Kievs, devilment, soup and salads ... meal planning in reverse!

I thought, because I haven't posted much in the way of anything just lately, that I'd give a quick rundown on what has come out of my kitchen recently.  With both successes and failures - sometimes both at once, depending on everyone's preferences - it makes an interesting mix!

So let's start with one which everyone liked at least one part of - my devilled sausages.  I served these little lovelies (see recipe here) with some home made coleslaw (white cabbage, carrot & onion all sliced finely, mixed with some raisins, Greek yoghurt & mayonnaise), beetroot and a really tasty rice salad.  The rice salad was made with a simple mix of cooked cooled white basmati rice, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, sweetcorn, chopped rocket and small cubes of cheddar cheese.  Once a lovely dressing had been added, along with seasoning to taste (I used a Suzanne's fat free dressing of blackberry, cardamom & chilli), the whole thing came together beautifully.  You can guarantee that even with a rice salad disliking teenager at the table, the sausages and coleslaw will go - and some rice salad went along with it, so I call that a success.

Travelling back on the school run one morning, hubby and I both were overcome with a mushroom lust.  Fortunately Sainsbury's is en route, so a quick stop for supplies meant we could have mushrooms on toast for brunch upon our return.  Yum.

Cooked until softened in a little butter, then seasoned with salt and pepper and given a quick splosh with a little mushroom ketchup, these little lovelies were gorgeous on some sourdough bread we had left over.  Toasted and buttered, it was simple and delicious.

Many moons ago, we made the mistake of introducing our son to chicken Kiev.  Not home made chicken Kiev, but the supermarkets' own version of chicken Kiev - one which is made of munched up and stuck back together again chicken, made into a dome with a tiny teaspoonful of garlic butter inside the cavernous waste that is each Kiev's centre.  He loved them then and every so often he requests them again.

Now for all that I have described them with an element of disdain, it is fond disdain as I really quite enjoy a Kiev myself.  It takes me back to when I had the horses and would come in at 9pm starving hungry.  I'd throw a couple of Kiev's in the oven and a packet of savoury rice into the microwave and 20-30 minutes later, sit down to a hot dinner.   I thoroughly enjoyed the Kiev dinner that hubby rustled together, as pictured above.  I know - I should be ashamed of myself and somewhere under the "Mmmmnnn...", I am.  Honest.

Surely everyone likes a jacket potato, don't they?  Even my hubby likes a twice baked Jacket Potato (more on those, in another post!).  In this instance, however, I was suddenly overcome with the desire for mackerel and as I had some salad left over, it made sense to combine the lot for lunch.  The mackerel came out of one of these little tins of mackerel fillets, but I'm fairly sure it still qualifies as being good for you!  In fact, if you totted up the inflammatory -v- non-inflammatory points, just putting the mackerel on the plate cancelled out any non-inflammatory points the remainder might have had!  A scrummy lunch.

So, how do you like the look of my thick chicken and vegetable soup?  It was intended to be chicken and dumpling soup, however like Topsy it kind of grew in the making and it seemed to us that dumplings would be overkill.

I basically emptied the vegetable drawer of the fridge onto the tray upon which I carry ingredients about the kitchen - and only put back things like cucumber and beetroot.  Following a quick rummage in the freezer, which gleaned the sweetcorn and peas, I was good to go.

The chicken was pan fried to a light golden colour, then shredded and finished its cooking in the soup stock.  Done this way, you gain flavour from the caramelisation on the chicken, but retain the softness that is inherent with chicken breast.

I included such lovely winter warmers as pearl barley and red lentils for thickeners and of course used the lovely Essential Cuisine Chicken Stock as the stock base.  Making the soup was a simple matter of chopping the vegetables to a suitably small size and putting them into the pot in the right order, depending on how long each took to cook!  I started off with the classic onion and garlic, followed by the celery, carrot and potato, then the stock, barley and lentils - finishing up with the softer vegetables and herbs.  With some crusty sourdough bread, the soup made a lovely hearty meal and it truly is the kind of soup that you can throw just about anything at.

Lastly - for this instalment, anyway - we have the sad case of the Merguez sausage.  Oh dear, what a tale of uncertainties, changes of mind and mistaken identities.  You see, hubby had a risotto in mind.  It involved lamb and possibly preserved lemon.  At this stage, it was just "in mind", you know - evolving.  I suggested to him that Merguez sausage might be good as the lamb component.  I knew that Asda do 4 or 5 Merguez sausages within the right price range and also knew that they were, to a large part, lamb.  However, what I didn't realise then was that Asda's Merguez sausages were, to a large part, beef.  ~rolls eyes~  I suppose they have to keep the price down somehow and there are cuts of beef that are a lot more economical to use than lamb.  However, being this charitable is with the benefit of hindsight.  That wasn't what I was saying once they were in my fridge and I'd read the ingredients list.

Being such a large part beef, made them useless for hubby's risotto.  So there they were, sitting in the fridge with no job to do.  Not only that, but because we'd never had them before and the ingredients list was unexpected, we had no idea how they tasted to be able to include them in a recipe somewhere.  There was only one thing to be done - cook them and eat them for lunch with a salad.

As it turned out, they were entirely wrong for the risotto hubby had evolving in his head - but would be great for another kind of risotto some other day.  They leach a gorgeous spicily flavoured, coloured oil once heated up - in the same way that chorizo does - and have a hint of lambiness in their flavour, but to be honest, I'd have been hard pressed to have told you what meat they tasted of.  They are certainly spicy - but not in a chilli sort of way.  More of a paprika and cumin sort of way that would make them ideal for all sorts of dishes.  So now we know - and I'm sure one day they'll appear in a more creative concept than beside some salad!

So just to whet your appetite, for my next instalment of meal planning in reverse, we've got some BBQ, more mackerel, that risotto and an awesome roast pork dinner amongst other things.  Can't wait!

Meal Planning around your son's social life

It seems as though, having hit 13yrs, suddenly our son is taking off with a social life that involves the evenings instead of just weekends and school holidays.

For years, we've been trying to get him to go to after-school clubs (and have been a wee bit successful, in parts) and to take part in after-school events.  However, he seems to be taking after me and was happy to remain a homebody.

However, now he's 13, son & heir is finding his wings!

This week, therefore, is a case of meal planning around his appointments and a visit to my parents.

Monday (Turkey Curry night) involved making dinner very much earlier than usual, in order to get son & heir back to school to take part in "Rock School" (as in "Rock and Roll", rather than the close inspection of geological formations).  Fortunately, as the curry included pre-cooked Turkey, it was simple and quick to make.  Son & heir had a great time practicing to be a rock star, whilst hubby and I sat in Macdonald's car park and enjoyed a large cup of their delicious coffee each.  We'll get our reward once he's famous, I'm sure.

By the way - how is it that Macdonalds manages to sell such lovely coffee?  We reckon they have to be putting something addictive in it that makes you come back for more.  There's no "gentle sipping" involved with a Macdonalds coffee - it's a consistent "down the hatch!" until it's gone, swiftly followed by much sorrowful peering into the bottom of the cup, wishing it would fill up again.

Here's how the rest of the week is shaping up :

Tues : Son & heir - Pizza, Adults - Pizza Tart & Zesty Beetroot Salad

Weds : Chicken Casserole & Sweet Potato Wedges

Thurs : Chilli con Carne with rice

Fri : Turkey & Bacon Pie with carrots, parsnips & tenderstem broccoli

Sat : Dinner at lunchtime, so sandwiches for tea

Sun : yet to be decided

Mon : Devilled sausages, sweet potato mash & peas.

We had the Pizza Tart last night and although the concept requires some fine tuning, the flavours were there.  The tart utilises chorizo, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese - so it's easy to tell how nice it was.  The mistake I made was not frying off the mushrooms before using them on the tart and as a consequence, a lot of water escaped from them.  I salvaged the situation and, when I blog about it, will take that into account in the recipe.

Wednesday's Chicken Casserole is one I found on the Good Food Channel's website.  It doesn't appear to be attributed to anyone - but if you recognise it as yours, let me know and I'll give you the proper mention.  In the meantime, consider yourself mentioned by proxy!

It's an interesting recipe, using sherry, cloves, green peppers, raisins and green olives.  I'm really not at all sure how son & heir is going to receive it, but it sounds good to me!

Thursday is son & heir's Jazz Club night when he plays bass guitar with the Jazz Band and which takes place immediately following school.  However, we have to be picking him up at the time I would normally be cooking the dinner - which requires a bit of forethought and planning.  This week, we've opted for a chilli con carne which hubby will cook in the day.  That'll leave us to heat up the chilli and cook some rice, which shouldn't make dinner late.

Friday is the next "Turkey leftover" night, in which I'll be making a Turkey & Bacon pie.  The cooked Turkey meat has been in stashed in the freezer and I've kept back a few rashers of that wonderful Emmett's streaky bacon.  I've also retained half the pack of chestnuts, which I'm going to include (chopped finely) in the pastry for the pie.  If it turns out how my imagination is seeing it, it should be really lovely.

Saturday is a "back to front" day, as (assuming my Mum is okay - she's experiencing arthritis problems with her knees, too, now!) we should be visiting my parents.  They live very locally to us, so we'll be able to leave the three dogs at home - which saves having to worry about muddy paw prints across their carpets!  So we'll, effectively, be having lunch at dinner time, that day.

Sunday is another weird one, as we're going to see Mike Dawes & Amy Turk perform at the Bournemouth Folk Club.  We'll be eating while we're out, so it's going to be a light snack before we go, if anything.  Both Mike (guitar) & Amy (harp) have such amazing touch and ability with their instruments, they are just mesmerising to watch - and extremely agreeable to listen to.  Mike has been such an inspiration to Son & heir regarding his guitar playing, too.

 Following all that excitement, I felt the need for something homely and yummy - so will be trotting out the good old Devilled Sausages, along with sweet potato mash and peas for Monday evening.  I reckon we'll all be flagging a bit by then and they'll warm the cockles of our hearts, without having to slave for hours over a hot stove.  Couldn't be better!

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Devilled Sausages & Fruity Quinoa Salad

Time has run away with me again!  How does it do that?  ~scratches head~  Well, I suppose it's down to having Son & heir home from school.  Tending to the requirements of his social life can leave you with little time left to do anything else!

So.  We'd got up to the Devilled Sausages with Fruity Quinoa Salad, I believe.  Hmmn, well, the sausages were great as ever (see recipe, below) but the jury is still out as regards the Quinoa.

I've said in previous blog posts how much I dislike having anything gritty.  Well, that includes quinoa with little tiny pieces of grit in it.  Does quinoa usually contain small pieces of grit, or was I unlucky, or maybe I bought a cheap & cheerful variety?  Certainly, if grit is a feature of a quinoa salad, you can count me out of future quinoa adventures.  I darned near broke a tooth on a small stone I encountered while I was tasting for seasoning.  I know the packet recommends that you rinse the quinoa very well before cooking, but I was under the impression that this was to improve the flavour, rather than wash out the gravel!

So, gravel aside, quinoa seems to have another problem.  I don't much like the way it stayed wet (yes, I drained it very well and it was still hot when I drained it).  Pasta and rice both dry off when you drain them, however not so quinoa.  Having put the dressing onto the salad, everything was becoming somewhat waterlogged and soggy.  I was very careful to not over-cook the grains, but of course, being the first time I'd cooked it I don't rule it out as a  possibility.  So, looking at the photograph here - what do you think? Does it look over-cooked?

Apart from those two problems, the quinoa salad wasn't exactly a hit as the dried fruit mixture proved to be way too sweet and dominated the flavour.  Even with fresh coriander, lemon juice, garlic and Dijon mustard involved, the sweetness just stomped all over that lot, regrettably.  As such, I won't be passing on the recipe.

I'm in two minds as to whether to give quinoa another go, mostly because of the grit problem.  So I'll be interested to hear your feedback!

DEVILLED SAUSAGES (Feeds 3)

Ingredients :

6 cumberland sausages (working on 2 each)
2 tsp brown pickle (Branston type)
1 tsp marmalade
1 tsp mango chutney
2 tsp peanut butter
1 heaped tsp curry powder
1 tsp mustard (your favourite type - I use English)

Method :
 
1.  Pre-heat the oven to 180deg C/350deg F/Gas 4.

2.  Line a roasting tray with non-stick silver foil.  Lay the sausages onto the tray and commence to splitting them from nose to tail - until they resemble boats (i.e. still joined at either end).


3.  Take a small bowl and include all the remainder of the ingredients, then stir to combine.


4.  Fill each sausage "boat" with the devilling mix, which should be quite thick.


5.  Place into the oven to bake for 25-30 minutes or until the sausages are quite brown and the devilling is showing signs of caramelisation.

6.  Serve with salad.

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Meal planning - heading towards healthy!

Can't see me ever achieving this!

This week's meal plan has, of necessity, something of a bias towards the healthy.  Only a bias, you understand - I've not gone completely mad and thrown out ALL the cream, or the cheese, or the pastry!

I decided that once my birthday was out of the way, I'd knuckle down to concentrating on making the meals a little lighter, healthier and better for us.

Now that doesn't mean that you won't find pastry, or cream, or cheese working their way in to the recipes, but what it does mean is that there will be rather less than there has been of late.

Also, (don't tell Son & heir) I'm going to be increasing the fruit and vegetable intake and trying to reduce the emphasis on meat.  I'll be trying to make the meat and vegetables work as a team, as opposed to the vegetables just taking up space on the meat's plate.

This first week, we're just going to be easing into the routine.  I can't just jump into it, because I've got foodstuffs in the cupboard and fridge that need using up.  I'm not going to throw away something that's perfectly good and that we paid good money for, just because I'm changing the emphasis of our meals.  However, hopefully, as we go along you'll notice a healthier trend (with the occasional "less than healthy" meal, just to create balance!).

So, here's how this week is looking :

Tuesday (Pizza night) : Son & heir is out, so hubby & I are having Tuna & lemon pasta.

Wednesday : Cheesey Parsnip Flan and salad.

Thursday : Smoked sausage, lime rice & succotash.

Friday : Devilled sausages and fruity quinoa salad.

Saturday : Beef & spinach pasta bake.

Sunday : Chicken & Sweetcorn Pie, roast potatoes, broccoli & carrots.

Monday : Crunchy fish (minus batter, for me), potato croquettes & peas.

I'm looking forward to that lot!

Well, today is Wednesday so we had the Tuna & lemon pasta last night.  It really is such an easy dish to prepare - and is almost a complete store cupboard recipe, except for the green beans.  The mixture of tuna, lemon zest, capers and chilli is just delicious - and keeps your taste buds interested!

Tonight's Cheesey Parsnip Flan and salad was a triumph, if I say so myself.  This was another recipe that was incredibly easy to produce.  I've tried to make all this week's recipes easy to make, in the belief that if I don't challenge myself too badly in the kitchen, I'll live to fight another day with a bit more energy than otherwise!

I'll be blogging both the Tuna pasta and the Flan immediately after this one, so I won't talk too much about them here, or I'll have nothing to say in their own dedicated blogs!  (That's how simple they are to produce!).

I'm intrigued by hubby's smoked sausage, lime rice and succotash idea for Thursday's dinner.  He's got a very definite idea in mind that he's trying to reproduce, he's been doing a lot of research via the internet on various recipes and it all sounds pretty good!

Friday's dinner is a meal of two halves, I'm afraid.  The devilled sausages are a pretty dead cert to be a Good Thing, but the quinoa salad is a completely new entity for all of us.  I'm dead keen to try quinoa and devised the recipe for this salad after doing extensive reading up on what other people have put into successful quinoa salads.  I'm hoping that the fruity aspect will go well with the curry/spicy aspect of the sausages.

I'm having a go at the Beef & Spinach Pasta Bake from www.foodwhine.com on Saturday.  Hubby has an extensive spinach patch developing at the bottom of the garden and it would be just fabulous to make a meal from it.  It's one of those recipes that is a cross between a pasta bake and a casserole, so I'm hoping the weather won't be roasting on Saturday, or you may find that this gets changed to a prawn salad!

Sunday sees the return of the home-made Chicken & sweetcorn pie.  I've been wanting to make a pie for ages and before we decided to upgrade the health value of our meals, had bought the double pack of frozen pastry.  Well I'm not about to let that go to waste - and making a pie gets rid of both packs at once, so it gets to stay on the menu!

One of our peas - the formative years

We were running out of time (and inspiration, if I'm honest) when it came to deciding what hubby was going to cook on Monday.  Hence the "crunchy fish" (aka fish in batter), potato croquettes (hideous things!) and peas.  I'm quite determined to de-crunchy my fish and so reduce the fat content, but I can't guarantee that either of the boys will be doing the same thing!  In truth, they probably don't need to, as they are both normally active people - unlike me who is sedentary at best!  It would be just fabulous if our pea vines were to yield enough peas to cope with feeding the three of us, but we'll just have to wait and see where that's concerned.  We had a sneaky taster of a couple of fresh peas from the vines just yesterday and they are truly gorgeous - so sweet!  Yum!

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T 

Devilled sausages : a family favourite

What can I say about Devilled Sausages?

They have been one of my few recipes that I have carried forward over the years.  They date back to childhood, when my Mum would make a much less interesting version - but no less tasty - which was always greeted well.

When I moved out from home and went to live on the boat, they became a staple there too.

I can remember making them once I'd moved back to dry land, in a shared house in Kingston Upon Thames.  I used to accompany them with an enormous home-made coleslaw with sultanas, or a big old salad - sometimes involving banana!  Enough for everyone.

When I moved to my own place in Oxshott in Surrey, I can remember coming home from a day at work, then an evening with the horses, then walking the dogs and finishing by whipping up eight devilled sausages.  I'd eat four that night, then keep four more for the next day which I'd eat cold with the home-made coleslaw.  Yummy!

I doubt there will ever come a moment when Devilled Sausages are suggested and rejected.  I hope not, anyway!  As good hot as they are cold, they can be packed into lunchboxes or even - as I did - packed into boxes to accompany a picnic dinner whilst watching Gilbert & Sullivan at Polesdon Lacey.

You can tinker about with the devilling mixture, but this is the one that hits the spot after all these years.

DEVILLED SAUSAGES  (makes 8)

Ingredients :

1 pack of 8 pork sausages, Cumberland are good, but plain old Pork are best.
1 tablespoon of Branston pickle (Brown pickle)
2 teaspoons of Dark Orange Marmalade
1 tablespoon of smooth Peanut Butter
2 teaspoons of Madras Curry Powder
1 teaspoon of English mustard powder
Optional ingredients include a teaspoon of mango chutney and however much hot sauce you prefer!

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180deg C.

2.  Take each sausage and cut a slit into it, along the long side.  Open the slit out until you have made the sausage boat-shaped.

3.  Place it on a baking tray and fill with a teaspoonful of the devilling mixture.  Ensure the mix is spread from end to end.

4.  When all sausages are complete, put into the oven for 25-30 minutes (depending on the size of your sausages).

5.  They are done when the sausages are well coloured and the devilling mix has melted into the sausage and browned.

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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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What was on the menu list last week!

I'm really not quite sure what happened to last week, in terms of being able to blog about what was on the menu list, anyway.  I seemed to perpetually be one or two days behind what was happening - but then, this is what happens when real life takes up time you could have spent writing about that real life.

Last week's menu was an odd collection - and this week's is turning out that way, too.  However before we turn our attention to what's going to happen, perhaps we could have a little look at what has happened!

I began last week with the lovely, lovely Smoked Haddock Chowder, with crusty bread.  Well, ordinarily it's lovely lovely.  This one wasn't bad - but it wasn't unctuous and glorious like it should have been.  I have found that, amazingly, if the cook isn't feeling 100% then - very often - the food won't turn out to be 100%.  No matter how hard you try.  Still, everyone ate it all up and maybe it wasn't as bad as I imagined.  Maybe!

A slightly less rich colouring - but very moreish nonetheless

Wednesday was the inaugural trot-out of a Lamb Pilaff originally blogged by Twitter pal @thegrubworm.  I was instantly intrigued by his recipe, as it included just about everything I like to eat - and in a seemingly authentic style.

As is always my way, I made a few changes to his recipe as - and most crucially - I discovered I didn't have any saffron at the last minute.  However, it was too late to change horses mid-course, so I just did my best with it.  I'd also added a leek to the meat mixture to increase the veggie quota and instead of using cubed lamb shoulder, I'd opted for the cheaper lamb mince.

Well, I can only imagine how the embellished saffron-infused version must taste, as the non-saffron version tasted jolly flipping good!  I won't blog the recipe, as you can go to his blog and pick it up from there, simply by clicking on this. 

Thursday had to be an easy dinner, as I'd been back to work after a few days holiday and anticipated that I wouldn't really be feeling like cooking.  Amazingly, we'd again run out of an integral ingredient for Devilled Sausages, sweet potato wedges and baked beans.  This one was down to bad luck, however, as we'd managed to pick up a jar of peanut butter which some disgusting oik had poked a finger into, then re-sealed.  Yuck.  Devilled sausages just aren't right without peanut butter included in the devilling (I'll blog the recipe the next time we have them and you'll see I'm right).


So, I freestyled a dish of oriental glazed sausages (soy sauce, oyster sauce, marmalade and chilli) together with sesame & orange sweet potato wedges - all with the poor old baked beans.  However, I have to report that orange zest goes oddly well with baked beans.  Who knew?

Good Friday brought about a return to a more structured approach to a meal, in the shape of Spirali al Forno, which utilised four cheeses.  Goodness, but this one was good - so much so, it warrants a blog post all of its own - so look out for it!


Easter was upon us by now - and Saturday involved lots of cleaning, organising and preparation for my parents' visit for lunch on Easter Sunday.  I took the easy way out - and we had pizza.  You can't knock it, when you're busy doing other things!

Easter Sunday, as I told you in the quick post to let you know I hadn't run away, was a lovely day with a lovely meal.  The Ottolenghi Fennel & Cherry Tomato Gratin I have blogged already, but I shall definitely blog the recipe for the Boulangere Potatoes, as it was one of the better ones I've tried.

I've also written a blog post for the Bournemouth Echo which deals with the day in detail, so I won't duplicate too much here.  Once the post is up on the Echo pages, I'll post it here so that we can all catch up.

One thing I didn't blog is our dessert on the day.  Hubby had requested we have some kind of creme brulee.  During discussions, he suggested that it would be possible, to save time and effort, to use pre-prepared custard and simply brulee the top.  Bearing in mind that Ruby, our rhubarb, had been growing fit to bust ever since it had stopped snowing - the concept of Rhubarb & Custard Brulee was born.


The execution of said concept didn't quite come off - although the desserts were very nice and the tops did brulee in the centre.  The custard proved too heavy for the rhubarb layer in the base of the ramekin and forced the rhubarb juice up between the side of the ramekin and the custard.  Consequently, when I sprinkled the sugar on and blowtorched it, a percentage of the sugar melted instantly and disappeared without trace.  However, the crunchy brulee top was achieved and everyone appeared to approve.  Next time, I'll definitely make a lighter weight custard and allow it to set with a skin on top.  That'll definitely help the blowtorching!


I think we should skip lightly over discussing Monday's dinner.  You see, I'd taken the chicken out of the freezer the night before and left it in the fridge.  I came to it on Monday evening to make the Sultana Chicken that I'd listed - and the chicken was still frozen solid.  So, we went to Macdonalds.  *blush*  Needs must, and all that.

Now, before I wrap this post up, I have something very important to report.  I recently bought my very first jelly mould.  So, I give you - a jelly!  Complete with wobble.

So proud - now all I want is one shaped like a rabbit.

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