Cinnamon Plums with Cranberries - light and delicious!

You might recall that I'd been pondering what to do with the punnet and a half of large purple plums that were roosting malevolently in the fridge.

I'd originally bought these plums for Son & heir to take to school for a break time snack (one at a time - not all at once!), however he'd neatly circumvented this well-intentioned idea by taking a chocolate biscuit instead.  By the time we'd worked out that this was going on, we had a surfeit of plums that were past their best and had to devise a new home for the chocolate biscuits.

As for what to use the plums for, well, that was easy.  There were obvious choices such as plum crumble, or plum pie, or even a plum cobbler.  All very delicious - right up until you remember that I'm supposed to be off carbs as much as is humanly possible.  Now I do try to not be selfish, but I'll be blowed if I'm going to spend my time cooking a lovely dessert and not be able to eat any of it!

Now my Mum had prepared a lovely light dessert for when we visited last weekend.  She'd baked halved nectarines with honey and bay leaves, together with raspberries and blueberries - which was completely gorgeous and perfect for anyone conscious of what they're eating.  It was even suitable for diabetics, so long as the honeyed juices were left in the serving dish.

So that got me to pondering on my plums.  I'd bought a punnet of cranberries to use in Red Cabbage with Cranberries (due for dinner tomorrow, with the Corned Beef Pie) but it was obvious that I had way too many cranberries for just that recipe, so I could afford to use a few with the plums.

Bearing in mind the time of year - just coming up to Christmas, when I considered what flavourings to put with the plums, cinnamon sprang immediately to mind quickly followed by a pinch of mace for that sharper note.  I pondered for a moment or two on using a little spiced rum as well, but in the end, opted for taking a little zest from an orange and using the juice as the moisture base.  I thought that the citrus would match up well with the mace - and indeed I was right.  However, if you don't have any mace but do have some spiced rum - go ahead and use it, because I'm sure it would be fab.

The next problem was what to sweeten the whole with.  Bearing in mind the diabetes, I was loath to use plain old granulated sugar.  Remembering my Mum's recipe, I opted for honey.  Yes, it's all sugar - but honey is (apparently) better for diabetics and considering hubby is only just diabetic, as I say, so long as he keeps the sugary juices in the serving dish, he'd be fine.

Well, what a triumph this was.  Incredibly simple to prepare, lavish to look at and gorgeous on the palate - especially with a spoonful of creme fraiche.  I'll very definitely be making this - and ones like it with different fruit - again.  Better than a pot of (albeit very nice) yoghurt for dessert!

CINNAMON PLUMS WITH CRANBERRIES  (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :

6 big fat purple plums
a handful of cranberries
half a tsp of ground cinnamon
a pinch of mace
zest & juice of one orange
3-4 tsp runny honey.

Method :


1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180deg C/350deg F/Gas 4.


2.  Slice and remove the stone from the plums.  Place the slices, cut side up, into a baking dish.  Add the cranberries randomly around the dish.


3.  Sprinkle the fruit with the cinnamon & mace, then grate the orange zest over.


4.  Juice the orange into the dish - it doesn't matter if it washes some of the spices off - it will all add to the flavours.


5.  Drizzle the lot with the honey, then place into the oven for 30-40 minutes.


6.  When the time is up, check that the plums are soft but whole.  Remove and allow to cool slightly, then serve with a spoonful of creme fraiche.


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Sweet chilli chicken stir fry - better than the stuff from a bottle!

Having slipped one stir fry past our son, I thought it might be worth a go to see if another might work.

It took a fair amount of encouragement for the vegetables in his meal to go, but a good 80% of them eventually got eaten.

Now I know of the young teenager's caution at everything green, added to the young male's predictable caution at anything vegetable, however, I have to admit that I just don't understand it.

To me, vegetables are the most glorious ingredients, which should be looked at with almost as much enjoyment and anticipation as a nice piece of beef, or a plate of sausages.  After all, there are just so many of them!  If you were to take me to a greengrocer's shop and ask me to name what of his produce I didn't like, I doubt I could name anything.  Yes, garlic has an uncomfortable effect upon me (makes me itch!) when eaten either raw or in quantity, and yes, I used to be allergic to all forms of onion (before I became pregnant - fine afterwards!).  These are just vegetables that I have a sensitivity to, rather than being actively disliked by me.

However, hubby doesn't like potatoes, peas, broad beans, green beans, most forms of cabbage - including brussels sprouts, any type of cauliflower, marrow - and the list goes on.  It seems to be a texture thing, as well as an odour thing, with him.  If something is of a squishy texture (i.e. overcooked cauliflower, or marrow) or smells of the compost heap (i.e. overcooked cauliflower, or cabbage), then he can't face it.  To give him his due, some of these things he will eat, but without enjoying the experience.

Son & heir seems to also be going down the texture route - as in his dislike of mushrooms and courgettes.  However, he also dislikes anything dark i.e. aubergine.  Interestingly, he won't eat anything remotely caramelised such as the chicken in this stir-fry dish, declaring it "burned".  It makes me wonder whether the "burned" thing subconsciously applies to the aubergine skin, too.  He won't eat a fried or baked tomato, but will happily eat a raw tomato.  He hates sliced onions being apparent in his food, but if you cook them until they disintegrate and are hardly visible, then that's okay.  I could go on.

Hubby reckons that females are the waste disposal units of the human race.  He reckons that a female will eat something that a male will think twice about (stop giggling at the back!) because of procreation.  He figures that females are hard-wired to be in top baby-carrying condition i.e. carrying lots of fat, so as to keep baby well fed until birth and even after, if you take breast-feeding into account - and I think he may have a point.

As someone who has her likes and dislikes - but none of the dislikes would actually prevent me from eating anything - I find it unfathomable that the chaps can be so picky.  Everything out there is just so exciting!  I look at an ingredient, be it a pepper or a pea, and immediately I'm considering what it would go with, what it's flavour is likely to be and how I could present it.  I guess that's what marks me out as a Foodie!

SWEET CHILLI CHICKEN STIR FRY (feeds 3)

Ingredients:

3 skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into thin slices
1 red chilli, chopped
1 garlic clove, grated
2 tbsp runny honey
1 tbsp olive oil
half a pack of egg noodles
1 tsp sesame oil
vegetable oil
vegetables for stir-frying (buy a pre-prepared pack, or select your favourites which should be sliced finely)
1 tbsp Mirrin (or rice wine)
1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp Oyster sauce
juice of half a lemon.

Method :

1.  Place the chicken, plus the chilli, garlic, honey and oil into a plastic bag and massage to make sure the chicken is covered.  Leave to marinade for as long as you've got.

2.  Heat a frying pan until quite hot, then tip the chicken and marinade into it.  Try not to let it poach by keeping the temperature up.  Turn the chicken regularly, until you achieve a golden to dark brown colour and they become glazed.

3.  In the meantime, place the noodles into a large bowl and cover with boiling water.  Cover the bowl and leave until softened.

4.  In the additional meantime, heat a wok or deep frying pan until roasting hot.  Then add the vegetable oil, swiftly followed by the stir fry vegetables.  Add the mirrin, soy sauce and oyster sauce and stir fry until the vegetables are wilted and softened.

5.  Next, drain the noodles & add the sesame oil, giving a light stir to ensure each noodle is covered.  Add them to the vegetable pan and toss the stir fry vegetables through them, coating them in the oyster sauce mixture.  Spoon out onto warmed plates to form a bed and nestle the chicken pieces into bed.  Serve!

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So come on, what's for dinner this week?

OMG Cat is surprised too!

Goodness, I can't quite believe it's Saturday and I'm only just getting around to telling you about what's on the menu for this week!

So, I'd better just get on with it quickly, hadn't I?

Stir fry chicken

Crunchy fish (in breadcrumbs) with vegetable rice

Fish & chips

Devilled sausages & Ottolenghi's Green Couscous

High Tea : tuna sandwiches, ham & peas pudding rolls, coleslaw,

scones & cream

Beef & baby corn curry with rice

Chicken Kiev, Jersey new potatoes, carrots & broccoli.

There now, that's a fairly eclectic mixture!  We were originally going to have Ottolenghi's Kosheri & spicy minced lamb on Thursday, but after a particularly harassing day at work I was bushed and couldn't lift a finger - so we got fish & chips.

After bamboozling our son into accepting a stir fry, I decided to just go for it and put a stir fry on the list.  This one wasn't just a stir fry (as in just veggies), it included noodles and the chicken was prepared separately to the stir fry mix, so as to make it easier to eat for the poor wee soul.

I suppose you could call it Garlic, Chilli & Honey Chicken with Oyster Sauce stir fry - which just about describes it!  Anyway, it was extremely more-ish (which was just as well, because son left quite a bit of his) and is definitely going to appear on the menu list again some day soon.  (Poor son & heir).  I'll be blogging the recipe soon, too - as it's definitely one I'd want to pass on.

Wednesday's dish was all about satisfying hubby's craving for "crunchy fish", which is the frozen fillet of fish that comes in either batter or breadcrumbs.  Every so often he gets a mad craving for it, but this time instead of with chips, he suggested a home-made savoury rice.  Now in the past, home-made savoury rice has been a licence to throw lots of veggies in the bin.  However, this time I made it a personal quest to "up my game" (as they say on Masterchef) and produce something that was as tasty as it was satisfying.

I began by cooking some quartered carrot slices in enough fish stock (from a cube - or two, in fact, as the quantity was well over the 400ml that one stock delivers) to cook the Basmati rice.  After 2-3 minutes, I added the rice.  While that was going on, I cooked a sliced onion in some olive oil until it was golden, then added a little coarse sea salt to it and left it to one side until the rice was done.  In the meantime, I'd added a handful of frozen sweetcorn to the rice pot, then a few minutes later, a handful of frozen peas (all these veggies had to cook within the 9 minutes as stated by the rice packet, so hence the staggered arrival times in the pot).  Next in was a tin of Borlotti beans (for additional protein and fibre) and some chopped celery.

Once the rice was cooked, I tipped three chopped spring onions into the bottom of the colander and drained the rice over the top of them, thus heating them up a little and semi-cooking them.  Then the whole lot went back into the pan, accompanied by a knob of butter and the cooked sliced onion.  I gave the whole lot a mix with a fork (for some reason, mixing with a spoon just turns the rice gloopy - but a fork doesn't.  ~shrug~) and served wit the crunchy fish.  The whole effect was really lovely - in fact, I could have carried on eating the rice and forgotten about the fish.  Regrettably, I didn't catch a photograph of the rice (such was my lack of confidence in it).  The true test of it's validity as a dish however, was that hubby nabbed the leftovers the next day and stir-fried them for his lunch.  Now THAT doesn't happen often!

Thursday was a bit of a washout, owing to the harassing day at work.  It wasn't that people were harassing me, it's just that I had a deadline to make, but other people's deadlines kept getting in the way!  Everybody seemed to need my input, that day.

Just HOW Ottolenghi does that look?

Still, as it turned out, I'm glad that I bumped the Devilled Sausages and Ottolenghi's Green Couscous along until Friday, as I am quite sure the couscous wouldn't have turned out as awesomely fabulous as it did, if I'd have been tired and not too bothered about what I was cooking.

As I've said already, I'll definitely blog the couscous recipe, as it was something of a revelation.

Make it ciabatta instead of a bap, and you've got it!

Tonight, Saturday, is a lovely meal in lots of ways.  We're having High Tea.  This is one of son & heir's favourite types of meals, in that it involves lots of carbohydrate and very little vegetable matter.  *chuckle*  It's fun to have, every so often.  So we'll be having Tuna & mayonnaise sandwiches (maybe with sweetcorn, if I can wangle it), plus Ciabatta Rolls containing ham & pease pudding (a hark back to Hubby's youth in Newcastle), plus coleslaw, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and pickles.  For dessert, we're having fruit scones with cherry compote and clotted cream.  ~sharp intake of breath~  I know!  I haven't even cooked so much as the scones or the compote.  ~hangs head in shame~  But it's a once-in-a-blue-moon occasion.  We'll be making up for it in the days to come.  Gruel for the next three days.  Maybe a lettuce leaf or two, if we're extra good.

Or, perhaps a tad more seriously, on Sunday we'll be having a lovingly-tended, slow cooked beef curry - using Brisket of beef.  In fact, it won't be all that bad for us, as I trim the beef to remove a lot of the fat before cooking and am not intending on including any cream, as I want the full flavour of the brisket to come through.  I'm hoping for a full-bodied beefy curry, only tempered slightly by the inclusion of some baby corn for texture and interest.

So that brings us to Monday, which as it's another working day, I've booked in something that won't cause any arguments over the preparation or eating - Chicken Kiev with new potatoes (Jerseys, in this instance) broccoli and carrots.  Yes, the Kievs have butter in them, but the butter can be trickled over the Jerseys - and the veggies are there to help with our five a day.

Son and heir has decreed that he'll be cooking his chicken dish (wrapped in bacon) for us next Sunday, so that's one day of next week's menus sorted out!  Now all I've got to do is to work out the remaining six dishes before tomorrow - and tell you all about them, before next week is up!

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