Cobbler, Bobotie, Wraps, Curry, Stew & Pasties - meal planning!

Gosh, I must be getting better at this - it's only Wednesday and here's me telling you about this week's meal plans.

Last week finished up okay, with the Corned Beef Pie which I've yet to blog about.  I'm happy that I managed to recreate it as per my memories of the flavours involved - but for me, the real star of that show was the Red Cabbage and Cranberries.  I'll also blog about those, as the recipe could come in very handy for Christmas!

We've finally managed to settle upon what meat we're having as our Christmas dinner.  Thanks to Knorr, we've already done the Turkey - and as we're very unlikely to have cause to invest in such a glorious bird, thought we'd go sideways from the many fowls that are available at Christmas time.  Hence, this year we'll be having Roast Beef.  In fact we've just been and ordered our 1kg of Sirloin, which was the best compromise we could come up with where a piece of Beef was concerned.  You see, hubby would always have a piece of Silverside or Topside because of its lack of fat whereas I would always have a Rib roast because of its marbling of fat.  So, to compromise, we settled on Sirloin as it has a layer of fat which is restricted to one side of the meat.  So now I'll be happy because the fat is there to baste the meat and provide flavour, whereas hubby will be happy because it's easily removed.  Job done.

Now then!  What about this week, I hear you ask?  Here's what's on the menu :

Tue : Pizza

Wed : Sausage & Leek Cobbler with carrots & cabbage

Thur : Bobotie with carrot & parsnip mash and cabbage

Fri : Spicy Chicken Wraps with Salsa & Sour Cream

Sat : Chicken Dopiaza with white rice & puppodums

Sun : Carmargue Beef Daube with Parsnip apple mash & peas

Mon : Ham, cheese & celeriac pasties, baked beans & hash browns.

Well, owing to my having forgotten to do the banking required, we didn't go shopping on Tuesday as normal.  Hence, we all indulged in pizza on "pizza night".

Having corrected the bank account, we set off for the shops today and came back with two packs of Debbie & Andrew's "Perfect Pork" sausages that were at half price.  I think they'll be lovely in the Sausage & Leek Cobbler that's on the menu for this evening.

The Cobbler is another recipe that I made in the days before writing Rhubarb & Ginger, so we've had it before and liked it very much then.  Fingers crossed, we'll like it as much again!

My earlier batch of Bobotie

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Bobotie.  I have made this before, using Rachel Allen's recipe, but this time I'm using a recipe from Kevin Dundon.  It doesn't differ by a lot, but seems a little easier to put together - particularly for a mid-week meal.  The combination of mildly curried lamb mince together with the eggy topping is really moreish.


Friday is son & heir's last day of term, so to celebrate we're having one of his favourite meals - Spicy chicken wraps.  This doesn't involve a whole heap of cooking - just some baking of some breadcrumbed shop-bought spicy chicken pieces which are then sliced and put in a wrap with salsa and soured cream.  I might be able to sneak a little lettuce in there, but only if he's not looking!


I'm going to have a go at creating a Chicken Dopiaza on Saturday.  I've been quizzing both Bipin at Bipin's Curry Pots and Dan from GreatCurryRecipes.net for ideas, so we'll see what I wind up with!


Sunday's Carmargue Beef Daube is a recipe from Trish Deseine that looks gorgeous.  We've been ready for a lovely beef casserole/stew for the last couple of weeks, so the slow cooker will be back in use, while we all gather around it and sniff the delicious aromas.

I'm serving it with a parsnip & apple mash which came from "Affairs of Living" - a wonderful blog site that deals with gluten free and allergen-friendly food.  As you know, I'm supposed to be steering clear of the carbohydrates as much as possible (and have lost 10lbs in weight, owing to this anti-inflammatory style of eating), which is why you won't be finding too many potato or pasta recipes here for a while!  This recipe is intriguing owing to the method, as you are required to roast the ingredients so as to reduce their water content prior to mashing.  Otherwise, as you can probably imagine, mashing parsnips and apples together could get extremely messy.  I am hoping the mash will go very well with the Daube of beef - again, fingers crossed!

Poor ugly celeriac!

So now we're back to Monday.  I found a little recipe (one of the little "afterthought" recipes) in the latest Good Food magazine for Ham & Cheese pasties.  The ingredients (apart from ham & cheese, of course) included potato.  Now, a little potato wouldn't have been an altogether bad thing - but coupled with the pastry, just made it a double felony.  What could I use instead?  Well, you can't make a pasty without pastry - so that had to stay and I needed to find an alternative to the potato.  What flavours go well with ham and cheese, that might also take the form of a carbohydrate replacement?  Why, celeriac of course!  Thinking back to my Cheesy Celeriac Slice, I don't see any reason why these pasties shouldn't wind up being totally delicious.


Apart from all that lot, I'm still pondering on light fruity desserts made with apples, cranberries and plums.  I've got one such in mind that I'm hoping to experiment with tonight, if I get time.  The Cinnamon Plums with Cranberries was so gorgeous and easy to prepare, there has got to be all sorts of different variations on that theme!


I've also got a lot of caraway seeds left over after the Red Cabbage & Cranberries.  I love a good old-fashioned Seed Cake and have been pondering over the combination of an American style pound cake, made with the caraway seeds.  I can't see any reason why it won't work - all I need is the time to give it a go!


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