Recipe Tuesday: Hoisin Chicken Tray Bake

Sometimes, you just need comfort food: something easy, warming, filling and tasty.  This is one of those dishes.  I don’t remember how I discovered the recipe.  It may have popped up in my FB feed, in an ad for the Australian magazine “New Idea”.  Certainly, they’re the source of the original recipe, although I can no longer find it on their website.

This is my variation.  The original recipe did not have added vegetables or mixed grains, nor did it use whole chicken legs.  It used thighs, which are fine but a whole leg is more tasty, more sustainable AND gives you more bones for the stockpot later.  I’ve given quantities for both.  Our butcher charges £3.99/kg for legs, so approximately £1 each.

Ingredients

4 whole chicken legs (or 4 large thighs, or 8 supermarket thighs)

1 heaped teaspoon Chinese 5 Spice

1 cup basmati rice and 1 cup bulgar wheat (or 2 cups of either)

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup frozen sweetcorn

4 cups chicken stock (ie. 1 litre chicken stock)

4 tablespoons hoisin sauce (aka 1/4 cup measure)

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 teaspoons fresh ginger paste (or 1 inch grated fresh ginger)

1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes, cut into 1-2 inch chunks

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Season the skin-side of chicken with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with five spice.
3. Heat oil in a large, flameproof, roasting pan or stew pot over a medium to high heat. Add chicken, skin-side down. Cook for about 5 to 6 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove chicken.
4. Meanwhile, combine stock, sauces, peanut butter, garlic and ginger in a large jug. Mix well.  (See note below)
5. Add stock mixture and rice to same, hot pan. Stir through the frozen peas and sweetcorn.  Bury the sweet potato chunks around the pan, under the rice.  Arrange chicken over rice. Bring to boil. Remove pan from heat. Put on the lid or cover tightly with foil.
6. Cook in a moderate oven (180C) for about 40 minutes, or until rice is tender and chicken is cooked through. Remove pan. Stand, covered, for 5 minutes, or until liquid is absorbed.

Notes:

• There will be leftovers!  There will certainly be enough rice for a stir fry, later in the week.  If you don’t want that, halve the quantities of rice, bulgar wheat and stock.
• The bulgar wheat adds additional protein and fibre.  (It has 8 times the protein and 4 times the fibre of brown rice.)
• You can use either crunchy or smooth peanut butter.
• Nobody has a large enough jug for step 4.  Mix everything that you can with enough stock to fill the jug, and add the remainder of the stock later, at step 5.

- Pam 

Recipe Tuesday - Apple Cake

Years ago now, a friend brought several bagfuls of apples into work to give away.  Gratefully, I took home a bag, stewed them, pressure canned them for 20 minutes, and later turned them into Apple Cake.  Last month, when another friend gave me apples from their tree, I was quite surprised to discover that I’d never written about the canning process nor had I written up the recipe!

This time around, I made two 16oz jars of stewed apple and then went searching for my recipe.   Since I am by no means an expert, I’m not going to go into details about pressure canning.  (My reference book for that is Farmhouse Kitchen, by Audrey Ellis, which was first published in 1973.).  However, it is time I shared the cake recipe with you.  

Note:  Because a 16oz jar contains enough for two cakes, all the quantities below are doubled up.  The quantities in brackets will make a single cake.

Apple Cake

Ingredients

1 cup oil  (1/2 cup)

2 cups stewed apple (1 cup)

2 cups castor sugar (1 cup)

4 eggs (2 eggs)

4 cups flour (2 cups)

4 tsp baking powder (2 teaspoons = "2 tsp")

4 tsp ground cinnamon (2 tsp)

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.

1. Line your cake tins.  I use 2lb loaf pans.
2. In the food processor, combine the dry ingredients.  Put the lid on and whiz for a few seconds to distribute the baking powder, sugar and cinnamon. Add the oil, stewed apple and eggs.  Process until smooth.
3. Distribute the mixture evenly between cake tins.  Bake for approximately 1 hour in the hot oven.
4. Remove from cake tins and cool on a wire rack.
   
   
   
   
   Yum!!
   
   
   - Pam

Recipe Tuesday - Baked Feta & Tomato Pasta

There is nothing like the taste of a freshly ripened, home grown, cherry tomato.   This year, we’re having a bumper harvest of them.  Fortuitously, someone mentioned an internet craze for baked feta and tomato pasta.  After a couple of sessions testing other people’s recipes, this is my version.  It feeds 4.

Ingredients

500g punnet of Cherry Tomatoes (or the largest you can get), washed

200g block Feta Cheese (get the proper Greek stuff, made with sheep/goat milk)

2 cloves garlic, crushed

80g jar salted anchovies in olive oil (or use a tin.  Don’t drain it.)

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (the good stuff)

360g dried pasta

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 220C.
2. Put the Feta into a lasagne dish, arrange the cherry tomatoes around it, together with the garlic.  Pour over the olive oil, attempting to coat as many of the cherry tomatoes as possible.
3. Turn the Feta over, twice, to coat with olive oil.
4. Dot the anchovies around the dish and pour the jar’s oil over the contents of the dish.
   
   
   
5. Bake at 220C for 45 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, at the 30 minute mark, boil a large kettle or two of water, pour it into your largest saucepan and bring the water back to the boil..  Add a pinch of salt, then pour in the dried pasta.  Bring back to the boil again, turn down and simmer for the amount of time specified on the packet.  (In my case, 11 minutes.). Once cooked, drain and return the pasta to the saucepan.
7. After 45 minutes in the oven, the tomatoes should be cooked and the Feta browned.
   
    
8. Remove the lasagna dish from the oven, and mash the contents together.  Stir into the drained pasta and serve.

It isn’t pretty but, OMG, is it tasty!

- Pam

Recipe Tuesday - Blueberry Muffins

A few years ago, at the bottom of the garden, we planted 3 blueberry bushes.  This year, they’ve come up trumps!  Yesterday, DH and I harvested 1.6kg of ripe blueberries and there are at least as many still on the bushes.  While I am hoping to freeze at least a kilogram, this morning I decided to make a double batch of blueberry muffins.

(The above photo was taken after I’d removed 250g for the muffins.)

After flipping through some recipe books and the BBC Good Food website, I decided to botch together a recipe.  (Why?  Because most of the ones I looked at required the addition of yoghurt or nuts or bananas.). Anyway, it worked!  This is my recipe.  I made 24 - the doubled quantities are shown in brackets.

Blueberry Muffins

Makes 12 (or 24)

Ingredients

1/2 cup vanilla sugar*. (1 cup)

2 cups plain/all purpose flour (4 cups)

1 tablespoon baking powder (2 tablespoons)

1/2 teaspoon salt (1 teaspoon)

1 cup milk (2 cups)

1/4 cup oil (1/2 cup)

1 egg, beaten (2 eggs)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (2 teaspoons)

125g/4oz blueberries (250g/8oz)

1 tablespoon plain flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C (425F).
2. Line the cups of your muffin pan with either silicone or paper liners.
3. In a food processor or mixer, combine the first 4 ingredients and give them a quick whiz to distribute the salt and baking powder.
4. Add the milk, the oil, the egg and the vanilla extract.  Blend until combined.
5. Place all but 12 (24) blueberries into a bowl.  Sprinkle over the flour and stir with your fingers until all is combined.+
6. Gently stir the flour coated blueberries into the muffin mix.
7. Fill each lined muffin cup 3/4 full, topping them up as evenly as possible if there is muffin mixture left.
8. Top each muffin with one of the saved blueberries.
9. Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.
10. Remove from oven and decant onto a cake rack to cool.

Notes

* Vanilla sugar is easy to make at home.  Just bury a vanilla pod in a jar of castor sugar and leave it for at least 3 weeks before first use.  Replenish the sugar each time you use it.  The vanilla pod will continue to give off flavour for years.

+ Dredging your berries with flour will stop them sinking to the bottom of the muffins.

Enjoy!!!

Recipe Tuesday: Chicken Liver Pâté

One of the biggest mysteries of the past few years is “where have all the chicken livers gone?”.  OK, I no longer shop at a Kosher butcher - they closed - but I haven’t seen any in a supermarket for years and our local butcher has real problems obtaining them.  Lurking in the freezer are a goose liver from removed from the 2022 Christmas goose and a tiny duck liver taken from the Christmas 2023 duck, both just begging to be turned into pâté.  Imagine my surprise when DH phoned me from the supermarket on Friday - I haven’t been shopping since I started chemo - and told me they had chicken livers!  Yay!! Three 400g packets came home with him. Two went into the freezer and, on Sunday, I made the third into Chicken Liver Pâté.  It was yummy!

My recipe is based on one by Rachel Khoo, from her Little Paris Kitchen cookbook. She uses shallots, brandy and rabbit livers, while I used onions, sherry, chicken livers together with the duck and goose liver from the freezer, and made a double quantity.  You will need a food processor.

Ingredients

250g chicken livers

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon sherry

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon Schmaltz or use olive oil

Method

1. Melt the schmaltz in a frying pan over a low heat.
2. Gently fry the onion and garlic, until the onion has softened and turned clear. 
3. Add the chicken livers.  Keep the heat low. Fry on one side for 2 minutes, then turn over and fry on the other.
4. Once the chicken livers have been turned over, add a pinch of salt and the sherry.  Stir. Fry for another 2 minutes.  Be careful not to overcook - they will toughen.  Test to see if they’re cooked by pushing down on one using the edge of a spoon.  It should break up easily and be brown inside.
5. Tip the chicken liver mixture into a food processor and process until smooth.
6. Decant into ramekin dishes, smooth down to give a flat top, allow to cool, cover with cling film and refrigerate until needed. Serve with good bread.

NOTE:  Traditionally pâté is covered with a layer of clarified butter/fat, in order to help preserve it.  I never bother but, if you wish to: melt 150g unsalted butter and allow it to cool for a couple of minutes. Skim off the white crusty layer, then gently pour the liquid butter over the pâté. Once cool, refrigerate and ensure the butter is set before serving.

- Pam

Recipe Tuesday - Mung Bean Curry

Tonight, I cooked something that I haven’t cooked since October:  Mung Bean Curry.  It used to be such a regular in my repertoire that for years I never had to check the recipe before I cooked.  In fact, I’m surprised that I’d never shared it on the blog.  

This is one of those recipes that came off the back of the packet.  I’ve been cooking it for 30+ years.  I don’t remember why we had a packet of mung beans in the cupboard - Dumbo, the long-ago ex, bought them and made something unmemorable with about half the packet -  but, I do remember noticing this recipe on the back and deciding to give it a go.  I saved that plastic packet for years and referred to it regularly.  Sadly, it disappeared after we packed up the kitchen for building works back in 2012.  This is from memory.

Mung Bean Curry (serves 4)

Ingredients

175g/6oz dried mung beans - not split mung dhal, but the whole bean

1L approximately of boiling water

1 tablespoon oil

1 medium sized onion, chopped

1 large clove garlic, garlic

100-150g mushrooms, sliced

2 peppers/capsicums, sliced

1 medium carrot, halved lengthwise and sliced

1 cup plain yoghurt

Spices

1 teaspoon ground chilli (or to taste)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon turmeric 

1 teaspoon corn flour

Pinch of salt

Bulgar Wheat (see notes below)

1 cup bulgar wheat

2 cups boiling water

Pinch of salt

Method:

1. Start by cooking your mung beans:  pour them into a sieve and rinse off any dust with cold, running water.  Then place in a saucepan, cover with sufficient boiling water to ensure that there’s 2.5cm/1inch of water to cover the beans, bring to the boil and simmer for approximately 25 minutes or until soft.  Once cooked, drain the beans.  While the beans are cooking, get on with preparing the rest of the dish.
2. In a small ramekin, assemble the spices.  Add a couple of tablespoons of cold water and mix to a paste.
3. Heat the oil in a large saucepan or frying pan.  Gently fry the onion until it is soft and glassy.
4. Add the mushrooms, peppers and garlic.  Fry until soft.
5. Stir in your spice paste.  Fry until the aroma rises and then fold in the yoghurt.  Add the carrot and keep stirring, until heated through.  Switch off until the mung beans are cooked.
6. When the mung beans are cooked and drained, stir them into the curry mixture.  Bring back to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, rinse out the saucepan used for the mung beans in hot water.  In it, combine 1 cup of bulgar wheat, with 2 cups of boiling water and a pinch of salt.  Bring back to the boil.  Cover and switch off.  Leave undisturbed for 15 minutes or until all the water is absorbed..
8. Serve.

Notes:

• My favourite “filler” these days is bulgar wheat, instead of rice.  Yes, it’s more expensive BUT it has 3 advantages:  1) it is even easier to cook (see point 7 above); 2) it bulks out to a larger volume than rice, so I only need to use 1 cup instead of 1.5 for 4 portions; 3) it has 8 times the fibre and 4 times the protein of brown rice!
• If you want to serve this curry with rice:  use 1.5 cups of white/basmati rice together with 3 cups of boiling water, cover, boil for 2 minutes, switch off and leave for 15 minutes or until all the water is absorbed.

Enjoy!

- Pam

Pumpkin Bread

I keep telling myself that I must write down this recipe before I forget it or lose it, so here goes...

When we visited Miami in 2006, one of the things I brought home in my luggage  was a packet of Williams-Sonoma cake mix for “Pumpkin Bread”.  I made it; it was scrumptious, and for several years afterwards I tried to find a recipe to duplicate it.  The only recipe I remember  had “pumpkin pie spice mix” listed as an ingredient.  Fast forward to our next trip to Miami in 2014 and, this time, I fly back to the UK with several jars of “pumpkin pie spice”.

Do you think that I could find the recipe mentioned earlier?  No.  These jars remained unopened, in the pantry, for years.  Fast forward to the end of last year when, in a fit of inspiration, I decided to search the internet again for a pumpkin bread recipe.  On someone’s blog, I found a picture of a recipe, cut from an ancient magazine.  Oddly, they didn’t give directions, just the photo.

(Sadly, while I saved a copy of the photo, I didn’t make a note of whose blog or I’d credit them.)

We don’t get canned pumpkin here, but a month or two ago, I bought a couple of large butternut squash in L!dl and decided to have a go making it with them.  After three attempts, I think I’ve nailed it.  I’ve also swapped in oil for the butter.  You need to bake the pumpkin/squash the day before you make the loaves.  It freezes well, so don’t be put off by having to make two loaves:

Pumpkin Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients

1 medium sized butternut squash

2 cups plain flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (aka baking soda)

1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 cups castor sugar

2 eggs

Spices: 

Either use 

1 teaspoon ground cloves, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

or use:

1 tablespoon Pumpkin Pie Spice

Method

1. The day before, prepare your butternut squash:-
• Preheat the oven to 200C.
• Cut it in half lengthwise.  DO NOT PEEL.
• Scoop out the seeds and discard them.
• Place the squash, cut side down, onto a baking tray and bake for an hour.
• Allow to cool before removing from the tray.
• Once cold, use a spoon to scoop out the pulp.  Deposit it into a bowl and weigh it.  The original recipe requires a 440g can, but I’ve made it with 450g, 350g and with 530g of pulp.  All three versions have been successful.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C.  Line two loaf pans with baking paper..
3. In a food processor or blender, combine the sugar, the oil and the eggs.  Blend.
4. Add the pumpkin pulp and process until combined.  (It may be a bit grainy.  That’s OK.)
5. Finally, add the remaining ingredients and process until smooth.
6. Divide the mixture evenly between two lined loaf pans and bake for 65-75 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
7. Once cooked, remove the two loaves from the loaf pans and cool on a cake rack.
8. If you are freezing a loaf, leave it in its baking paper, slide it into a freezer bag, seal and freeze. 

Enjoy!

- Pam

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Recipe Tuesday: Carrot Cake

It’s cake, Jim but not as we know it....

If there is one story about me in Lockdown, it’s that I seem to be baking cakes, tweaking a lot of recipes to get what I want.  Well, this is another one of those recipes.  You may remember back to April, when I talked about all the mutant carrots we’d unearthed?  At the time, I went looking for my carrot cake recipe card.  I’d made it several times before - but not recently - and it was a really great cake.  Do you think I could find it?  It wasn’t in the binder together with the rest of the set.  It wasn’t tucked inside any of the recipe books...  Thinking back, the last time I remember seeing it was in the old kitchen, pre 2013 makeover, when it was on the top of the bookcase that was tucked in beside the fridge.  All I can tell you is that it was for a carrot cake made with oil not butter and had a cream cheese frosting.

I never did find the recipe and, if 2012 was the last time I’d used it, there was no hope that I’d remember the quantities.  Eventually, I turned to Google.  This recipe from Rachel Allen turned out to be the closest to the one I remember, but the first time I made it, I combined the carrots and sugar in the food processor, turned around to measure out the other ingredients and turned back to find the carrots swimming in water.   The sugar either dehydrated the carrots or sucked moisture out of the air!  The mixture came out very wet, resulting in a cake that was more like fudge.  The next time, I left the sugar until the end and made a rather dry carrot cake.  A couple more experiments later, I’m happy with the results, so thought I’d share them with you.

I’ve changed a couple of other things, too.  Decreased the oil slightly, since I found the original quantity made the cake greasy.  Also, I tend to use sunflower seeds whenever a cake requires nuts. They’re cheaper and I always have some in stock.  (I add a tablespoon of sunflower seeds to my breakfast each morning for additional protein.). On the oil front, I use rapeseed oil, which is a) cheap and b) monounsaturated like olive oil.  Flour, in this house, is always Atta Flour aka Chapatti flour, which is a strong, light wholemeal, plain flour.  This recipe doubles up well or can be used to make carrot cake muffins (at step 5, divide the mixture between 12, lined, muffin pans and bake for 25 minutes at 180C).

Carrot Cake - makes 1

Ingredients

125ml/0.5 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

300g carrots, cut into chunks

200g soft, dark muscovardo sugar

75g sunflower seeds or chopped walnuts

100g raisins or sultanas

180g plain flour + 1 teaspoon baking powder (or use 180g self raising flour)

1/2 teaspoon sodium bicarbonate

1 teaspoon cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf pan with non-stick baking parchment.
2. In the food processor, combine the oil, eggs and carrots.  Process until the carrot is chopped up small.
3. Meanwhile, measure out all your remaining ingredients.  (You can put them all into the one bowl, if you want.)
4. Add all the other ingredients, in one go, to the food processor and process until combined.  You should have a slightly lumpy batter.
5. Pour into your lined loaf pan and bake at 180c for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. 
6. Once cooked, remove from the loaf pan and cool on a cake rack.  When cool, you can ice it if you want. (I don’t.  I’m not a huge fan of icing.)

Enjoy!

- Pip

Carrot and Hazelnut Roast

Something for our continued series of Using Up Carrots.  Following on from the Carrot & Lentil Soup I made last month, one of the dishes I  planned to make with our mutants was the Carrot & Hazelnut Roast from Rose Elliott’s Cheap and Easy vegetarian cookbook.  Sadly, Lidl aren’t stocking hazelnuts, so I tried it with cashews and, you know what? It tastes even better.  This recipe doubles up well and copes if you need to vary the size/number of carrots or can’t get a large enough packet of nuts.  Serve with roast potatoes and peas or, in hot weather like today, cold with a green salad.  It’s delicious either way.

Price-wise, this should work out at less than £2 for one loaf.

Carrot & Nut Roast - serves 4

Ingredients
2 large carrots, sliced
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
2-3 slices bread, torn into strips
100g-200g hazelnuts or Cashew Nuts
2 teaspooons mixed herbs
2 eggs
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Place the hazelnuts, carrots, onion and bread into the food processor, hold it securely and process until chopped.  (It’ll bounce around a bit.) 
3. Add the remaining ingredients and process until combined.  You want a grainy texture, not completely smooth.
4. Spoon into a lined loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the middle feels firm to touch and it is browned on top.  
5. Turn out of the pan, peel off the lining and cut into 4 to serve.

Note:  If you’re making roast potatoes to accompany this, parboil them for 15 minutes, baste with oil and put them in the oven at the same time as the roast.

Enjoy!

Pam

Recipe Tuesday: Corn Pone (or what to do with leftover chilli)

Sunday, we had beef chilli for dinner.  When I cooked it, I followed the chilli variant of my recipe post from May 2007,  Minced Beef & Other Possibilities, adding grated carrots and a quarter cup of split red lentils to ensure we had leftovers.  There was enough chilli for dinner for two, two lunch boxes and to form the basis of dinner tonight.  

The idea behind this recipe comes from The Tightwad Gazette, where Amy Dacycyn talks about adding a tin of baked beans and a cornbread top to leftover chilli, in order to make Corn Pone.  Sadly, Amy doesn’t give more details. Maybe Americans are taught to make cornbread at school.  I certainly wasn’t.  The top is a Cornmeal Spoon Bread.  I haven’t priced up the leftover chilli but the additions come to 62p.

Corn Pone - Serves 4

Ingredients

2-4 portions of beef chilli

1x 420g can baked beans (22p)

150g/1 cup fine cornmeal (15p)

1 teaspoon baking powder (5p)

1 clove garlic, crushed (optional) (5p)

1 teaspoon lazy chilli (optional) (5p)

1 egg, beaten (10p)

250ml/1 cup water

Pinch of salt

5 grounds black pepper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 220C.
2. Combine the chilli and the baked beans and pour into a deep ovenproof dish.  Smooth over the top.
3. In a bowl, combine the other ingredients and beat until smooth.  (This is the spoon bread top.)
4. Pour the spoon bread over the over the chilli, carefully covering the top of the chilli.  (It will be runny and won’t pour out smoothly.)
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, or until browned and crisp on top.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get it to look pretty on the plate, but it was yummy!

Enjoy.

- Pam

Warm French Lentil Salad

Today’s recipe is a frugal favourite that I discovered on a trip to Paris in July 2007.  DH’s cousin lived near the Trocadero and had organised a surprise birthday party for her mum  at a restaurant near the Jardin Du Palais Royal.  I wish I could remember its name.  The restaurant was beautiful inside, very Belle Époque, and the food was delicious.  The service was lovely, too (they treated DH’s mum and aunt like queens).  My choice for starter was a warm lentil salad, which they made with small, black, Puy lentils and the type of anchovy that is marinated in vinegar or lemon juice not salted.   

This is my version.  On occasion, I’ve added smoked mackerel instead of anchovies but it also works well with shavings of a strongly flavoured, air-cured ham.   In the version in the photograph, I used leftover roast duck.  The fish (or meat) just adds an extra flavour dimension but isn’t essential - ou can leave it out completely and I have excluded it in my costings.   The red pepper adds crunch and sweetness;  you could use a yellow one instead.   (I have seen a version of this recipe that uses thinly sliced radish.)   It goes well when served on a bed of baby spinach leaves or watercress.

Quantities given feed four as a main course.

Warm French Lentil Salad. (£1.50 excluding optional fish/meat)

Ingredients

2 cups small black lentils. (50p)

3 spring onions, sliced. (30p)

1 sweet red pepper, sliced into 1-2 inch strips. (32p)

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil  (20p)

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar (or sherry vinegar or white balsamic vinegar). (10p)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard  (10p)

Optional:  125g (approximately) marinated anchovies, drained, or smoked mackerel or shavings of air-dried ham (e.g. pancetta)

Method

1. If you have time, soak your lentils for an hour first.  Then drain well and deposit in a mid-sized saucepan.  Cover with boiling water, bring back to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes until soft.  (If you forget or don’t have time to soak the lentils, you will need to simmer for 30-40 minutes.)
2. Meanwhile make your vinaigrette, combine the olive oil and the white wine vinegar in a blender, add the Dijon mustard and process until smooth.
3. When the lentils are cooked, drain them well and decant them into your salad bowl.
4. While still hot, pour over the vinaigrette.
5. Now prepare your vegetables and grill your mackerel (if using), shredding it into lumps once cooked and crispy.
6. Stir the pepper, spring onions and fish into the warm lentils, then serve.

Enjoy!  We had it for dinner last weekend.

- Pam

Slow Cooker Cuban Black Beans

We were introduced to Cuban-style black beans by The Lost American.  It's classic peasant food:  slow cooking cheap meat (smoked ham hock) with dried beans, to feed as many as possible.  Ham hock is hard to find here, so generally speaking I use bacon off-cuts aka "cooking bacon" which I can buy for 60p for 500g.  Once or twice, I've used lumps of ham.  When I have found ham hock, it was sold from the hot-meat counter at the supermarket for several Pounds each.

This is one of those meals which you suddenly find yourself craving.  I think that's down to its smokey flavour.  The only downside to cooking it in a slow cooker/crockpot is that everything comes out a dark brown  colour.  Please read the notes section before you proceed. 

The cost is between £2 and £3 depending on how much bacon you use and assuming 10p for the cheapest herbs and spices.  This makes at least 5 portions of soupy stew, more if you serve it over rice.

Ingredients

500g black turtle beans, soaked overnight and drained (£1.10)

1 onion chopped (12p)

6 cloves garlic, crushed (10p)

2 green peppers, roughly cubed (40p)

150g-500g  cooking bacon, roughly chopped (or use leftover ham, see notes below) (18p-60p)

2 chilies, chopped (or 1 heaped teaspoon ground chilli)

1 smoked dried pepper (if you are lucky enough to find them) (say 50p)

1 bay leaf 

1 tablespoon oregano 

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons white vinegar

1/2 teaspooon liquid smoke (2p)

Boiling water to cover

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients in the slow cooker.  Ensure that there is at least a 2.5cm (1 inch) covering of boiling water, more if your slow cooker lid doesn’t seal well.
2. Put the lid on, set the cooker to high and cook for a minimum of 8 hours.  
3. If it gets a bit dry, add more boiling water (cold water will cause the pot to crack).
4. If it turns out soupy, serve with lots of fresh bread.  Otherwise, serve over rice.

See what I mean by brown?

Notes:-

• Slow cookers/crockpots are meant to have well-fitting lids that seal so you need less liquid.  I’m on my third and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a bit of a myth.  The original crockpot has a rubber gasket around the lid and that does seal.  For all the others, you’re dependent upon how well the lid fits the rim.  My current one has certainly boiled dry.  
• You need to cook this on high for the beans to go soft.  (It should be possible to mush them with a spoon.)  The first time I cooked this, I used  “automatic”, which starts off as high and then swaps to low after 2 hours.  We got home 12 hours after it started cooking and the beans were still hard.
• I can only find black beans, aka black turtle beans, in Waitrose.
• Where do you get the Liquid Smoke?  Ocado sell a 148ml bottle of Stubbs Liquid Smoke for £1.89, so I based the cost on that.  My bottle is years old.

- Pam

Recipe Tuesday: Not quite Mr Julian's Dhal

There are a thousand recipes for dhal.  I like dhal.  For me, it's an ideal comfort food: tasty, filling, healthy/nutritious, cheap and kind to my irritable-bowel-syndrome-gallbladder-free-long-suffering gut.  

To me, the smell of yellow dhal cooking is the smell of the Middle East.   In 2012, when we were visiting Oman, we dropped in on my brother-in-law for lunch and "Mr Julian", the chef in the officers' mess fed us yellow dhal and roti for lunch.  It's what BIL and his colleagues ate every day.  I begged "Mr Julian" for his recipe, which he kindly and bemusedly wrote down for me.    He seemed quite taken aback that I would want something that simple but we explained that it was something most Brits didn't know how to cook.  (Incidentally, I am using parentheses because I'm fairly certain that "Mr Julian" isn't his real name, but instead is an anglicanisation.  I think he was Bangladeshi.)

When I got back to the UK, I attempted to make Mr Julian's Dhal.  The first stumbling block was that he'd written "curry powder" on the spice list, which left me mystified until BIL explained it was Garam Marsala.  (I don't use commercial curry powder and didn't have a clue what blends are available in Oman.) Once that mystery was solved, I made a couple of batches then added the recipe to that precious pile of paper and plastic where all loose recipes ended up, on the corner of the bookcase in the old, pre-renovated kitchen. 

 A few months ago, I thought I'd have another go.  I really fancied eating dhal for lunch.  Sadly, I hunted high and low and couldn't find the precious slip of paper with the recipe.  I went through the cookbooks; it wasn't tucked inside.  I tried a couple of recipes from the Curry Club cookbooks but they weren't the same (one required so many whole peppercorns that even my spice tolerant stomach complained).  In the end, I resorted to the recipe that was on the back of the Natco Chana Dal packet, adding garam marsala and veg at salient points and hoping for an approximation of Mr Julian's Dhal.  I remember his boiled the dhal with turmeric and a tablespoon of garam marsala, but I can't remember what other spices he used, if any.  This, though, was nearly as good and I made a pot of it for my lunches for work this week:-

(Almost) Mr Julian's Dhal

Makes 7 portions.  Total cost £1.97, assuming 5p for the cost of the bulk-bought spices

 

Ingredients

300g yellow split peas/Chana dhal. (67.5p)

1tsp turmeric

1tblsp garam marsala

1/2 tsp salt

Boiling water

 

The Tarka

1 tbsp. oil (3p)

1 onion sliced (12p)

100-150g mushrooms, sliced (25p)

1 large clove garlic, crushed (5p)

1 tsp ground chilli 

2 cups frozen mixed veg (30p)

1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes (25p)

Optional:  A handful of fresh spinach leaves or leftover rocket from a bag of salad leaves. (25p)

Optional:  a tblsp or so of fresh coriander leaves, chopped 

 

The Rice

1.5 cups basmati rice (12p)

3 cups boiling water

 

Method

 

1.       Pour the dhal into a sieve and rinse well in fresh water.  It doesn't need soaking..

2.       Boil the kettle.  Meanwhile, measure the dhal in a jug, make a note of the volume measurement and pour into a saucepan.  Add twice as much boiling water.  (The packet said to use 1 litre of water for 300g of dhal but that took considerable simmering to be absorbed..)

3.       Stir in the turmeric, salt and the garam marsala, bring back to the boil and simmer until the dhal is soft and most of the liquid is absorbed.  Stir regularly.   The dhal will be cooked after 20-25 minutes but it takes a while until the liquid is almost gone.  (Note:  when it reaches the point where it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan, that’s when it’s ready.)

4.       Meanwhile, make your Tarka:

a.       Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion until soft. 

b.      Add the mushrooms and continue frying until most of the water they make has evaporated.  Then stir in the crushed garlic.

c.       Have your frozen mixed veg ready on the side.    Sprinkle the chilli over the contents of your frying pan and stir fry until the aroma rises.  Stir in the frozen veg and fry until all their water has evaporated.

d.      Add the tomatoes and fry until most of their liquid is gone, stirring occasionally.  Stir in the spinach and coriander if using and cook until wilted.  Switch off until the dhal is ready.

5.       To make the rice using the absorption method:-

a.       Boil the kettle again.

b.      Measure out your rice and put in a saucepan with a tight fitting lid.

c.       Cover with twice as much boiling water.

d.      Bring back to the boil and boil for 2 minutes.  (Use a timer.)

e.      Switch off the heat.  Cover the saucepan with its lid and leave to sit for at least 12 minutes.

f.        It is now ready to serve.

6.       When your dhal is ready, stir in the tarka.  Taste and season as necessary.  Serve over rice.

 

Notes:

• As you can see from the photo, this is great for lunch boxes for work.  It freezes well.  Defrost and then zap for 2 minutes in the microwave or until piping hot.
• Instead of using frozen mixed veg, you can use any leftover cooked vegetables you have to hand.  This works well with grilled peppers or roasted mix veg (e.g. Sliced onions, mushrooms, peppers, courgettes tossed in oil and herbs and roasted for half an hour or so in a hot oven).

 

Recipe Tuesday: Middle-Eastern Chicken Livers

This past weekend, was one of those which you look forward to for weeks, involving lots of planning when you think everything is coming together really well and then it all falls apart spectacularly.  Saturday was the FA Cup Final, Chelsea vs Arsenal. Being season ticket holders at Chelsea, DH and I managed to secure tickets so went to Wembley.  We lost.  The final score of 2:1 to Arsenal does not do justice to how terrible Chelsea played.  Without some miracle defending in the first half, the score would have been 5:1.

Sunday, the RPG I play in nearly got derailed by a certain participant's sense of humour.  One of our party is schizophrenic.  This person thought it would be funny to wind him up.  It isn't.  It is nasty.  And the GM let him know in no uncertain terms that such behaviour was not tolerable.  But it led us down a rabbit hole, we'd rather have avoided.

Yesterday, was a quiet, pottering around sort of day.  Monday was a bank holiday in the UK, so we slept in and watched far too much pre-recorded TV.   Any hope of attacking the lawn - in desperate need of a mow - or planting out the courgettes was derailed by rain.   Then along came dinner.  Recipe below.  I'd reached the final stage, where you stir in the yoghurt, when I opened the tub that had been lurking in the fridge for a few weeks and realised it was furry.  Definitely growing some sort of white fungi or bacteria.   Help!

DH came to the rescue, popping to the shops at the end of the street, while I switched everything off and stirred like mad to prevent the chicken livers over-cooking while we waited.  

Years ago, I wrote a blog post about chicken livers and I was quite surprised to discover that I hadn't included this recipe in it.  This is the first, non-pate chicken liver dish that I learned to cook.  It originally came from one of those week-by-week compendiums, collect all the parts and build yourself an amazing recipe collection, etc...  (You know the type.).  This is my version:

Middle-Eastern Chicken Livers

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons oil/schmaltz 

350g-500g Chicken Livers

1 large onion chopped

150g mushrooms, sliced

1 large clove garlic, crushed

2 peppers/capsicum sliced (green or red are best for colour contrast)

2 carrots, sliced

1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce

400ml plain yoghurt

A tablespoon of chopped coriander 

Spices

1 teaspoon curry powder (see note below)

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground paprika

1 teaspoon flour (plain, self-raising or cornflour will do)

Rice

1.5 cups Basmati rice

3 cups boiling water

Method

1. Put the kettle on to boil for your rice.  Meanwhile, prep all your veg.  When the kettle has boiled, measure your rice into a saucepan with a tight fitting lid, add twice as much volume of boiling water, cover and boil for 2 minutes.  Switch off and leave undisturbed for 15 minutes.
2. Combine the spices in a small ramekin dish.  Stir in a tablespoon or two of water to form a thick paste.
3. Heat the cooking fat in a deep frying pan.  Fry the onion until it is soft and clear.
4. Add the mushrooms.   Fry, stirring occasionally, until the mushroom water is almost evaporated then add the garlic and the peppers, stirring occasionally until the peppers have softened.
5. Decant the veggies into a bowl.  Return the frying pan to the heat, add a little more oil if necessary.  Turn the heat down.  Spread the chicken livers over the hot surface.  Fry until browned on all sides and the livers are firm.  (Be gentle with the heat or they will toughen.)
6. Return the veggies to the pan.  Add your spices and fry until the aroma rises.  Stir in the yoghurt, Worcestershire sauce and the carrots.  Bring to a gentle simmer and simmer for five minutes, stirring occasionally.  
7. Scatter over the coriander and serve.  Enjoy

 

Notes

• If you keep kosher, this works with soy-based non-dairy "yoghurt".
• If you keep kosher and kosher your livers with flame before cooking with them, skip step 5.  Add your spices to the frying vegetables, then stir in the livers and proceed as per step 6 above.
• I use home made curry powder, aka "Curry Powder Number 1".  In a small spice jar mix:  1 teaspoon of ground chilli, 2 teaspoons ground cumin, 2 teaspoons paprika, 1 teaspoon ground turmeric and the seeds from 6 green cardamom pods.  Put the lid on tight and shake vigorously to blend.  This is Curry Powder Number 1.

Recipe Tuesday: Pilchard Madras

In case you've never come across the term before, "pilchard" is the Cornish name for a large sardine.  In Britain, while fresh sardines are sold as "sardines", "pilchards" are sold canned, usually in a tomato sauce but sometimes in brine.  Like regular cans of sardines - the small flat tins you can buy the world over -  the taste and smell is quite strongly fishy.  Despite this, they're a useful storecupboard item.  They're sold in 14oz/400g tins, currently for £1.09 each.   One can should feed four.

I like to cook them in a Madras curry, which mitigates the fishy flavour.  The original was made in a moment of pure inspiration, several years ago, and now I make it once in the blue moon, when I haven't preplanned dinner and fancy a curry.  That was the case a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

Like all my curries, it's a one pot meal, padded with veggies (in this case, the last of the carrots which were half dead in the fridge).  Just add rice (which I have done, below).  For instructions on cooking a "regular" meat Madras, see the notes below the recipe.

Pilchard Madras

Makes 4 generous portions.  Total cost, including rice, £2.41.

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped (12p)

1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed (5p)

100g-200g  mushrooms, sliced. (35p)

(Or, instead of the above, use a portion of base)

1x400g tin Pilchards in tomato sauce. (£1.09) 

1x400g tin chopped tomatoes (25p)

Additional veg:  e.g. 2-3 large carrots sliced or 1-2 peppers/capsicum, cubed, or a cup of frozen mixed veg (whatever is available) (15p)

1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil (I use rapeseed). (3p)

2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice (from a bottle). (5p)

Spices 1 (20p)

1 teaspoon ground chilli (more if you like heat)

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground fenugreek

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 whole green cardamom

Spices 2  

1 desertspoon garam marsala

1 desertspoon chopped fenugreek leaves (optional)

Rice

1.5 cups basmati rice or white, long grain rice (12p)

3 cups Boiling water

Method

1. Combine spices 1 in a small ramekin dish.  Add a tablespoon or two of water to form a thick paste and set aside.  (This will help stop the spices burning.)
2. Heat your oil in a deep saucepan or large, deep frying pan.  Fry the onion until soft and glassy, stirring occasionally.  Add the mushrooms and, when they have made water and most of their water has evaporated, add the crushed garlic.  Continue frying for 1-2 more minutes.
3. Make sure you have your tins of tomatoes and pilchards open.  Stir Spice 1 into the onion mix and fry until the aroma rises. 
4. Quickly add your tins of tomatoes and pilchards, breaking up the pilchards with your wooden spoon/spatula as they land in the pan.  Stir in well.
5. Add your optional veggies.  Bring to the boil, stirring all the time, then turn down to a simmer.  Stir occasionally.
6. At this point, put the kettle on to boil for the rice.  When the kettle has boiled, measure out your rice and pour it into a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid.  Cover the rice with twice the volume of boiling water.  Bring the saucepan back to the boil, cover with the lid and boil for 2 minutes.  Switch off the power and leave it to situndisturbed for 15 minutes, or until the rice is cooked and all the water is absorbed.
7. Immediately after you have switched off the rice, stir Spices 2 into your curry.  Simmer until the rice is done, stir in the lemon or lime juice and  serve.

Notes:-

• To cook a regular meat Madras, add a step between step 1 and step 1 above. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil/cooking fat and brown 1lb/500g of cubed beef/lamb/chicken/pork.  Remove the browned meat to a plate, then proceed with steps 2, 3 and 4, returning the meat to the pan at step 4.  In step 5, simmer the meat mixture for an hour or until it is cooked and can be cut with a fork, stirring occasionally and adding extra water if it gets too dry.  Once the meat is tender, proceed with the remainder of the recipe  
• I buy my spices in 500g bags from the Asian section of the supermarket or from Asian shops like Wing Yip and store them in old Douwe Egberts coffee jars. This is the cheapest way to buy them. Given how long they last, etc, I reckon 20p is a fair assessment of the cost of all the spices listed.
• When you are feeling flush, buy big bunches of fresh fenugreek and coriander.  Wash them, chop them and freeze them loosely packed into the largest ziplock bags you can find. (You want to be able to break up the herbs when frozen.).  When you need fresh herbs to finish off a curry, add a spoonful/lump or two straight from the freezer. 
• All the prices above are based on the cheapest option from Tesco.  Yes, you can get tins of chopped tomatoes for 25p, but only when they're on a 4 for £1 offer, when I usually stock up.

Recipe Tuesday: Bread and Cheese Pudding

One of the websites I frequent is MoneySavingExpert.  A couple of weeks ago, their weekly newsletter had a give-away/competition:  win a copy of somebody's new cookbook full of £1 meals.  Sounds great!  Just the sort of cookbook that I'd enjoy reading and stealing ideas from.  Until I read the small print on the blurb at the back of the book....  Each portion of food costs £1.  Then I saw red.

Let me spell it out to you.  Since your average recipe makes four portions of a meal, that means each recipe actually cost £4.  Not £1.

It was a book of £4 dinners, not £1 dinners.  On the basis of this book, any fool can make a beef chilli, using supermarket standard ingredients and have spent less than £1 per portion.  Hell, I can do it using beef from my (expensive) Kosher butcher and have cash left over.  Talk about misleading marketing!  Some poor person, who is struggling to make ends meet, will buy that book based on the title and the fact that it was mentioned in MSE's newsletter.  Instead of getting something that will actually help them save money, they'll just get a cookbook full of all the recipes that don't involve roast dinners.

So in the spirt of "beat them at their own game", I have decided to publish a series of very cheap-to-cook recipes, tagging them as <£2dinners.   Here is the first.  The cost of each item is in brackets after its listing. All items are supermarket cheapest, "value" own-brand.

Bread and Cheese Pudding.

Serves 4.  Total cost £1.89

Ingredients

Four slices of bread, cut in half diagonally (5p)
325g can sweet corn kernels, drained (35p)
200g can tuna, drained (65p)
2 eggs (12p each = 24p)
250ml milk (25p)
75g mature cheddar cheese, grated (35p)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Layer the bread, tuna and sweet corn  in a lasagne dish, so that the bread points stick up and each slice of bread has some tuna and corn between it and the next one.
3. Scatter over the grated cheese.
4. In a measuring jug, combine the eggs and the milk and whisk until well combined.  Add a grind or two of black pepper.
5. Pour the egg mixture over the bread.
6. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the egg mixture has set.

Yummy!

(As an aside, Blogger's reluctance to update their App is really beginning to wind me up.   I'm writing this on my iPad, via the web browser.  Uploading the photo for today's post was a nightmare.)

Recipe Tuesday - Chocolate Brownies

(Yes, I know the date stamp below says "Wednesday", but as I type this on Wednesday morning it is still Tuesday evening in California, so I figure this squeaks under the wire.)

Everywhere I've worked in the UK, it's traditional for the birthday girl/boy to bring cakes into the office to celebrate their birthday.  Breaking with the shop-bought norm, a couple of weeks ago I decided I'd bake chocolate brownies, which is what I took into the office on Monday.  They went down a treat!

In the end, I had to make two batches on Sunday.The first batch  were too gooey - our combi oven is on its last legs (we've ordered a replacement) and didn't hold its temperature well, so I got the timing wrong for it.   For the second batch, I used a proper oven - the fan oven on the stove - and they turned out perfectly.

Chocolate Brownie Recipe - makes 16 - 20

Ingredients:

110g dark chocolate  (I used 50% stuff from Lidl)

110g butter

225g self-raising flour (or 225g plain flour plus 2 teaspoons baking powder)

40g cocoa powder

275g soft dark muscovardo sugar

4 eggs, beaten

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a medium sized saucepan, over a low heat.  (Or use a large bowl suspended over a saucepan filled with boiling water.)
3. Stir in the sugar and keep stirring until combined.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the eggs.
5. Add the cocoa and flour (plus baking powder if using).  Whisk until all ingredients are combined and there are no lumps.
6. Line a large rectangular baking dish with silicon baking paper (I think mine is 30cm by 20cm and 2cm deep).  Pour in the mixture.  It may not spread all the way to the edge.  Don't worry about that.
7. Bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes.  If you stick it with a knitting needle, the needle should be slightly sticky but not covered in goo.  Turn out onto a cake rack and allow to cool.
8. Once cool, cut into 16 or 20 squares.  Store in an airtight container.

Notes

Mixing - I mixed this by hand using a balloon whisk.

Flour - I used what I have in stock, which is wholemeal chapatti-bread flour and added baking powder.

Eggs - The second time I made this yesterday, I only had 3 eggs.  Turned out slightly stiffer and a fraction smaller but otherwise fine.

Time - takes 5 minutes to measure all the ingredients.  Another 5-10 minutes to melt the chocolate and butter and combine everything into a batter.

Doubling up - The first time I made this recipe, four months ago, I made a double quantity.  It works well but you get a lot of brownies.  

Enjoy!

- Pam

A very un-Kosher pasta dish

Sometimes, a recipe comes from almost nowhere.  That's what happened with this.  A chance glance at a photograph on the BBC Good Food website, led to me dreaming up this recipe on my drive home from work a couple of weeks ago.  It was so visceral, I could almost taste it.  In the end, I gave into my cravings, dug out the non-kosher cookware and came up with this:

Bacon and cream cheese pasta

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

150g bacon trimmings

1 onion sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
100g mushrooms, sliced
250ml dry white wine
200g cream cheese
30g or so of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (real "parmesan" not that Danish fake rubbish)
500g pasta shapes (I used quills because that is what I had)

Method

• Put the water on to boil for the pasta.  Cook the pasta according to the packet's directions.
• Meanwhile, prepare the onion, garlic and mushrooms and proceed with the rest of the recipe.
• In a non-stick frying pan, dry fry the bacon until the fat begins to run.  Stir occasionally.
• Once there is fat in the frying pan, add the onion and continue frying it until the onion becomes glassy/clear.

  

• Stir in the mushrooms and the garlic.  Continue frying, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have made water and it has evaporated.
• Pour in the white wine and bring to the boil.  Stir in the cream cheese and keep stirring until it has melted and the sauce is creamy.  Switch off the heat and stir in the parmesan.

 

• Drain the pasta and return it to the saucepan.  Pour over the sauce.  Season with freshly ground pepper and serve.

  

 

Enjoy.

 

- Pam