchless and rich voice lifted both albums above the ordinary.

The first part of the meal involved making a Yorkshire Pudding mixture using four ounces of flour, half a pint of milk and three ounces of dried sage all of which I stirred together and left in a mixing bowl to set.

I then took my Le Cresceut dish and soaked the bottom with olive oil. I next topped and tailed five carrots, peeled them and diced them. I did the same with three large parsnips and lightly fried them in the Le Cresceut dish with some fresh thyme leaves for around twenty minutes until the carrots and parsnips began to soften and could be cut into fairly easily with the edge of a tablespoon.

While the vegetables fried I topped, tailed and peeled ten shallots before slicing them thinly and adding them to the Le Cresceut dish. I proceeded to fry them until they became transparent and made sure I stirred regularly the contents of the dish to prevent it from sticking to the bottom.

I then added five frozen vegetarian sausages which were fried for twenty minutes, which was about the same length of time it took for the shallots and the other vegetables to be properly cooked.

While the root vegetables and sausages cooked in the Le Cresceut I boiled ten ounces of red lentils in a pan for around fifteen minutes until they were soft and had turned a pale yellow, which indicated they were cooked properly. I drained the lentils and added them to the Le Cresceut dish together with a pint of vegetable stock, as by now the root vegetables had softened enough to have liquid added to them. I then slowly stewed on the hob the dish for thirty minutes adding some frozen peas as I did so.

At the same time as adding the lentils and vegetable stock to the Le Cresceut I put the Yorkshire Pudding mixture into an oiled baking dish and cooked it in the oven at 210 degrees (220 for non-fan ovens) for 30 minutes which meant that that casserole I had created in the Le Cresceut and the Yorkshire Pudding were ready at the same time.

The resulting dish provided a rich and filling meal that contained enough ingredients to allow my grandad to enjoy it with the rest of the family and importantly have a meal that was of the traditional type that he enjoys but which is also very good for his health.

Casserole and Yorkshire Pudding: all for a Boxing Day Tea.