Where did Christmas go? Meal planning for New Year.

Did you see it? That was Christmas, that was!

Flipping heck!  Blink and you'd miss it - that's how Christmas was in our house this year.

We spent a good month working towards it and in an instant it's gone.  I suppose it's very much like making a good dinner.  You spend what seems like ages planning, shopping, then creating and cooking, only to have it devoured in less than five minutes, where after it becomes just a memory.  Makes you wonder why we do it, really!

Oh and I know I've yet to blog any of the recipes from last week.  All I can say is "patience, young Padawan!", they'll get blogged as soon as I can spend the time to do so!

I thought that, before I got cracking on blogging the lovely recipes that came out of the Christmas week, I'd better get on with blogging our plans for the week leading up to New Year's Day, or it would have passed us by without any word about it!

Son & heir very kindly passed his sniffles on to hubby, who contracted a nasty case of Man Flu over Christmas.  Fortunately, he was just on the upside of it when Christmas Day struck, so was able to enjoy what was, for us, a very quiet day.  I was determined that the nastiness should not breach my defences and so had nothing to do with it.  Right up until about 3 days ago, when I started feeling a bit rough.  However, I seem to have gained the upper hand without any noses starting to drip or hacking coughs becoming evident, and I'll settle for that!

Because of all this feeling below par, the first few days of this week have been a bit low-achieving on the meal front.  Consider it the culinary equivalent of treading water, before getting back into the kitchen in a big way again.

I got three new cookbooks over Christmas - Rose Prince's Kitchenella (my favourite cook book of all time) as a gift from son & heir, James Martin's Desserts as a gift from my brother & his family and Michel Roux's Eggs which I won in a competition run by Clarence Court (the source of the lovely Burford Brown).  So you can imagine, it wouldn't take long for me to get back in harness again - I've so much inspiration, from those three books alone!

Here's the plan for this week's menus :

Tues : High Tea including party nibbles like mini Duck Spring Rolls, Jalapeno Mozzarella

bites, Spicy Chicken Kebabs and a cheeseboard.

Weds : Pizza

Thurs : Sausage, Mash, Baked Beans & Peas

Fri : Lamb rice with golden onions

Sat : Tarragon chicken with gnocchi

Sun : Pork Ballotine, Parsnip & Sweet Potato roast, Baby Aubergines & Courgettes

in lemon vinaigrette followed by Chocolate Mousse

Mon : Tuna Pasta Bake.

So you can see how the week progresses to the crescendo of New Year's Day, followed by the return to "treading water" on the Monday!

Friday's Lamb rice with golden onions is a recipe taken from Rose Prince's Kitchenella and aside from sounding gorgeous, it looks really incredibly simple to prepare.  I'm all for "incredibly simple", right at the moment.

The Tarragon Chicken and gnocchi is one I've done before - quite recently - and it was very well received, so it will be a nice warm-up to the following day's culinary endeavours.

The Pork Ballotine is a home-brewed recipe, conjured up by hubby and I during a quiet moment on Boxing Day.  The idea is, to take a pork fillet and very nearly cut it in half but instead opening it out, then flattening it and thinning it until you achieve sufficient to wrap around some stuffing.

The stuffing will be formed primarily by laying a little stuffing mix of pork sausage meat with flavourings such as pine nuts, sage, prunes and sauteed onion along the pork, followed by slices of chicken breast, followed by a little more stuffing.  The whole lot is rolled, wrapped in cling film and cooked sous vide style, in the slow cooker.  Just prior to service, the ballotine is unwrapped and pan fried in butter to give it colour and flavour.  Well, that's the plan.

I'll be serving it with an Ottolenghi recipe - the Parsnip & Sweet Potato roast, on a few Rocket leaves for colour.  Extra vegetables will be provided by griddled baby aubergines and courgettes, dressed with a parsley & lemon vinaigrette.

Sounds good - we'll wait to see whether it IS good!

New Year's standby dessert : Xmas Pud!

I've also got some good dark chocolate left over from Boxing Day's Avocado Pie, which I intend on making into a chocolate mousse.  I've never made a chocolate mousse before, so fingers crossed it works out well!  I've found a super-easy recipe that's just melted chocolate, cream, egg yolks and beaten egg whites (in a nutshell) and I reckon that if I make it the day before, if it turns out to be disgusting, well I've always got the remainder of the Christmas pudding to break out!

Having detailed all that, you can probably understand why we're going for the easy option on the Monday!

We'll be trialling gluten-free corn pasta in the Tuna Pasta Bake, as normal wheat pasta has the unfortunate habit of giving me stomach pains, followed by some quite severe bloating.  I've got enough of a girth, without any bloating adding to the mix!  I seem to recall that we've tried this pasta previously and weren't impressed, but it will be interesting, nonetheless.

Apart from a few forays into "bottom of the fridge vegetable soup" (of which I've just made a Celeriac, Butternut Squash & Carrot version which was top notch), that seems to be everything on my "to cook" list for this week.

We've decided not to make New Year Resolutions this year, but to make New Year Culinary Intentions, instead.  Just got to finalise them, then we'll have a plan to work to for the year.  Love a good plan!

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Keeping the planning straight in the face of many changes!

It all boils down to this .....

For once, there's a fairly good reason why this meal planning post is a tad delayed.

I put the plan together on Monday evening, as usual.  Then, that evening, I watched "The Food Hospital" on Channel 4 (all about using food as medicine), which reminded me that I was going to try to find the website which gave the Inflammation Factor for various foodstuffs.

Versus this!

Having done so, I quickly realised that a great number of the foodstuffs that I had been eating were right up there on the scale of "foods that are really bad for people with inflammatory conditions".  If you consider that both Polymyalgia Rheumatica (inflammation of the blood vessels) and Arthritis (inflammation of the joints) are both conditions that have contributed towards my current disability, then perhaps I needed to do something about it.

Hence, my diet has changed fairly radically - and the menu plan had to be changed along with it. Interestingly, it didn't have to be changed all that much.  I had planned to have Macaroni Cheese on one evening, which has had to be ditched, but otherwise everything else has stayed (pretty much) the same.  It's more a case of changing what I had for breakfast and lunch, rather than the dinner meal.  In brief, the dietary changes involve the loss of a great deal of carbohydrate and the input of foodstuffs with positive scores for inflammation such as mackerel (+465), chilli (+498), green leafy veg etc.

I've got to say, that although I am missing our oaty bread (-49 for 1 ounce), I am absolutely cock-a-hoop about increasing my vegetable consumption.  I absolutely adore veggies of all kinds, so to be "forced" to eat more of them is so far up my street that it's not even funny.

You may notice a change in the types of dishes I'm blogging about, but it will be interesting to see how that change manifests itself - if at all!

No doubt I'll bore you all to tears with talk of "Inflammation Factor" scores (breakfast today - mackerel & horseradish on toast - scored +350, for instance).

So, it's probably a good thing that I didn't do all of this until Monday evening - which was after we'd been to Macdonalds to cheer up a very glum Son & heir.  (It worked, he was much more cheerful after a "Big Tasty" burger).

Here's the plan for this week :

Tues : Macdonalds - Big Tasty burgers all round!

Weds : Prawn Patia, Saag Bhajee & white rice

Thurs : son - pizza, adults - Bacon & brussels sprout risotto

Fri : Chicken & Tenderstem® casserole with cheddar dumplings

Sat : Toad in the hole with carrots, swede & Tenderstem® broccoli

Sun : Roast gammon ham with baked Mozzarella gnocchi

Mon : BBQ glazed pork steaks with baked sweet potatoes and peas.

There now, doesn't really sound like "diet" food does it?  I would say that's because it really isn't "diet" food.  For instance, with the chicken casserole with cheddar dumplings - I will have more of the vegetables than the chicken and dumplings.  So dishes that might score a potential negative score, I'll just have more of the positive scoring elements.  Easy!

I was looking forward to making the Prawn Patia (which is an Anjum Anand recipe) and had sourced an alternative Spinach Bhajee recipe from a curry recipe book that we'd had for donkey's years.

In the event, the Patia was fairly successful but the Spinach wasn't.  At all.  Anyway, I'll leave the explanation of that for the blog posting or I'll be repeating myself - and considering I'm taking Cod Liver Oil capsules at the moment, that's the last thing I want to be doing!

Hubby had a mad rush of blood to the head on Thursday and, instead of making a Bacon, Mushroom & Sundried Tomato risotto, he opted for a Bacon & Brussels Sprout risotto!  This from the man who professes to abhor Brussels Sprouts!  Is it any wonder I get confused?

I'm afraid that again, this is one which will have to wait until its own blog post to be explained fully.  However, the fact that it is getting its own blog post should tell you that I thought it was remarkably successful.

This evening (Friday), we've just had the Chicken & Tenderstem® Broccoli Casserole with Cheddar Dumplings and it was really lovely.  Well done Jo Pratt for putting together such a yummy casserole dish.  If you're curious ahead of the blog post, you can find its original format on the Tenderstem website here.  You won't be surprised to hear that I tinkered about with the recipe a little bit!


Tomorrow is hubby's first go at a Toad in the Hole.  He's bought some lovely chipolata sausages to have in the Toad, as he has a theory as to the length of time a sausage takes to cook -v- the depth of the Yorkshire pudding batter.  We've even bought a new roasting pan especially for the Toad, such is our dedication to getting it right.


I'm looking forward to this one, as I am completely useless at making Yorkshire Pudding. It will be interesting to see how hubby gets on with it - and fingers crossed that he gets a lovely crispy, risen Toad in the hole.


As I said in my last blog post, I am opting for easier dinners on a Sunday for the foreseeable future.  As such, this Sunday I shall be pot-roasting a gorgeous piece of Gammon, which we'll be having with Baked Gnocchi with Spinach, Tomato and Mozzarella (instead of Mascarpone).  Both are simple "assemble, cook and serve" dishes which should go well together.  Hopefully, I'll be capable of getting from the kitchen to the living room this time!

I'm really looking forward to Monday's dinner.  Not because of the pork, although the BBQ glaze sounds really delicious - and I absolutely adore pork - but because of the baked sweet potatoes.  I'll be making chilli cream to go in them again and just know they'll be utterly gorgeous.


Now, as far as additional bits of cooking are concerned, in the pipeline for this week I have a recipe for a lovely Cream of Celery Soup, using some truly gorgeous Fenland Celery that was sent to me to try.  I find it completely bizarre that you can't get Cream of Celery soup any longer and wonder what the majority of the celery crop gets used for!  It probably gets sent abroad because us Brits are useless at finding uses for it - like so many of our fine produce.


Aside from that, I'm just waiting for Son & heir's birthday cake to be finished, whereupon I'll be making an Avocado Pound Cake.  Hopefully this will happen before the beginning of December, as I want to enter the Avocado Brotherhood's "Blog an Avo" competition!


Oh, and of course, I'm trying to find suitable things to have for breakfast.  Breakfast seems to be the hardest meal to fulfil without using carbohydrates.  After all, we get so used to eating cereal and toast!

Jonty is hopeful of a taste!

So far this week, I've had tinned mackerel & horseradish on one slice of toast - which as I said above, worked out to be a positive IF score even with the one slice of toast.  I also had a fresh orange, which bumped the score up a bit.  A spectacular success was the cherry tomato, parsley and chilli omelette (see above), followed by a Kiwi Fruit, which went down extremely well - although timing helps with that one. I tend to have my breakfast when I return home from taking Son & heir to school - which makes eating things like mackerel and chilli a lot easier.  I couldn't eat any of that, having just got out of bed!  Even a cup of tea is often a challenge, first thing in the morning.

If anyone has any bright ideas as to savoury or fruity (particularly citrus - but not grapefruit) items that don't include carbohydrates that can be eaten for breakfast, I'm all ears!

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Baked gnocchi with spinach, tomato & mascarpone

I usually leave a day or so in between trying out a recipe and blogging about it, but the really good ones get blogged earlier than that because, basically, I can't wait to tell everyone about them!

Such is the situation with this Baked gnocchi dish from Jo Romero's Comfort Bites blog.


You know how some recipes strike you instantly as being so "do-able"?  You can see immediately that everyone who will be eating would enjoy the ingredients and the way they have been prepared.  The first time I read through the recipe on Jo's blog, I knew straight away that we'd really enjoy eating this dish.

I felt as though I was cheating a bit, buying a jar of pasta sauce.  However, I'm glad I did as the jar - a sundried tomato sauce from Dress Italian - was very nice with a depth of flavour that I'd have been hard put to have achieved in a home-made sauce (for the same money - just a pound - that is!).


I also added a ball of mozzarella, diced, to the recipe as I know how much Son & heir enjoys the stringiness of cooked mozzarella and anything that helps him over the fact that there's also spinach in the dish, can't be anything but good.


I have given the recipe below, but please note that I'm very definitely not claiming it as mine - it's simply because I've added the mozzarella, which is where my recipe differs from Jo's.

Even if you've never cooked Gnocchi before, this is a perfect introduction to the little darlings.  Flavoursome and rich with the mascarpone balancing the tomato and with the spinach for added texture and flavour, it is truly a lovely thing.  The sheer fact that neither hubby nor Son & heir missed their meat (in case you haven't noticed, it doesn't contain any!) is testament to the satisfaction it delivers.



BAKED GNOCCHI WITH TOMATO, SPINACH & MASCARPONE (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

500g pack of potato gnocchi
500g jar of your favourite tomato based pasta sauce
2 handfuls fresh spinach leaves, washed
About 6 tablespoons mascarpone cheese
A mozzarella ball, diced
Handful of Parmesan.

Method :

1.  Preheat oven to 180C. Heat a large saucepan of slightly salted water until it boils. When the water is boiling, drop in the gnocchi and cook for around 2 minutes, until they puff up slightly and float to the top.

2.  Meanwhile, scatter the washed spinach leaves in the base of a fairly large roasting dish.

3.  When the gnocchi are cooked, drain and tip directly onto the spinach in the dish. Mix slightly, so that the spinach begins to wilt in the steam of the cooked gnocchi. But go careful - you don't want to break them up.

4.  Tip on the tomato sauce and mix again.

5.  With a tablespoon, scoop out dollops of mascarpone and arrange them over the top of the tomato-gnocchi mixture. Sprinkle over the cubed mozzarella and cover with a handful of freshly grated Parmesan and bake for around 30 minutes, until the gnocchi is bubbling and the cheese has melted.

Allow to cool slightly before serving - with a side salad.

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