It's a good plan ...

.... but the question is, whether we'll manage to stick to it!  As ever, real life often gets in the way of the plans I make for dinner throughout the week.  Some weeks we make it through to the end of the plan with no changes, but most weeks something happens to change at least the order in which the meals appear, if not the meals themselves.

So near - but yet, so far ....

However, I find that making a plan is still the best way to a) afford the ingredients and b) reduce wastage.  As I've said before, it also cuts out that horrible "what shall we have for dinner tonight" question.  All you have to do, is remember to take the meat out of the freezer the night before!

This week's plan has had to be changed right at the start, thanks to my over-twanging the elastic bands in one of my fingers by wrestling with the car's seat belt on Monday afternoon.  Having turned a lovely shade of light mauve and assumed twice its normal girth, we decided that perhaps immobilising the finger might be an idea and broke out the lolly sticks and micropore tape.  Thankfully, even with it in the splint, I discovered I could still type - so here I am.
 

Hand-E-cap!  Neat little splint though, don't you think?

As an emergency measure, the pork steaks in mushroom sauce that were due to be had on Tuesday evening, were changed to pizza.  Bung it in the oven, set the timer, get it back out, eat it.  One trouble free mealtime, done!

It is now Wednesday morning and the offending digit is at least staying the size it should be, even if it is still hurting.  Still, hubby's in the chair for tonight's dinner so it's got a bit longer in which to heal.

So, what's on the list?  Well, here we go :

Tues : Pizza

Weds : Full English Breakfast

Thurs : Baked curry chicken, vegetable curry and rice

Fri : Rigatone con cipolle, with naked burgers

Sat : Lamb flatballs in flatbreads with hummus and salad

Sun : Family lunch out

Mon : Pasta bolognese.

A previous version - with black pudding, this time

Tonight's Full English isn't one of those humungous "eat until you burst" kinds of Full English's, it will consist of bacon, sausage, fried egg, mushrooms, baked beans and hash browns.  No toast, no bubble and squeak (sob - LOVE bubble & squeak), no fried slices, no black pudding - or any of the other many and varied items you could include in one.  Still, it's been a while since our last - and we only fry the sausages and eggs (and then in rapeseed oil) - so it could be worse.

Tomorrow's baked curry chicken is a recipe I've been pondering over for a while.  You see, we have recently had several meals where I've oven baked chicken breasts in either a BBQ glaze or Cajun spices and it occurred to me that I could marinate the chicken in a yoghurt/curry/chutney kind of mixture and do the same thing.  Plus, if I made a standard vegetable curry and put the whole thing with rice, it would be the same as making a curry except with more vegetables and in a different type of presentation.  So that's what I shall do.  Hopefully - finger allowing.

Imagine this as curried chicken, with a vegetable curry and rice ... get the idea?

Now, Friday's Rigatone con cipolle is a recipe that hubby has been making since God was a boy.  It is an incredibly simple recipe of onions sweated down until almost disintegration, with added stock and tomato puree, put over pasta.  When he first introduced me to it, I was unable to eat it because of being horribly allergic to onions.  However, the tiny taster I had tasted pretty darned good.  Pregnancy solved my onion allergy - don't know how, but it did! - and we'd forgotten all about it up until recently, when with the blog having taken a turn for the homely, it suddenly came back to hubby's memory.  So, on the plan it went and he'll be cooking it for us, accompanied by some Aberdeen Angus burgers (without bun, cheese or pickles).  We might be allowed a little bit of mustard, I'll have to see.  LOL

Didn't work all that well with loose meat, either. Tasted good though!

Saturday's lamb flatballs in flatbreads keeps on making me chuckle every time I see the name.  I recently made this dish, except I used lamb meatballs - which kept leaping out of the flatbread in a most unseemly manner.  So, it suddenly dawned on me, why not make them flat?  Now I dislike intensely the word "patty" ~gak~ when used in this context, but that's where I'm headed with the lamb mixture.  Hence, "flatballs".  *grin*  I'll be adding hummus and rocket - you never know, I may even make my own hummus ~sharp intake of breath~, I know!  We'll have a small salad of some denomination and some home made tzatziki too.  Yum!

Sunday is off the menu plan, as we're meeting up with my parents to fulfil a long standing (from January!) lunch date in honour of my Mum's birthday.  We didn't make it when it should have happened, as that was when my poor Dad fell and broke his hip.  Here we are, some five months later, finally being able to have that lunch!  Hooray!

So, after all that excitement, Monday brings us back to normality with a good old pasta bolognese.  In fact, we haven't had a "bolly" for quite some time and it will be nice to re-visit an old friend.  Who knows, we may even push the boat out and have some garlic bread too.  *wink*

Crunchy and toasty and delicious!

I've just been casting my mind back over the last week to find something yummy to tell you about regarding last week's menu plan (yes, I still menu plan even when I'm not writing the blog!) - and I remembered the pork burritos with home made guacamole and salad.  Yum.  I really think that this is my favourite way to deal with a corn wrap.  Fill it full of yummy meat in gorgeous BBQ sauce (as ever, I used Mic's Chilli's El Loco BBQ Sauce - can't get enough of that stuff!), fold, brush with sunflower oil, sprinkle with cheese and bake for 20 minutes.  The crunch from the toasty edges of the wrap is just fabulous - as is the flavour, mixed with the sweet and hot BBQ sauce.  ~happy sigh~

You're salivating aren't you.  I can tell.

Oh and I must tell you about our Father's Day dessert!  The main course was somewhat blown out of the water by visiting Burger King for lunch (we had the chicken casserole the following day) but I managed to rustle up the Tri-berry Eton Mess that was on the menu.  The photograph will give you an indication of the extreme naughtiness involved in this dessert - but then, you don't get low calorie Eton Mess!  Along with the whipped cream and meringue pieces, this one involved halved strawberries, whole raspberries and fresh black cherries.  Oh my word.

Oh!  Which reminds me!  Stoning cherries.  Now if ever there was a culinary task that was guaranteed to create frustration, it is stoning cherries - without a cherry stoner (or pitter).  However, listen up fans!  If you don't have a contraption to help you with this - or you still manage to fire cherry stones across the kitchen - try this.  Get a chopstick - everyone has at least one in their cutlery drawer - and remove the cherry stalk, then insert the chopstick through the stalk end and push the stone out the other side of the cherry.  It truly is as easy as that.  I managed to stone an entire punnet of cherries in less than a quarter of the time it takes to do it with a knife.  Indeed, if your cherries are big enough, sit them on top of a lidless mineral water bottle and push the stones through into the bottle.  Makes clearing up a heck of a lot easier!  Try it, honest injun, it works.  With Picota cherry season literally just around the corner, this could revolutionise your cherry desserts.  Oooh, Picota cherries ... mmmmmmn .....

Sweet Chilli Pork Stir Fry - or "how to use the other half of your pulled pork"

This is the final destination of the other half of our pulled pork joint.

Now it was supposed to be a "sort of" roast dinner - with accompanying roast potatoes, parsnips, butternut squash, Yorkshire Puddings and gravy etc.  However, we forgot to take one of the tubs of stock out of the freezer at the same time as the pork, which meant that we'd have to forgo using it to make the amazing gravy - which would be a shame.  True, I could have got it out anyway and defrosted it in the pan - but in the time before I was due to start making dinner, I started to think sideways.

Initially, I started to think about gravy alternatives such as making a sauce.  I contemplated fruity sauces, but couldn't think of anything that didn't demand going out to the local Sainsbury's for supplies - and I didn't want to have to do that.  I seriously contemplated making an onion sauce, mainly because I love onion sauce and haven't had it for an aeon.  I thought it would go quite well with the pork (even better with lamb - but we didn't have any of that) and onion sauce always goes well with vegetables and roasties.  However, when I contemplated the washing up that would result at the end of the dinner, that put me off the sauce idea completely.

After all, I'd have a pyrex dish for the pork to be heated up in, the roasting tray for the roasties and a pyrex bowl that I'd used to oil and season them in, another tray for the Yorkshires, the three-part steamer pan for the other vegetables - and that was before I'd begun to think about the gravy or a sauce!  I was going off the idea rapidly.

So I began to think even further sideways - about things that weren't roast dinners.  Now, what would I be likely to do with some leftover roast pork, if I wasn't going to make it into a roast?

Wraps - I could put it in wraps with some BBQ sauce.  Don't have any wraps though - and don't want to have to go out and get some.  A pie - it'd make a nice pie.  Mind you, then I'd have to make pastry - and I refer you back to the washing up problem.  So what doesn't make a lot of washing up?  Hmmn .. something made in the wok.  Aha - now we're onto something.  A stir-fry.  Oh, but son & heir doesn't like stir fries - and I don't have any traditional stir fry vegetables in.  Well yes, but this IS pulled pork we're talking about stir frying - and son & heir is a sucker for pulled pork.  Add some chilli to the lure and I'm sure he'll forgive the stir fry effect.  So what vegetables have I got?  A red pepper .. two courgettes .. the taggy end of a head of broccoli and plenty of onions.  Wish I had some mushrooms!

So okay, what sauce could I put the whole thing in?  I've got a Blue Dragon Black Bean sauce, but one won't be enough and anyway, I don't fancy the oh-so-savoury route.  Wish I had some Hoi Sin sauce!  I've got Oyster sauce .. hmmn, once again not enough.

It was about this time that I remembered I had a bottle of Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce in the cupboard that we'd not tried as yet.  I knew I also had a part-used bottle of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce in the fridge.  The sweet chilli was going down the right flavour route - sweet and hot - and the BBQ sauce would add the complexity to the flavours.  Add a little bit of Mirrin (Japanese rice wine) and a dash of Fish Sauce and I reckon we'd have it.  I had the bottle of Cider Vinegar standing by, just in case the whole thing came up too sweet - but didn't need it.

The vegetables behaved themselves in the pan and I even got to exercise a tip I'd seen demonstrated on the t.v. - that of stir frying the onions and peppers, then including a small amount of water in the wok and steaming the remaining vegetables for 2-3 minutes, before continuing the stir frying.  I did this just after including the broccoli pieces and it worked like a charm.  The combination of the two sauces was a complete masterstroke, if I say so myself - and the whole thing came together in what felt like minutes.  The washing up consisted of two pans and a chopping board - can't complain about that - and best of all, it was flipping delicious.

As a last-minute avoidance of making a roast dinner, I'd say that was a complete score!

As regards the Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce, what a winner that is!  I'd already got a huge bottle of Thai sweet chilli sauce on the go - and had been waiting to finish that before breaking out the Mic's Chilli version.  However, the Thai one is so rampant with garlic that I didn't fancy including it in the stir fry or we'd have been burping garlic for ever more.  Mic's Chilli's Sweet Chilli Sauce has a degree of garlic - much as you'd expect - but it also has some lovely deep toffee flavours going on in there.  The chilli effect, for all that it declares itself to be just "one chilli hot" was still pretty darned awesome when combined with a dash of Chinese five spice and the BBQ sauce!

So there you are - want something different to do with the other half of a pulled pork joint?  Raid the fridge! 


SWEET CHILLI PORK STIR FRY   (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 medium onions, peeled, quartered and sliced thickly
1 red capsicum pepper, cored, de-seeded and sliced thinly
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1 courgette, sliced into batons
4 broccoli florets, quartered
500g cold cooked pulled pork
100ml sweet chilli sauce
75ml barbecue sauce
1 tbsp Mirrin
1 tbsp Fish sauce.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a wok and add the onions.  Cook on a high temperature until softened and just beginning to caramelise, stirring all the time, then add the red pepper.  Continue cooking and stirring until the red pepper has softened.

2.  Add the five spice and stir to combine.  Add the courgette pieces together with the broccoli and continue to cook and stir for another couple of minutes.  Add approx 100ml of warm water and cover the pan.  Let the contents steam for around 3-5 minutes, pausing to stir once in this process.

3.  Add the pork, chilli sauce, barbecue sauce, mirrin and fish sauce and stir to combine.

4.  Turn the heat down and cook for another few minutes, to allow the flavours to marry up and the pork to heat through sufficiently.

5.  Serve on a bed of white rice.

Printable recipe

Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork - perfect for winter!

I've been eyeing up various recipes for pulled pork for a very long time.  The reasons I hadn't got around to making it until now, were firstly because we didn't have a barbecue to cook it on and secondly, when we did have a barbecue, it rained.  And rained.  And threw it down - repeatedly.

Then, however, I saw a blog posting from a lady (forgive me, but I've forgotten who it was and on which blog I saw it - should've made a note!) who had experimented with cooking pulled pork in the slow cooker, with amazing results.

Bing!  Genius.

Now I'd have thought that the slow cooker would have resulted in the pork becoming too soft and not having that roasted flavour that is essential to a good pulled pork recipe.  How wrong was I?

So this Pulled Pork recipe was a bit of a major production in time, if not in effort.  Nope, it definitely didn't involve a lot of effort.  I simply prepared the pork by trimming it a little bit, then rubbed it with a whole heap of spices and flavours (chipotle chilli, English mustard, smoked paprika, garlic, brown sugar) and left it to marinate overnight.

What started out as one piece, fell into four after 12 hrs!

The following day, first thing in the morning, open up the slow cooker, open up the plastic bag in which the pork was marinating - and bung the contents into the cooker.  Tip half a jar of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce over the poor confused piece of piggy - turn the cooker to low - and forget about it for the rest of the day.

Some 12 hours later, put some chips on to cook (deep fry them if you must - but oven baked curly fries did the job for us) and prepare your sub rolls.

Lift the pork from the slow cooker and pull it apart with two forks - just like you've seen them do it on the t.v.  Now - this is the tricky bit.  Try, really really hard, not to eat too much before you can get it onto the sub rolls.  Yes, I know it's difficult - so, so difficult - but this was intended to be a meal for the whole family with leftovers - remember?

See that apple sauce peeking out?  Yum.

Because I'm a rampant traditionalist at heart, I gave my sub rolls a liberal coating of apple sauce - and not the American type of apple sauce that is nigh on liquid, the type that has chunks of apple in it and is closer to a tart jam.  The pulled pork then went on top, with a scoop of the liquid from the slow cooker on top (and boy, that "sauce" was amazing!).

My menfolk eschewed the apple sauce version and went for a liberal coating of the El Loco BBQ Sauce on their rolls, with pork on top and the slow cooker juices poured on.

Oh my gawd, but it was good.

Now okay, I'll accept that it didn't have the charred flavour that you would have got from the barbecue, but there were so many deep and meaningful flavours going on there anyway, that we really didn't miss it.  I'm sure that, had we have finished the pork on the barbecue, it would have taken on a completely sublime flavour - but just straight from the slow cooker was pretty darned awesome.

So for people who don't have a garden, or a barbecue, you too can have pulled pork!  Either cook it - well wrapped - for 12 hours in an extremely low oven, or break out the slow cooker.

Oh my - just the memory of this pork is making my mouth water.  The weekend is coming - hi thee down to your local butcher and get a pork shoulder.  You'll be glad you did!

SLOW COOKER BBQ PULLED PORK   (serves 3-5)

Ingredients :

1kg boneless pork shoulder, trimmed of extraneous fat
1 chipotle chilli
1 tbsp English mustard powder
1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
half a tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 clove of garlic, grated
around 200ml of prepared BBQ sauce (as in Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce).

Method :

1.  Into a large freezer bag (one large enough to take the pork as well), add all the dry ingredients and the garlic.  Mix well.

2.  Add the pork and seal the bag.  Then massage the meat through the bag, ensuring that the rub ingredients reach every single little bit of the meat.  Once well covered and well rubbed in, leave to marinate in the fridge for around 12 hours (overnight is best!).

You may well find it necessary to double bag the pork, to resist your fridge contents smelling of BBQ garlic!

3.  Take the pork out of the fridge and allow it to return to room temperature (around 30 minutes).

4.  Decant the pork straight from the bag into the slow cooker - along with any juices.

5.  Pour the barbecue sauce over the pork, ensuring it is well covered.

6.  Turn the slow cooker for low and leave for 12 hours.

7.  When done, remove from the cooker and cover with silver foil.  Allow to rest for 15 minutes or so, then pull apart with two forks to create the classic "pulled pork" look.

8.  Serve in baps or sub rolls, with apple sauce, additional BBQ sauce, some salad or anything you fancy additionally.  Don't forget to add a spoonful or two of the juices from the slow cooker on the top of the pork once it has been laid into the roll.

Delicious!

Printable version

 

 

I can spatchcock! A chicken, that is ..

Disconcertingly, it looks a tiny bit crab-like

Isn't it silly, the cookery things you look at and think "oh, now that looks a nice thing to do to a <insert ingredient of your choice>", but rule it out as being something way beyond your skill set to be able to do?

Such was spatchcocking a chicken, with me.  Until now, that is.

Mind you, I do think it is more a consecutive set of events that led up to the spatchcocking, rather than my suddenly getting brave.  You see, for Mother's Day this year dear son & heir bought me (which may seem a tad odd for the majority of the populace, but not for me) a knife block and set of kitchen knives, which included a pair of poultry shears. 

Large, mean, shearing machine!

Up until when I did the chicken, the most the shears have ever been set to do was opening a bag of spice.  However, I put them to the job they were best meant for when I decided to cut the spine out of my chicken and spatchcock it.

Ta-daaa!  One spatchcock chicken :)

Now I defy anyone with a conscience not to feel a bit weird when cutting through a chicken's rib bones, okay?  'Nuff said, methinks.

However, the whole process of turning a "ready to roast" into a "spatchcock" chicken is remarkably easy!  Just turn the little fellow upside down, with the Parson's nose to you and cut alongside the spine.  Do the same the other side, then turn it over, press down on the breastbone and in the time it takes for the ribs to give you a round of applause (okay, I know, I said I wasn't going to say any more.  I apologise), you've got a spatchcock chicken.  Just criss cross it with skewers to keep it flat in the oven, and you're there.

Following a quick bath in Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce

Because I was giving the Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce a good run for its money, I wanted the flavours from the BBQ sauce to really penetrate the chicken meat.  In order to help this along a bit, I slashed (sounds so barbaric!) the legs and breast fairly deeply, which allowed the BBQ sauce to penetrate and give fabulous flavour.

Om, nom, nom!

I then put the chicken in the fridge for 4 hours or so, to marinate, before cooking that evening.

So, later on that evening, I put the chicken into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF /Gas4 and roasted it for 45 minutes.  The smell was amazing - but then anything using the El Loco BBQ sauce is going to smell amazing.  I swear, you could roast my old trainers in the stuff and they'd (almost) smell edible!

I served the chicken with some of the Ottolenghi Green Couscous, which is just the most delicious couscous ever - and paired with the piquancy and tongue-tastic flavours of the moist, succulent BBQ chicken, it really was a match made in heaven.

More om nom nom!

Owing to being flattened into one same-height layer, the chicken doesn't take as long as a normal roasting chicken would to cook in the oven, the meat stayed a lot more juicy.  Well, so it seemed to me.  Of course, maybe we were just fortunate with the chicken - but considering it was one of Asda's "cheap as chips" chickens (the only one we had time to lay our hands on), it says a lot for the method of cooking that it turned out as well as it did.

I'm seriously considering never making a conventional roast chicken again, if these results are consistent!

Leg or breast?  Who cares - hand it over!

BBQ SPATCHCOCK CHICKEN    (serves 4) 


Ingredients :

A chicken
a pair of poultry shears or a very sharp, heavy knife and a strong arm
Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce - around a half a bottle (or another barbecue sauce of choice).

Method :

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas4 and prepare a roasting tin that will take the chicken with room to spare around it.  I always line the tin with non-stick silver foil, as it makes washing up so much easier!

2.  Take the chicken and turn it upside down (breast side down, that is) and with the Parson's nose pointing towards you.

3.  Insert the shears slightly to one side of the Parson's nose and begin to cut alongside the spine of the chicken, until you reach the neck opening.

4.  Then repeat for the other side of the spine - and remove it once freed.

(If you are using a knife, you'll need the chicken with its breast side uppermost and then cut alongside the spine, so that you can bear down through the bone onto a chopping board).

5.  Turn the chicken breast side up and press sharply down on the breastbone to flatten it.

6.  Once flat, take a metal skewer and run the skewer from the neck end of the breast, through the thigh and drumstick and out the other side.

7.  Take a second skewer and do the same with the opposite diagonal.

8.  With a very sharp knife, slash the breast meat and legs in several places.

9.  Rub in the BBQ sauce - taking care not to touch the chicken with the mouth of the bottle - and I recommend using one hand to rub the sauce into the chicken and the other hand to handle the sauce bottle.  You don't want to transfer raw chicken germs to the BBQ sauce bottle that you'll be putting into the fridge!

10.  You can either leave the chicken to marinate until you are ready to cook it, or just put it straight into the oven to cook for 45-50 minutes, depending on how big a chicken it is.  As ever, test the chicken is cooked by separating some of the meat with a sharp knife - if the juices run clear it's done, if there is any evidence of pink meat or pink juices (which is hard to tell with the BBQ sauce, but it's a different kind of pink to the BBQ sauce), put it back into the oven for another 10 minutes or so until the juices run clear.

Printable version

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Menu plan? What menu plan?

Well, we DID make a menu plan - then it all went to worms as we shoved all the planned meals to one side and went for takeaway.

Firstly, on Tuesday, son & heir was invited to stay at his friend's for tea so there didn't seem to be a lot of point in making what was a three person meal (I'd bought the fish already, you see) for the two of us.  So hubby had a kebab and I had some chicken.

Canton Restaurant, Poole

Then, on Wednesday, I was driving back from a local shopping trip when I found myself yearning for a Chinese takeaway.  So intense was this yearning (they happen often, but I can ordinarily ignore it) that it wasn't going to be ignored.  I mentioned it to the family and everyone seemed keen - so that was what happened.  I shared some Spare Ribs with son & heir, a Canton Special Fried Rice and a Hot & Spicy Special Chow Mein with hubby and had a Duck with bamboo shoots, water chestnuts & cashews all for myself.  It was totally lush.  I've got the leftovers for lunch today, too.  ~glee~

So, as a result, we'll ignore Tuesday and Wednesday and - where the menu plan is concerned - pretend they never happened.

Here's what's on the plan for the rest of the week :

Thurs : Smoked mackerel, mediterranean potato salad and a tomato salad

Fri : Roast vegetable & bacon pasta

Sat : BBQ Pork chops with roast vegetable giant couscous

Sun : Stromboli and rice salad

Mon : Sausage & mozzarella bake with garlic bread.

The two meals that have been swerved this week were to have been Chilli Dogs with hash browns & coleslaw, plus a Beef Curry.  I'll just move them on to next week as we hadn't shopped for them yet anyway.

The two roast vegetable meals were, initially, separated by a day.  Because of having to swap the meals around a bit, they've come together which isn't the best plan - but hopefully they'll be sufficiently different in character that we don't feel over-roast vegetabled!

Oy! Put that out!

Looking at the way the rain is currently falling semi-horizontally from the sky, I think we might have been able to just reach outside the front door and catch a couple of mackerel!  As it is, we've already bought our mackerel and dinner tonight is a simple matter of putting together the Mediterranean potato salad.  It is a warm salad, involving tinned cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers, black olives and new potatoes which sounded a pleasant change from the mayonnaise type of potato salad.

We've gone particularly Mediterranean this week.  Maybe it's because we know it's the closest we'll get to the Mediterranean, as there's no chance of affording a holiday there and even if we could, if I could get there (which is unlikely) I wouldn't be able to do anything as I can't walk around.  I don't qualify for a wheelchair from the NHS and can't afford to buy one, so we'll just have to eat holiday-style instead.

The roast vegetable and bacon pasta is really a simple matter of roasting some aubergine, red onion, courgette and tomato with garlic, grilling some bacon and combining the whole lot with some pasta, basil leaves and parmesan.

Son & heir has a friend coming over for the day that day, so it seemed a good dish to put before teenagers - having bacon and cheese - so long as they don't object too strongly to the aubergine and courgette!

I've been aware of giant couscous (Moghrabieh) for a while - since I bought my two Ottolenghi cook books which feature it in a couple of recipes.  I found some in our local Asda (amazingly) some while ago and have had a lttle play with it, but this is really the first  "proper" go with it.

Moghrabieh served with mixed veggies

This instalment of roast vegetables won't include the aubergine, but will include red pepper and will have a dressing of lemon, olive oil and fresh chopped mint.  I think it will be fresh and a lovely pairing with the BBQ (Mic's Chilli "El Loco" BBQ Sauce again!) pork chops.  You never know, if the weather has improved by then we might even be able to cook the chops on our new barbecue!  Not likely, but you can hope!

Hubby is making a Stromboli for Sunday's dinner - after the style of the Hairy Bakers' Stromboli as featured on their recent European Bakeation tour.  It will be along the lines of a pizza filling, with a rich tomato sauce, pepperoni, onion, ham & mozzarella.  We're currently thinking we'll have some rice salad to accompany it.

Photo c/o Vintage Victuals

I thought I'd have a go at an American style Peach Cobbler for dessert on Sunday.  It's a bit like the Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie, in that I hear so many people talking about "their Mom's Peach Cobbler" as being the best, etc. etc. that I just have to find out what's so good about it.  Hooray for t'internet, because without that I'd be lost for a recipe.  As it is, I'm spoiled for choice and will most probably do what I often do and take what seems to be the best points from a number of different recipes and make my own!

Our local Asda has some really gorgeous, intensely flavoured little peaches in at the moment - it's the beginning of the season here - that I can't help but think would be just perfect for a Peach Cobbler.

Monday's Sausage & Mozzarella Bake is a request from son & heir, who has liked this one ever since the first time I made it.  It's a Jamie Oliver recipe and is so easy to make, it is perfect for a Monday.

As for extra bakes and makes, well, I'm expecting all sorts of things to come in over the next few weeks, where various people have asked me to try various products.  I look forward to receiving these challenges, as the devising of new recipes is an opportunity for hubby and I to put our collective mighty brains together in something other than a family matter.  Yes, occasionally we have a difference of opinion and yes, occasionally I'll offend hubby mightily by stamping all over his good ideas because I like my own good idea better - but eventually they all get an airing and the best ones reach the blog.  So, it's all good.

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BBQ Burritos using Mic's Chilli "El Loco BBQ Sauce"

I just don't know where to start to tell you about the fun we've been having with the Mic's Chilli products.

I first heard of Mic's Chilli on Twitter, where you'll find them being tweeted about by @MicsChilli (amongst others).  They are based in Ireland, which I've got to say isn't the first place you'd go to when you're considering buying either chilli sauce or barbecue sauce - but once you've found them, I would be very very surprised if you ever wanted to look elsewhere, it's that good.

Having taken delivery of a box containing one of each of their range of chilli sauces, the El Loco Barbecue Sauce and a Sweet Chilli Sauce, we've been busy getting up close and personal with them.  However, for the sake of clarity, this post deals just with the barbecue sauce - I'll get on to the other sauces in other posts, otherwise we might be here for quite some time.

Chicky & Gnocchi with garlic bread

So, do you remember the Chicken & Gnocchi we were planning to have with Sorrel Pesto, but swerved the pesto?  Well, on a whim, hubby decided to use some of the Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce on the chicken and put the gnocchi into a plain cheese sauce.  It might seem a bit of a random pairing, but oh yes, it worked.

In this instance and because he felt that the BBQ sauce might be a tad on the spicy side for the dish, he combined the sauce with a little tomato ketchup before putting it onto some pan fried chicken.  In fact, the BBQ sauce is more flavoursome than it is hot - from a spicy point of view - but as a little introduction to El Loco BBQ sauce, it was a good one.

I had planned to give the BBQ sauce its first proper trial with some BBQ Burritos - which I cooked on Saturday.

I'm a bit bored with minced beef and minced turkey, so decided to go with minced pork in this instance.  The burritos were so easy to make because the BBQ sauce is so good.  All I did was fry a large quantity of onions until they were golden brown and sweet, then I removed them from the pan and fried off the pork mince to a stage where it was caramelising.  Then the onions were added back in and the BBQ sauce was added to everything, along with 200ml of water to help everything amalgamate and to give some fluid for the mince to cook in and soften a little.  Personally, I hate gritty hard mince in something soft like a burrito - and because the mince was caramelised to accentuate its flavour, it needed to soften a little.


I'd bought some soured cream and a small pot of tomato salsa to go with the burritos - which made them more like an enchilada, but then who's counting!

I also served them with my first go at an American-style chopped salad.  From what I could gather, a "chopped salad" involved some sort of leaf, many different types of salad vegetable, plus some sort of protein involvement.  Everything is cut into small dice or just plain old chopped, then amalgamated with some kind of dressing - and served.

My chopped salad involved Little Gem lettuce, cherry tomatoes, spring onions, a Braeburn apple, some radishes, some parsley, a little cucumber, some sweetcorn and diced cheddar cheese.  Hubby made a lovely dressing of Rapeseed Oil, cider vinegar, honey & Dijon mustard that went very well indeed.

I was working on the premise that we often have cheddar cheese with chilli, so felt that a little cheese amongst the salad would go down well and provide the required "bridge" that brought the two elements of burrito and salad together.

The mince mixture, having had some 20 minutes to simmer and bubble, had reduced back down to the desired consistency.  As a last flourish, I added a can of red kidney beans and a big old handful of chopped coriander and served.

Chicky & Gnocci - yes, it was a garlic bread fest!

The very first mouthful of burrito was an instant hit of savoury/sweet, as the fabulous flavours of the BBQ sauce hit first - smokiness, garlic, paprika, followed by the molasses and sweetness from the onions, all carried by the richness of the pork mince.  The heat of the Habanero and Chipotle chillis was tempered by the soured cream and the salsa delivered that cold against the heat of the mince mixture, that made your tongue tingle.

Fabulous!  Mic's Chilli has just won over three new fans.  We don't just like it a little, we like the BBQ sauce enormously.  Hubby declared that the El Loco BBQ Sauce is the best BBQ sauce he's ever experienced - and he's been through a lot!


For me, it's not just the flavours of the sauce (which are amazingly complex), it's also the fact that the sauce is so versatile.  We've (so far) used it with pan fried chicken, pork mince, a spatchcock chicken (which will be blogged in future), on cheese on toast, in baked beans, with cold chicken and couscous, as a dipping sauce - and it has performed on all levels throughout.


As and when you have the opportunity to try it - I would impress upon you that you NEED to try this BBQ sauce.  I am sure you won't regret it.


BBQ Burritos   (makes 8)


Ingredients :


2 medium onions, sliced fine
1 tbsp olive oil
500g minced pork
freshly ground black pepper
140g good Barbecue Sauce (Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce, if you can get it!)
150-200ml hot water
400g tin of organic red kidney beans
a handful (to taste) of fresh coriander, chopped fine
8 corn wraps.

Method :

1.  Put the sliced onions into a frying pan and add the oil.  Allow to fry on a medium heat until well softened and golden brown.  Remove and retain.

2.  Turn the heat up to maximum and put the minced pork into the frying pan.  Season with the pepper and cook the pork through all its stages, as it will initially change colour, then a quantity of liquid will appear.  Continue to fry on a high heat until all the liquid has evaporated and the mince is beginning to colour.  Stir regularly, allowing the bottom layer to colour, then turning the mince over with a spatula, to set up a new bottom layer.  When you've done this some three or four times, turn the heat down to medium.


3.  Add the BBQ sauce and the water and stir to combine.  Allow the mixture to simmer and bubble gently for as long as it takes to reduce back down to a "saucy" consistency.  Remember to stir regularly, so as to prevent the sauce burning on the bottom of the pan.


4.  Add the beans and the coriander and stir to combine.  Check for flavour and seasoning and if you're happy, lay out the wraps and get filling.


5.  I usually add some soured cream and a little tomato salsa to each wrap, before wrapping them up and serving with a salad.


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