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.