Christmas with Differences

Christmas Eve was an epic day by any stretch; it started with a chicken dinner, included an important delivery, trips to three different bars in two different towns with lots of wonderful people and ended with me dropping through the front door before hitting the sack in the early hours of Christmas Day morning.

However as the daylight emerged on what was an unseasonably mild Christmas Day, despite the heavy rain, disaster struck as after a day of revelry I was left without an appetite, much energy and was nursing a large hangover. It was still worth it though after such a good day.

Eventually I forced myself out of bed at around midday on Christmas Day thankful that my parents were not due over, to have their first Christmas day meal away from their own house in thirty-five years, until at least 5pm.

By 3pm I had consumed four pints of water, a vitamin tablet (that well-known hangover cure) and some dip. Even though I was feeling nowhere near tip-top condition I knew I needed to start cooking the Christmas Dinner.

The music of choice had to be some of the most mellow and subdued in my collection bearing in mind I still had a sore head so I plumped for Cat Stevens' 1970 folk-rock classic Tea for the Tillerman with its laid back acoustic guitars and stately strings.

I first took three white potatoes and took any bad bits out of them with the point of my potato peeler before peeling them and washing them. I then cut them horizontally into circular shapes about one centimetre deep and two to three centimetres across. My plan was to roast the potatoes and I realised it was important to get them right by cutting them into the size pieces that I did as if they are too large they will not cook quickly enough, whereas if they are cut to small they burn in the oven.

I put the potatoes in a high sided baking tray covered with sunflower and cooked them for half an hour on gas mark 5 before turning them and cooking them on gas mark 7 for a further half an hour.

While the potatoes were cooking I prepared the sprouts by removing the leaves on the outer layers that had begun to blacken and I then cut the bottom centimetre or so off each sprout and used my knife to make a cross shape in the bottom of each sprout. I boiled the sprouts steadily with three sliced, toppped and tailed and peeled carrots I had prepared previously and once these vegetables were ready, which I was able to check by prodding some with a fork, I drained them and kept them warm in a covered pan.

The stuffing mix was prepared by putting it in a glass, greased ovenproof dish and, using an old trick handed down from family members, mixing it with a beaten egg as well as the amount of boiled water directed on the packet.

Also prepared at this time were a vegetarian answer to pigs in blankets. I made these by kneading together eight ounces of plain flour and four ounces of margarine with some dried sage and using a small amount of milk to bind the ingredients together to form a pastry. I then rolled it out and wrapped pieces of the pastry around six vegetarian sausages that were on a greased baking tray.

After putting the stuffing mix and sausages to one side, as they were not going in the oven until it was time to turn the potatoes, I took a white onion and diced it before frying it with three Quorn chicken fillets. After the onions began to become translucent and the Quorn began to go brown I added half a pint of vegetable stock with some flour mixed in and let this stew gently on the hob until everything else was ready.

When the potatoes had been turned I put the sausages and stuffing into the oven with them and cranked the temperature up to gas mark 7. I then cooked all these items for half an hour.

While the potatoes, stuffing and sausages were going through their final stage of cooking I made a white sauce using three ounces of margarine, a heaped wooden spoon of cornflour and mixing this the melted margarine in a pan. After this was done I added about a quarter of a pint of milk and stirred this in on the hob on a high heat until I had a thick sauce for covering the sprouts with.

It's fair to say that Christmas Dinner can be quite a stressful dinner to cook and one of the reasons for this is with it being Christmas there is so much pressure to get it right and make it memorable. Another reason is that as there so many different ingredients being used and elements to the meal it is a real challenge to get everything ready at the same time.

If someone had been watching me on Christmas Eve, particularly towards the end of the night, they may have laughed at the thought of me preparing Christmas Dinner singlehandedly but somehow I was able to get everything ready at the same time as my parents and I were able to sit down not long after half 5 to a meal that was also my first Christmas Dinner in my first home.

I should point out the reason it was a vegetarian dinner was a result of my mum being a vegetarian and my dad just doing what he's told. Still it did not lose much for the lack of meat as the vegetables were the same as those you'd have with a traditional Christmas Dinner while the pigs in blankets and the mock chicken in gravy had a welcome rich robustness that was a perfect meat substitute.

It was also a pleasant change for me as I had over the course of December eaten no less than three traditional Christmas Dinners. Certainly this meal and its location helped make this a different but wonderful Christmas Day. It was a Christmas Day that marked time at the end of a year of ups and downs, triumph, some sadness, much great achievement and the promise of something exciting and new in 2016...

The Quorn Chicken Fillet on this helping is slightly obscured by the sprouts, carrots, potatoes, stuffing white sauce and my take on Pigs in Blankets

Golden Salmon, Golden Sunshine

If you ask most people in the world of work what the hardest working week of the year is many I'm sure will say it is the last full week prior to the Christmas Holidays. The week just gone was of course just that week and although I had only been at work for four days of it I ended it exhausted. Part of the reason was the need to do things before Christmas simply because of the fact it is coming up to Christmas, while the short days at this time of year drain your batteries especially if you are going to work in the dark and then coming home in the dark too.

Yesterday morning, having finally beaten the migraine from hell that had clobbered me the day before, I rolled out of bed, got my hair cut for the holiday season and then had a wander in the rain with my dog to post the last round of Christmas Cards.

When I got home I elected to have a proper cooked dinner due to me having only enough energy the previous night to bung an instant meal into the oven. As the weather was mild I decided to have Salmon as it is a meal that reminds me of sunny summer days when the sun never seems to stop shining.

I prepared the salmon fillets I was to use by laying them out on a baking tray covered in foil and sprinkling them with paprika before covering them with sunflower oil. I then put them to one side while I prepared a butternut squash and a red onion.

The butternut squash has become popular in cooking over the last ten or fifteen years. It's vegetable I can never remember from childhood meals in 1980s and 1990s and I first encountered it one summer in 2002 when I was back from uni visiting my parents' house. It's not the easiest to prepare and the best way to do it is top and tail it and then use a knife or sharp potato peeler to peel it. After it's been peeled you are best cutting the ball shaped bit off, splitting that in two and scraping out the seeds and orange-coloured pith from it while the rest of the squash is best if diced into cubes.

Once the squash was suitably cubed I finely sliced a red onion and fried the squash pieces for around twenty minutes in white pepper and sunflower oil. Once this had been done I placed the onion pieces in foil next to the salmon and put the orange squash cubes onto the salmon itself and arranged them on it to look like golden scales.

Next I folded the edges of the foil over the salmon and other ingredients to form a parcel and I cooked them in the oven at gas mark 5 for 25 minutes. While the salmon was cooking I prepared the side dish which today was a peeled white potato sliced thinly width-ways and boiled until fairly soft with some peas.

When the salmon was ready I served it with the potatoes and peas and some mayonaisse which I spiced up by mixing dried dill into it and putting it on the squash. The unseasonably mild weather meant that I could sit in my conservatory to have the meal and the freshness of the salmon, a freshness you only get if you oven cook it rather than grill it, coupled with the slighlt al-dente texture of the squash made this a dish that served to revitalise me after a long week.

Salmon is golden: at least it is as shown here when covered in butternut squash pieces

Winterstew

It was Saturday in mid-November the weekend after bonfire weekend and I had spent the morning having a good session of snooker. The next day I was due to drive down to the midlands to catch up with some family I had not seen for five years.

The weather was generating some gale force winds not dissimilar to those in 1987 that caused more than a few problems for this country. This said I knew it was going to be a challenging drive if the weather kept up so I decided to cook something suitably fortifying by making a beef stew.

The ingredients were as follows:

15 ounces of diced beef.
1 diced onion.
Half a red cabbage thinly sliced.
1 diced onion.
1 diced potato.
8 ounces of lentils.
Tablespoon of tomato puree.
Half a teaspoon of black pepper.
1 pint of Banks Bitter.
Half a pint of vegetable stock.

The first job was to warm up some rape seed oil in my wok. I then added the beef and fried it lightly until it was brown on all sides. I also added all the vegetables and fried them for about five minutes. Next I added the tomato puree and stirred it into the food with the black pepper being added and stirred in at the same time.

After that I poured in a pint of Banks' Best Bitter which is suitable for this dish as it is an ale with a nut brown colour with sufficient bitterness to offset the taste of the beef. After roughly half the bitter had been absorbed I then added the vegetable stock and the lentils and warmed the food through for five minutes.

After that I added the stew to a high sided glass baking dish that I had put plenty of rapeseed oil in the bottom of. I then covered the top of the dish with cooking foil and stewed in the oven at gasmark three for three hours.

As I put the dish full of food in the oven the closing part of Joni Mitchell's 1994 effort "Turbulent Indigo" began to play. This record is one of her better latter day records and although it isn't quite up there with classics from the seventies like "Court and Spark" and of course "Blue" it is still a very good record with songs such as "Sunny Sunday" and the anthem to futility "Sex Kills".

After the stew had been in the oven for two of the three hours I took it out briefly to remove the foil and then put it back in the oven for the final hour of cooking.

Although it takes a long time to cook this dish is worth the wait and although, obviously, the beer gives a distinct bitterness to it the rich and succlent beef with the softened cabbage, potatoes and lentils make this meal a winner. It certainly did the job of filling me with energy for the challenging drive I undertook the next day.

Freshly Stewed; the perfect fortification against the high, chilly winds of winter.

Spicy Mince

The last Tuesday in November was a cold damp day that followed on immediately after a freezing, fraught, tiring and wet meeting in the bar of a local hotel the night before. By the end of the meeting almost all the participants looked in need of some tea and sympathy.

I was still pretty tired the following day so much so that I had an afternoon nap as the combination of chairing the meeting and several months' working hard in the exciting and enjoyable day job finally caught up on me. By the time I woke up the weak winter daylight had given way to an unatural dusk illuminated by the streetlights and an electric full moon.

I pushed myself to my feet and decided that tea needed to consist of something that wasn't too demanding to make. I settled on a traditional dish with a modern twist; mince and mash which in Scotland is known as, which my Scottish Grandad will confirm too, mince and tatties. The twist I put on the dish involved some different flavourings from usual in the ingredients and using vegetarian mince instead of traditional mince.

As I was off work the soundtrack was an album that was mellow, atmospheric and introspective rather than energetic and agressive and I chose Camel's well-played 1978 live offering "A Live Record".

I first prepared the potatoes by peeling and then slicing them into small squares. I then simmered them lightly in a pan of water on the hob until they were soft enough to mash with some dried sage and melted margarine.

While the potatoes were simmering I prepared the mince mixture. I first topped and tailed a large white onion and then diced it up. I put it in my trusty wok and fried it with around twelve ounces of quorn mince and two carrots that I had earlier sliced up into very small cubes to ensure they cooked more quickly.

The oil I fried the ingredients in was a rapeseed oil which I find gives earthy traditional English dishes like this one a better taste than if they are fried in olive oil. The flavourings that I added at this point were a small pinch of powdered mustard, half a teaspoon of liquid mustard, a hint of black pepper and a tablespoon of Barbecue Sauce. After frying the mince mixture lightly for about fifteen minutes, by which time the onions began to go translucent, I added a teaspoon of dried sage and half a pint of vegetable stock.

Once the stock was added I simmered vigorously the mixture for about twenty minutes until a lot of the stock had been absorbed and the carrots had softened. Once the carrots were in this state the dish was ready to serve.

I added some of the mince mixture to a plate that already had on it the potatoes which were now mashed with a mixture of melted margarine and dried sage.

The taste was one that made this usually bland meal something different as the Barbecue Sauce and two types of mustard gave the dish a smokey and mature taste that the mince would have otherwise lacked while the sage in the potatoes lent a warm richness to the meal.

It may look traditional but the taste of this dish gives it a flavour that makes it more interesting than your average mince a mash dish 

Raisin Cake for Charity

On Sunday I spent the morning enjoying the unseasonably warm mid-autumn sun by taking a route on my walk that encompassed landmarks that in some ways marked time since certain events which they were associated with took place in my life. For a change I had no dog as my dog was holed up at the home of my parents recovering from being spayed. I have to say I felt strange without a dog so I instead concentrated on taking some photos on my new phone of the places that I passed that have meant things to me over the last fifteen years or so.

One picture was of the sun creeping through a clearing in the local wood, a clearing where I remember standing in December fifteen years previously with my previous dog and thinking hard about where I was going to study at university the following year. Another photo I took was of my old local pub that's now closed and bordered up, a pub that I first went into almost fifteen years ago to the day and one where I have spent some of the best nights of my life in with lots of wonderful people.

When I got back home my thoughts turned to the present and also to the upcoming Children in Need charity bake off that my employer was organising for the following week. I had promised colleagues I would make something in support of this cause and so I settled on an old recipe for raisin cake.

There are two ways to make cake mix. The first involves stirring together your margarine and sugar as the first thing you do in your preparaton while the second, which is sometimes called the "rubbed in" method has you putting the flour and margarine in the same bowl and manipulating them together with your hands until the flour and margarine has become like golden breadcrumbs.

It was this second method I used for this recipe by taking 225 grams of self-raising flour and rubbing them together with 110 grams of margarine until I had my golden breadcrumbs in the bowl.

Providing the soundtrack was Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come's 1973 record "Journey". Brown is best known for his 1968 number one "Fire" and little else. However he has over the years produced a number of varied and innovative records that are in some cases vastly superior to those of his more popular peers. Journey is no exception with its blend of strong and passionate singing from Brown, powerful church organs that give the music an ethereal glow and engaging space rock lyrics. The album also has the distinction of being one of the first to use a drum machine which only adds to its unique and innovative character.

I now added 110 grams of sugar and 110 grams of raisins to the mixture and stirred them into the breadcrumbs. Also at this time I added two teaspoons worth of ginger to make the mixture have a real autumnal taste.

After this I added three wooden spoonfuls of milk and an egg before stirring them into all the other ingredients until I had a bowl filled with a paste that smelled of ginger and contained plenty of raisins. I poured it into a greased cake tin and used a butter knife to spread it out evenly in the tin. I cooked the mixture on gas mark 4, alternatively if you have an electric oven, 180 degrees or 170 degrees for a fan oven.

After an hour I removed the cake from the oven and as I have no skewers in my new house I instead used the point of a bottle opener to check if the cake was done by pushing it into the cake. I saw that just a small amount of sponge came off the bottle opener when I withdrew it from the cake so I knew it was ready.

I turned the cake out onto a tray and once it had cooled I wrapped it in foil and put it in the freezer until the following Tuesday night when I defrosted it in time for taking work on the Wednesday.

The taste was excelent as the ginger gave the cake a real kick tastewise. In fact my employer's cashier, who has a notorious sweet tooth, declared it to be the best of the cakes put on offer by his colleagues for the Children in Need which in itself was a succcess raising a lot of money for a worthy cause.

Freshly out of the oven and ready to put into the deep freeze for the following week.

Love and the Italian Winter

The second weekend in October was one where it was time to wind down after a hectic four weeks that included a birthday drink for a friend, a trip to Southport for a black tie event and several random encounters.

After wandering with the dog in the Autumn sun I decided to have a go at a new recipe which, with one eye on the clocks changing soon, had many ingredients contained in it that are associated with wintertime.

I listened to Tangerine Dream's groundbreaking offering Cyclone while preparing the vegetables for what was to become an Italian Winter Vegetable Risotto. Cyclone is groundbreaking, at least for Tangerine Dream, as it was their first album to feature vocals and is all the better and more interesting for this development.

The ingredients for the risotto were as follows:

4 diced and peeled carrotts.
1 diced and peeled white potato.
1 diced and peeled red onion.
2 garlic cloves finely sliced.
half a diced red pepper.
8 ounces of risotto rice.
8 ounces of diced baby corn.
Half a pint of red wine.
Half a pint of chicken stock.
Chorizo slices.

I took the vegetables save the baby corn pieces and fried them lightly in my wok while stirring them constantly for about fifteen minutes until they began to brown slightly. I then added the risotto rice and the baby corn and stirred them constantly too for about ten minutes until the rice began to become translucent.

The next step was to add into the wok half a pint of red wine and simmer it while once again stirring the contents of the wok continuously for about twenty minutes. After the wine had been absorbed by the food I then added half a pint of chicken stock and stirred and simmered this into the food for another twenty minutes until I had a rich mixture that wasn't overly runny.

I served the risotto after adding some slices of fresh chorizo to it right at the end of cooking. I even, as can be seen from the picture below, put one on top of a serving of risotto to decorate it.

I don't usually use winter vegetables in risotto as I find them a little bland and I usually prefer summery risottos like lemon and rocket for example. However this risotto was an exception to the rule as the wine and stock and made it rich and the chorizo and pepper gave a much needed edge to the slight stodge of the carrott and potatoes. Definitely a meal to give one some energy on a winter evening.

Thai Tea

The Friday before last had seen the end to a very busy but exciting week at work and the Friday evening afforded me the opportunity to catch up with old friend of mine who I worked with a few years previously. He has a taste for Far Eastern food down in no small part to the fact that his wife is Chinese.

This said I decided to make a Thai Curry as it was something that after a long day at work was quick to prepare but also very substantial.

I first took half a cauliflower and cut it up into several fairly small pieces about the size of the flowerhead of a dandelion. I next warmed some olive oil in the bottom of my wok on the hob and then added the cauliflower to it with two teaspoons of Thai Red Curry powder and two teaspoons of ground coriander. As I always say the way to get the best out of your spices is to apply them early in the cooking process and this meal was no exception. I stirred the cauliflower for around ten minutes until it started to soften a little and it was totally coated in the spices.

It was then time to add about eight ounces of cubed butternut squash and frozen quorn pieces. You can vary the recipe at this point by choosing to add some cubes of Tofu or alternatively some pieces of chicken. After stirring the quorn pieces and butternut squash cubes for five minutes I added the juice of one whole lime and also to bring out the sweet flavours in the curry three tablespoons of dark soy sauce.

The trick with this part of the preparation of the meal was to ensure the cauliflower, squash and quorn pieces softened without at the same time burning them too much. The best way to do this is to apply a medium heat to the wok and keep stirring the ingredients constantly.

After the food began to soften I added half a pint of chicken stock and simmered the food moderately while stirring it until it had absorbed a lot of the stock. I also added some frozen peas to the wok and started to simmer some noodles in another pan of water.

To help ensure that the food was soft enough to be edible and rich I added a tin of coconut milk to the wok and again simmered the until it had absorbed about half of the milk. Doing this also helped mean the mixture wasn't too runny when I served it.

Around the same as the contents of the wok were ready the noodles had also been simmering for enough time to be ready to serve. This said I shared out the noodles in two bowls and then added the curry mixture to the bowls as well. I also pulled out a mandatory bowl of prawn crackers to dip into the curry.

The sweetness of the soy sauce served to make sure the spices were flavoursome but not unecessarily overpowering while the milk lent a richness to this curry to make it substantial. In all the dish was a success and my friend ate all of his share quickly.

The Italian Job

After the surprising richness of the Glazed Swedes (see my last post for more on this) I wanted something a little lighter and quick to make due to being a little tired after a wonderful long walk that morning in the late Autumn sun.

My thoughts turned to the many Italian dishes I have enjoyed over the years and I decided to make a pasta rigatoni with a number of different ingredients.

By now the playlist had moved on from Zappa and the Mothers' eclectic and intriguing "Absolutely Free" to take in Jefferson Airplane's politically radical (for the time) 1969 offering "Volunteers". The album features an excellent rock version of the traditional song "Good Shepherd", an eerie version of "Wooden Ships" (better known through its recording by Crosby Stills and Nash) and the punchy title track, which like the album it is from was written in a more idealistic time when people thought that music could really change the world.

The first step with the pasta was simply to take eight ounces of pasta rigatoni and boil them for around fifteen minutes. While the pasta was boiling away I halved eight baby tomatoes and cut up a medium sized block of feta cheese into cubes.

Feta is something that tends to polarise people; like marmite you either like it or you don't. I find it a delicious accompaniment to many pasta dishes and also risottos. It does make your throat dry but then that gives you the excuse to have a refreshing glass of red wine or a pint of continental lager with it.

I then sliced up two slices of prosciutto ham on the chopping board. When the pasta was ready I drained it and added it to a glass serving dish covered with olive oil. I also added two teaspoons of dried basil, five sundried tomatoes, the prosciutto I'd sliced up and the halved cherry tomatoes. After all these items were mixed together I had a quick main meal on my hands that was ready to serve.

The taste was first class with the pasta providing plenty of substance and protein while the sundried tomatoes and feta provided a rich and mature taste that was offset by the basil a the fresh taste of the prosciutto. This meal is certainly one for someone wanting a filling meal that does not take too long to make nor is it too demanding to prepare either.

Above an easy to prepare and very filling meal with the full spectrum of flavours that Italian Food offers.

The Red Hot Chili Swedes

Yesterday was one of those days where it was good to catch up on things around my house, do a bit of work I'd brought home with me, have a long walk with the dog and some cooking. In short a pretty chilled out day. I needed a day like that though as the week had seen two rather challenging and busy meetings in connection with the charity I am president of this year, much rewarding work in the day job, a lunchtime drink with two good friends and a meal out at the end of the week with my parents who had finally returned from a month at sea.

On the media player today was an album that had arrived that morning; it was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's sophomore effort from 1967 "Absolutely Free". Zappa's music both with the Mothers and solo takes in almost every genre of music in Zappa's own idiosyncratic way. Some might argue with good reason that he was his own genre.

The first course of my tea last night saw me attempting to make Swede interesting. It has never been one my favourite vegetables being tough to prepare due to its tough skin making it difficult to peel and it's taste is not as pleasant as parsnip or carrot. When in doubt as to how to make a foodstuff more flavoursome I use spices. In this case I decided to use cumin, chili and honey.

Before these spices came into play I first took half a swede, peeled it and then cubed the flesh. I next added it to a pan of boiling water and boiled the swede flesh for around twenty minutes. I then drained the pan and fried the swede flesh in olive oil in my wok with a teaspoon of cumin and a teaspoon of chili powder.

After frying and mixing the cumin and chili powder for around five minutes I added to the wok five teaspoons of honey and on a medium heat on the hob I fried the swede cubes vigorously until they took on a glazed appearance and once the surplus honey had been fried away the pieces were ready to serve as a delicious starter to my mains- a starter I call glazed swedes in chili spice.

The honey added a sweet edge to the swede's often bitter taste, a taste that for some reason always reminds me of dreary winter Sunday dinners when I was a child,  while the chili and cumin added a warmth and flavour that lifted this dish above the ordinary.

Golden glaze- this dish is one way to make the experience of eating swede a lot more pleasant.

Popping over

One of my approaches to cooking is informed by taking traditional recipes and giving them a modern twist. That was the case on a Saturday last month when I chanced upon an old recipe for Beef Popovers- something that is a throwback to the days of the 1960s and before.

Essentially beef popovers are tiny Yorkshire Puddings filled up with mince beef. However my twist was to use Quorn Mince instead of mince beef. With the sounds of ELO's underappreciated third album "On the Third Day" playing out in the background I got a patty cake tin case and greased each individual compartment with plenty of margarine to stop the batter casing I was to make from sticking unnecessarily.

I then put four ounces of plain flour into a mixing bowl and made a hole in the middle of the flour. Into this hole I poured the white and yolk of one egg. I then gradually stirred the egg into the flour until it absorbed as much of the flour as possible.

Next I added gradually around half a pint of milk and stirred it into the egg and flour until I had a very liquid batter mixture. I then distributed the mixture evenly between the tin cases like the father of many children who treats none as his favourite.

I weighed out eight ounces of Quorn Mince and after adding a pinch of white pepper to the mince I shaped the mince into 12 two centimetre balls. The mince was surprisingly ductile and easy to fashion into the desired shapes. I then put a ball each in the tin cases and cooked them in the oven for around 15- 20 minutes on 210 degrees (220 for non-fan ovens).

After allowing them to cool a little I served them with a side dish of leeks, melted margarine and tomato ketchup. They tasted (as expected) like bite size Yorkshire Puddings and the Quorn Mince had all the taste of mince beef but without the unpleasant fat content and aftertaste so regularly associated with mince beef.

The popovers, which I consumed at lunchtime after my morning walk, set me up well for a fruitless trip to the south of the county that afternoon and much more rewarding trip out that evening for an enjoyable catch up with two good friends.

These popovers were delicious when served with some boiled Leeks, melted margarine and tomato ketchup.

Jam Side Down

The last Sunday in September found me in a reflective mood and recharging my batteries as the number of unexpected adventures in the last  month and the responsibility of looking after two houses and two dogs began to take their toll.

As always when I need to focus on having some downtime I fall back on my love of cooking and music. I picked Pink Floyd's 1977 effort "Animals" to bake some blackcurrant buns to. The album, although one of their best, is often overlooked by the casual fan, as it falls between two of their greatest albums (both of which are more accessible) 1975's "Wish You Were Here" and 1979's "The Wall". Animals' best track is "Sheep" which I was lucky enough to see its writer Roger Waters perform in 2008 on his excellent solo tour.

I realised I had mentioned my cooking skills to my work colleagues and I decided that actions spoke louder than words and therefore I should make something to take in for them to enjoy. The recipe I chose was a variation on an old recipe from a 1960s cookbook. It is essentially used to make buns that are topped with Jam.

I first added eight ounces of self-raising flour to my mixing bowl followed by three ounces of  margarine which I cut into cubes and then stirred into  the flour until the mixture resembled large golden breadcrumbs or shingle on the beach.

Then I added two and a half ounces of brown sugar and one egg. After I had thoroughly mixed these ingredients into the margarine and the flour I saw that it was all far too sloppy to cook. This said I added four ounces of plain flour to the bowl which meant that after I had stirred it in there was a mixture that almost had the consistency of cookie dough.

I divided the mixture into twelve equal pieces and put them on a greased baking tray. Then I added half a teaspoonful of black currant jam to the top of each piece trying as I did so push the jam down into them so it didn't run off in the heat of the oven.

I cooked the buns in the oven at 200 degrees (190 for fan ovens) for a period of fifteen minutes. I noticed the buns had become a pale bronze colour, a little like a meathead who hadn't applied enough fake tan before a night on the town, and when a put a skewer into them it came out clean meaning they were ready. The jam had also run a little and crystallised on top of the buns to create a tasty topping.

I tried one after I consumed a large stew for my tea and I found that buns sweet and rich but not too rich that I couldn't manage one comfortably despite a big main course.

At work the reaction was positive as pretty much all the buns were eaten by the colleagues in my team which has motivated me to do more cooking projects to take into work.

Straight out of the oven with a pale bronze colour showing in the dough and the jam well crystallised on top of each bun.

Parkin For Charity

The third Monday in September was a washout; weather wise that is. It was one of several Mondays in September I was having off work as some downtime to allow me to look after effectively two houses and two dogs during the month while keeping things going in my role as this year's president of my local rotary club. Yes I didn't think I was old enough to do the role either but it is an enjoyable one so far.

As I couldn't get much of a walk in with the dog and I was aware that my employer were taking part in the worthy cause of a MacMillan Coffee Morning that Friday I decided to do some baking in preparation for the coffee morning.

Even though it was only September I knew Summer was starting to float into a memory and the foul rain gave a taste of the no doubt cooler and wetter winter weather lurking ahead on the road to shorter nights and mornings spent de-frosting the car. This said the food I decided to make was Parkin.

It's true to say that Parkin originated in Lancashire which is the other end of Pennines from the city where my employer is based. It has a sweet yet charcoal like taste and is very fortifying in the winter months.

As the rain hammered down on the house that I was, rather reluctantly it has to be said, sitting in its owners' absence I got underway with the cooking. On the playlist was the Electric Light Orchestra's difficult second album the aptly titled "ELO 2". During the making of the album founding member Roy Wood left early on during the sessions to become a Christmas one hit wonder and Jeff Lynne meanwhile gradually asserted his leadership of the group. The record contains the King Crimson- like "In Old England Town" the folky "Mama" and some shimmering prog-rock workouts in the shape of "From the Sun to the World" and "Kuaima". After a few spins it becomes clear that it is a strong record and its highlight is a cover of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" featuring Jeff Lynne adapting a filthy rock and roll voice and some clever string arrangements.

I put one pound of self-raising flour in a mixing bowl with a tablespoon of ground ginger and six ounces of brown sugar. I mixed these ingredients together with a metal tablespoon until they were well combined.

I then melted two ounces of margarine in a warm pan on the hob before adding the melted margarine to the mixing bowl with a quarter of a pint of milk and a beaten egg. Finally I weighed out eight ounces of treacle and added this to the bowl. The treacle was like any good treacle should be- a dark colour, sticky and sweet.

I stirred all these new ingredients together with the flour, sugar and ginger until I got a thick paste that was the colour of melted dark chocolate. I added the ingredients to a high-sided baking tray lined with greased cooking foil.

The tray of uncooked Parkin was then placed in the oven heated at 170 degrees (180 for non-fan ovens) and cooked for an hour and five minutes. Until it was even darker than before and the surface of it was solid but still soft enough to spring back when touched lightly.

I turned it out in its foil onto the work surface to cool off.  After a couple of hours I cut it into cubes about 3cm x 3cm and then, as it wasn't to be consumed until Friday, put it in containers which I then put in the Freezer. A work colleague said this was a good way of keeping it until then without losing its flavour.

On Wednesday night it was out of the freezer and slowly defrosting. By Friday morning it had been transported to work and was sharing a table in the firm's kitchen with millionaire shortbread and marble cake amongst others in aid of the firm's MacMillan Coffee Morning.

The Parkin, with its rich ginger taste and surprisingly sweet flavours of treacle reminded me that bonfire night and winter were not far away. Quite a few of my colleagues took pieces and contributed money to the charity as well so it certainly helped the firm raise some money for a worthwhile cause.

Above- on the table at work ready for consumption by my colleagues

Egg timer

Last Sunday was a handy day to mark time part way through a long weekend that was thoroughly enjoyable, confusing and cathartic in equal measures. It had started off with an unexpected trip to a pub in town on Friday night that, aided by the consumption of some Leeds Brewery blonde beer which was the same colour as the hair of the person I was in the pub with,  seemed like a "crazy dream"- perhaps because of the beer. Saturday saw a surprise trip to the cinema with two of my close friends to see the excellent "Straight Outta Compton" a film that depicts superbly the rise and fall of Gangsta Rap's first super group N.W.A.

Sunday morning arrived around six hours after I had consumed my last post film beer and watched my last post evening out N.W.A. video on Youtube. I helped clear the cobwebs that morning with a fun seven and a half mile walk with one of my mates from the cinema trip as we set the world to rights and gave our dogs plenty of exercise in the stunning countryside we are so lucky to be able to live and walk in.

When I got back it was time for dinner and I noticed that the house I was looking after had a large number of eggs in the fridge and I decided that I needed some comfort food and as the eggs needed using up the end product of my cooking project was to be Eggs Benedict. Those of you who have followed this blog for a while may remember me posting about Eggs Benedict two years ago after I had it at the Glasgow Malmaison the morning after a day spent exploring the city with very good company.

Sunday's Eggs Benedict was a modified and even richer version than the one I made previously.

The album I listened to today was the first one I ever bought from a record shop. I bought it back  in Christmas 1998 when I was a scruffy-haired fifteen year old who's world hardly stretched passed my parents' back garden. The album was Dire Straits' third effort Making Movies which, save a throwaway song at the end, is flawless and songs like "Tunnel of Love" and "Skateaway" summed up well the weekend's events to date.

I started by putting a pan of water, laced with Red Wine Vinegar, on the hob and let it steadily come to the boil. While the water was coming the boil I melted eight ounces of margarine in a small frying pan on the hob and then added three eggs to the pan as well as around two tablespoons of red wine vinegar. The reason for this mixture was to make the Hollandaise Sauce that goes with the eggs. The trick with the sauce is to beat it thoroughly with a whisk continuously. This stops the sauce becoming lumpy and resembling a disturbing derivative of scrambled egg.

As the sauce came together I added the leaves of five sprigs of Rosemary to it and continued to stir the sauce. Meanwhile the water was coming to the boil and using a ladle I added the yolk and the white of one egg to the boiling water. As I lifted the egg into the water from the ladle I used the ladle to create a small whirlpool. 

I let the egg cook for 3-4 minutes in the pan and as the Hollandaise Sauce was ready I put it on the lowest light on the hob and stirred it vigorously on occasion to stop it becoming too lumpy. At the same time I put two slices of buttered bread with two slices of smoked ham on each slice under the grill and lightly grilled them for a couple of minutes.

After the first egg was done in the pan I lifted it out with the ladle and put it on top of the ham toasties on a serving plate. I then repeated the boiling process with two more egg yolks and their whites. I arranged these two eggs on the plate when they were done and poured the Hollandaise and Rosemary Sauce over the top of them to serve. I also sprinkled a little black pepper on the eggs.

Eggs Benedict has a reputation for being rich and overindulgent and this dish was in the best possible way. The taste of the Hollandaise Sauce was enriched by the extra red wine vinegar the texture of the rosemary while the boiled eggs were done for just enough time that they were solid while still giving out some flavoursome yolk when pierced.  The toasted ham and bread helped form a delicious base to the whole dish both literally in the way I had served it and with the taste it added to it.

Eggs smothered in Hollandaise Sauce with a base of ham and bread- the perfect post-dog walk and cinema night out meal.

Orange Broccoli Special

Yesterday I needed some serious wind down time after what had been a hectic and exciting summer that also had featured a painful low personal point in July (when things in my life seemed shot to pieces) which eventually was more than evened out by getting my own house at last, an unforgettable birthday party at the house and being made president of my local Rotary Club.

In the week and a bit preceding yesterday there had been no let up to the excitement with a trip to a wonderful Indian Restaurant (that used to be a dodgy drug-ridden pub in a previous life) for a colleague's leaving do, a fun evening watching old episodes of Shooting Stars at the house of two of my friends, a night out in our local town's new German Bar for an enjoyable Birthday Party, a seventeen mile walk in the driving rain through wonderful scenery with two old school friends and a Lakeland Terrier, a meal out in a country pub and a charity golf tournament in aid of Breast Cancer Research. I somehow managed to fit a working week in the city into all this and there was no wonder therefore I felt a little shattered.

I spent yesterday buying food for a fraternal buffet I am holding later today at my house, doing some gardening, cleaning and washing and generally being very domesticated while taking it super easy. Sometimes you need days like this to re-charge your batteries.

I had time for some cooking and today's piece, which is designed to ease me back into the world of food blogging, was a quite basic one but effective nonetheless. I grilled three chicken breasts that were flavoured with peppers and spices and a left-over lingering in my deep freeze from my birthday Barbecue (more of which in future blog posts). I also boiled some carrots, potatoes and broccoli up as a side dish.

I realised  that I wanted a sauce to go with the dish and I was reminded of a recipe in one of my parents' aged vegetarian cookbooks. Thinking back to this recipe I was inspired to make an orange white sauce to mix with the Broccoli.

The album on the media player for this project was the Electric Light Orchestra's excellent and underrated 1983 offering "Secret Messages" which includes the fifties throwback single "Rock & Roll is King" as well as first rate album tracks "Take me on and on" and the title track.

The secret to a good sauce is to make thick and creamy with the consistency of buttercream used in cakes. I melted around three ounces of margarine into a saucepan and once the margarine was almost melted I added a heaped wooden spoon's worth of corn flour. I turned off the heat on the hob and mixed all the melted butter into the margarine until it formed several golden coloured lumps. I then grated the zest of one whole Tangerine into the mixture and stirred the zest in thoroughly. I find that sauces, like sponge mixes and pastries, benefit from having all the dry ingredients including the spices mixed together before you add the wet ingredients.

I next added around 300 millilitres of semi-skimmed milk to the mixture and stirred it on the hob quickly over a medium heat until it was like a thick paste and there were no lumps. This took about two minutes. It is a tricky skill to master as if you use too much milk you end with a runny and lumpy sauce but if you do not use enough milk you end up with a very dry mixture  that's burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan. If you avoid this however you get a sweet sauce that is surprisingly good at complimenting the rather soggy taste of the broccoli when the sauce is poured over the broccoli and served with it.

The Broccoli is shown here smothered in the sauce to enhance its taste. The orange sauce also set off the flavours in the grilled chicken well.

Scones of Wild Garlic

Today was a day to unwind and relax after an action packed few days. It started on Friday with a very sober bar crawl round three local pubs, then continued the next day with a trip out round town to catch up with some good mates and wound down today with a long walk with the dogs that included some excellent views and healthy dose of setting the world to rights.

We had called time on the trip round town on the Saturday night relatively early, compared to the old days of staying out until three in the morning, and I was in bed by half one in the morning. These days if I stay out too late it wipes me out for the whole of the following day and if I have a really late night then I need to book a few tactical days off work after the night out.

Luckily an early(ish) night meant some time for a good long walk and also chance to do some more cooking projects. This said I decided to make something that you can only really make at this time of year due to the availability of one of the ingredients; Garlic Scones. The reason why you can only make them at this time of year is because rather than using garlic bulbs you use the leaves of wild garlic plants in the recipe which are only really edible at this time of year.

The soundtrack to cookery today was The War on Drugs' recent brilliant album "Lost in the Dream" which includes great tracks like "Red Eyes" "In Reverse" and "Under the Pressure" a song that describes adequately my mind-set since the start of the new year.

I first put in a mixing bowl 225 grams of self-raising flour and fifty grams of low fat margarine. I cut the butter into small, misshapen cubes and then rubbed it in with my hands until the flour and margarine were combined together and shaped like breadcrumbs.

The next job was cut up eight wild garlic leaves. Wild garlic grows commonly near where I live, mainly along the side of riverbanks and footpaths and fortunately some was available in the garden of the house I am currently living at. I sliced the garlic leaves horizontally using a sharp knife into narrow strips. I added the strips of garlic leaves to the flour and margarine together with 100 grams of grated, lactose free extra mature cheddar. I also added one beaten egg and one hundred millilitres of semi-skimmed milk to the bowl and stirred them together until they formed a thick paste.

I realised that I needed to dry the mixture if it was going to cook properly and so I added to the bowl about seventy-five grams of self-raising flour. I then stirred the mixture into a ball and kneaded it like bread dough into the flour until I had something that had the dry, dusty consistency of pastry. I rolled it out on the worktop until it was about a square foot in width and about a centimetre deep. I cut the pastry up into five centimetre square pieces and baked it in the oven on 200 degrees, 210 for non-fan ovens, for about fifteen minutes.

After taking the scones out of the oven and letting them cool down a little I had a taste of them and found the wild garlic to be less potent than garlic bulbs would be. The wild garlic leaves did not overpower the taste of the mature cheddar either. The scones were best served with a spot of margarine melted onto them and proved to be an enjoyable starter to tonight's tea.

Butter would melt: these scones are delicious if halved and then margarine is spread on top of them.

Changing to chicken

Last weekend was one where it seemed that different ways of doing things crossed paths in successive days; the part of me that still likes a good night out and the part of me that wants to knuckle down to the task of settling down and taking on  a lot more responsibility.

The first half of the weekend saw me enact the first role at a loud bar in a big city for a birthday party. The live entertainment needed a volunteer from the audience to embarrass for one of their routines and, as seems to be my lot in life sometimes, I was the volunteer. That said people thought I was a good sport in acting as a volunteer and even though inside I wanted to jump on the first train home in embarrassment at the situation, I held my own as best I could for the sake of everyone watching.

The next morning we had a lie in the peace and quiet of the flat and thoughts turned to cooking a healthy but filling Sunday lunch as well as having some much needed downtime. These days weekends are becoming a lot more about having the time to re-charge batteries through walking in the country, have relaxed visits to quiet restaurants and pubs and friends' houses and looking for a property to buy rather than having heavy nights out all the time. This new approach to weekends was one of my New Year resolutions while the other was to have some dishes that were healthy with more protein in and more meat as well.

The meal we decided to make was a chicken stew with all the ingredients prepared from scratch. I first cut up into halves four medium sized chicken breasts which I added to a non-stick pan which I had first sprayed the bottom of with some very low fat cooking spray. I fried the chicken on a medium heat and turned it constantly with a wooden spoon for around fifteen minutes until it began to turn a golden brown. When I cooked it I added a teaspoon of paprika to the chicken and made sure that I combined the paprika fully with all the chicken.

The trick with cooking any raw meat is making sure it is done all the way through and not undercooked. To help ensure that this meat was cooked through I cut the pieces in half part way through cooking and if the middle part that had become exposed through cutting was uncooked I pushed the uncooked part down onto the hot surface of the pan.

Another trick with raw meat, which I had confirmed as being a good trick if you fry anything savoury when I had a meal in early December with a talented local artist, is that early on you should get the spices mixed into the dish to give it the flavour. This was the reason why I added the paprika to the chicken at an early stage.

Next I diced up one large white onion and finely sliced two cloves of garlic. I took the chicken out of the pan and put it on a plate while then adding the onion and garlic plus another teaspoon of paprika to the pan. I fried the onion and garlic until the onions became translucent.

After this I added a can of Borlotti Beans and a can of tin tomatoes to the pan with the chicken and around a pint of water. I simmered the contents of the pan for around thirty minutes with the lid covering the pan. So as to keep the contents from drying up I added water to it periodically.

In the meantime I boiled some rice in a pan for around half an hour.

After simmering the contents of the pan for thirty minutes I took the lid off and simmered the contents for another twenty or thirty minutes. Towards the end of the cooking I added 100 grams of spinach and two tablespoons of chopped parsley all of which combined very easily with the rest of the mixture.

Once the contents of the pan were ready I added the rice to it and served it with some white cabbage. The chicken was succulent and rich while the spice of the paprika and the Borlotti Beans gave a real depth of flavour to the dish. Certainly this was a good meal to have on a cold Sunday morning in winter.

Tatty Beef

On the last weekend before Christmas Week I went up to my grandparents for a long overdue visit. They are both well into their eighties and both been unwell as a result this has meant that each time I see them I wonder if it will be the last time. Negative thoughts I know but that's what the passage of time does to you.

I knew that they were not quite enjoying the high standard of cooking they used to when my Gran was well and were relying on instant meals so I thought it only right that I cooked them a proper meal when I dropped in to visit.

The recipe I chose is one of my granddad's favourites and one as a child I remember Gran making for him on many occasions. It is basically a variation of corned beef hash and in the part of North East Scotland where my Granddad originates from it is known as Corned Beef and Tatties.

With the sounds of Jethro Tull's song "This is not Love" from their 1991 effort "Catfish Rising" thrusting through my mind, as a result of it being on the car stereo on the drive up, I took four white potatoes and peeled them. I then sliced them in half lengthways and put them in a pan of water. I fired up the hob and brought the pan to boil before simmering the potatoes for around half an hour until they were soft.

While the potatoes were simmering I covered the bottom of a frying pan with rapeseed oil and heated the oil gently on the hob. I added to the hob three large shallots that I had first peeled, topped and tailed and diced. I fried them with a hint of black pepper until they became soft and see-through. I then cut up around eight slices of corned beef into small squares and stirred them into the oil and shallots in the pan until the beef was coated in oil. I find that rapeseed oil is the best oil to use when frying beef.

After the potatoes were ready I drained them and then mashed them with a bit of margarine. After they had been mashed I added the mash to the frying pan and mixed it with the beef and shallots to make a thick paste. The meal was now ready to serve.

This type of food is quite basic and easy to throw together quickly but despite this it is a substantial meal that is very filling. Normally it is made with onions but I decided to use shallots to give it a unique twist.

It was certainly something my grandparents appreciated as they ate their helpings quickly and seemed happy at having a dish they explained they had not eaten for a while. I personally find that corned beef has a wonderful savoury taste sadly lacking in other types of beef and this taste is only enhanced with the use of the potatoes; definitely making it a simple but delicious dish.

The shallot pieces shine out of this recipe