Salad? Don't be silly!

*phew* No lack of salad here!

As I sit here and look at the menu plan for this week, I'm seriously hoping that the weather forecasters are right and the hot hot sunshine is going to take a bit of a back seat for a few days - because we're all out of salad, here!

Son & heir has been moaning about the amount of salad he's had to munch his way through just recently, poor dear.  Yes, I know - but he's practising to be an ungrateful teenager and is doing quite nicely at it, currently.  As a result, we've had to think of meals that don't insist on a side salad to go with them.  He probably hasn't twigged to this, but being without a side salad inevitably means that cooked vegetables will appear on his plate instead.  I won't let him get away with just pasta meals for ever, you know.

He's also - very kindly - distributed a cold germ about the place and hubby has succumbed and I'm just about to, if my throat is anything to go by.  So, personally, I'm very glad that we opted for an easy one to start the week!

Let's have a gander at what's on the menu list, then :

Tues : Pizza

Weds : Pork schnitzels, potato salad and corn on the cob

Thurs : Chicken Murry with mushroom rice

Fri : Beef in black bean stir fry

Sat : Baked trout with green couscous and parsnip crisps

Sun : Roast beef, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots, broccoli, peas, Yorkshire puddings and creamed horseradish with gravy.

Mon : Beef & mushroom pie, new potatoes, peas and carrots.

Ssssh!  Don't shout too loud about those trout, or Asda will have sold out before we can buy two on Friday.

So, pizza tonight and we're both very happy with it.

That's not a Wienerschnitzel - that's a continent!

The Pork Schnitzels on Wednesday will be a creation from hubby's arsenal.  Having done the egg & breadcrumb thing with the fishcakes last week, he's as keen as mustard to try the same thing with an escalope.  It sounds like it's likely to be a bit of a blast from the past - and will take me back to meals in Germany when Bockwurst wasn't on the menu and I opted for Wienerschnitzel instead.

Oh and I have got to tell you about the Rose Veal thing - but that's for another blog post.  We rang our butcher to investigate getting some Rose Veal to make the schnitzels with, you see.

A Murry from the past ... ah, fond memories!

Thursday's Chicken Murry is a chicken curry - but not one made to anyone's recipe or with any particular style in mind.  It's a "Mummy Curry", i.e. one which I made up as I went along and is jolly blinking good.  I'll be giving the diced chicken from our local butcher a go with this one, crossing my fingers that it'll be a suitable substitute for the chicken breasts that we used to use when they were on special offer.  If it looks a bit ropey, then I'll have to buy a couple of legs and dice the meat up myself.

Hubby has found a use for the other half of the Silverside we bought for last week's curry, in the Beef in Black Bean stir fry.  It's going to be a noodle & broccoli stir fry, so hopefully son & heir won't do his normal downcast "oh!" when he hears it's a stir fry for tea.

Something that looks like this would be good!

Saturday's baked trout is going to be a new challenge for me. I've wanted to cook a whole fish in paper for almost as long as I can remember - and I figure that two whole trout will be enough for the three of us for a dinner.  I'll be putting it with some of Ottolenghi's Green Couscous and making up some parsnip chips - the thin ribbon kind, as opposed to the fries kind.  It seems easy enough to do, so I reckoned I'd give it a go.

Sunday's dinner is the roast beef that we moved on from last week owing to the weather.  It really was madness to think of having a roast beef dinner on such a hot day - which is this weekend's gain as we get to have it then instead.  My mouth is watering at the idea of roast beef, so I'm hoping the weather won't intervene and send it off to next week again!

We're reckoning (and hoping!) to have some leftover roast beef, which I'll incorporate into a pie with some whole shallots and mushrooms.  Served with some lovely Jersey Royals together with peas and carrots, it should be cracking!

Maybe something a bit like this?

Now, as for everything else, well I'll have to think of something to have as a dessert on Sunday, plus I can feel another cake sneaking up on me.  I'd like to make a sponge cake this time, I think.  Something lighter for the warmer weather - maybe with fresh fruit involved somewhere along the line.

I'm not sure whether hubby has any plans to make anything extra this week - so we'll just have to see what turns up!

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Ras-al-hanout Minced Lamb with Ottolenghi's Green Couscous

This recipe was originally one from that old favourite, BBC Good Food.  However, I can't justify paying for stewing lamb, or for a lamb shoulder for everyday meals so it required some adjustment and tinkering about, in order to make it suitable for using lamb mince.

I was conscious that the texture would appear very different from how it should do, as mince has a very different "look" to cubed lamb.  Hence, to provide the "cubes" that would be lacking otherwise, I added some small cubes of sweet potato.  The sweet potato added to the sweetness of the dish and also worked perfectly where giving the whole mixture some additional texture.  It didn't look like a panful of slop - which I was a tad nervous about!  One thing to note, though, is the degree of fattiness that appears if you don't drain the fat from the mince to begin with (which is difficult, considering the order of cooking).  I was left with pools of oil on the surface of the mince - which were very quickly and successfully dealt with by laying a piece of kitchen paper on top.  The oil was absorbed into the kitchen paper and the gravy was left behind.  Perfect!

The recipe said to serve with cooked couscous, mint or coriander leaves and lemon wedges - all of which immediately brought Ottolenghi's Green Couscous to mind.  We absolutely love this couscous - which is saying something, as couscous has often been something of a *heavy sigh* where carbohydrates are concerned.

Bearing in mind the anti-inflammatory thing, the lamb dish was spot on (especially with the addition of sweet potato), but the addition of a carb. wasn't in keeping with the spirit of the thing at all.  However, if you consider that in total you're using just 150g of couscous, divide that by three diners and at 50g, you're not doing as much damage as you first thought.  Add to that the ingredients of olive oil, onion, cumin, spring onion, chilli, parsley, coriander, tarragon, dill and mint - and you're immediately into plus points.

The two dishes - the lamb mince and the couscous - went together perfectly.  I was so pleased, although following a spoonful of the couscous I could easily have forgotten about the lamb and just eaten couscous until I couldn't have stuffed another morsel in - but that's probably just me.

I am always vaguely disappointed by Ras-al-hanout.  I think it is a combination of two factors.  Firstly, Ras-al-hanout spice mix has, as one of its ingredients, rose petals.  I have an issue with the smell of rose petals when they aren't attached to a rose bush.  Make no mistake, I have no issue whatsoever with the flavour - love Turkish Delight!  However, I blame the entire thing on a work colleague from when I was a Legal Secretary back in Epsom.  I shared an office with a wonderfully intelligent and mischievously quirky girl called Liz, who had adopted an intensely rose fragranced perfume.  Sitting in a centrally heated office with her, was like being in the middle of Hampton Court Palace's Rose Garden on an 80 degree summer's day.  Now where the Rose Garden is concerned, it's wonderful because you walk into it - breathe deeply - and walk back out again.  Having to live with it for 8 hours a day, was hard, hard work.  When it reached the stage that I was leaving work with a migraine each day, I had to stop her from practising her breast-stroke on her typing chair (yes, she used to!) and ask if she would mind toning down the perfume.  I'm pleased to say that because she was so lovely, she did.


However, since then I've had issues with any kind of rose perfume - which obviously includes Ras-al-hanout.


The second element to this disappointment, is I think because the spice mix doesn't contain any chilli heat at all.  Now the whole reason I was attracted to it in the first place, was because it was novel to find a spice mix that didn't contain chilli.  Having used it a few times, though, I made the enlightening discovery that the spice just isn't exciting without a little heat.  I still have some left in the packet, so the next time I use it, I'll include some chilli and see how the disappointment factor goes!  Yes, I know it won't - strictly speaking - be Ras-al-hanout then, but isn't that how recipes develop?


RAS-AL-HANOUT MINCED LAMB  (feeds 3)


Ingredients :


1 tbsp olive oil
500g minced lamb
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
3 tsp Ras-al-hanout spice mix
1 tbsp tomato puree
3 or 4 dried apricots, chopped
a sweet potato, peeled and diced
300ml vegetable stock.


Method :


1.  In a deep frying pan, heat the oil and add the onion.  Fry until softened and beginning to caramelise, then add the garlic and ginger and continue to cook for another minute or so.


2.  At this stage, you could remove the contents of the pan (set aside somewhere to keep warm) and brown the mince.  This enables you to drain the fat once browned.  Otherwise, you'll need to skim the surface at the end, to remove the excess fat.  Either way, brown the mince until beginning to caramelise.


3.  If appropriate, return the onion mixture to the pan and add the spice mix, tomato puree, apricots, stock and sweet potato and bring to a simmer.


4.  Cover and simmer for around 20 minutes or until the sweet potato is virtually cooked.


5.  Remove the lid and continue to simmer until the sweet potato is tender and the sauce has reduced from a gravy-like consistency, to a dense sauce-like consistency.


6.  Serve.


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It all started so well, with Cornish Pasties, of all things ...

As I recall (and a lot has happened since then, so I could be wrong), the last thing I spoke to you all about, was the Chicken Caesar Salad.  Seems like a lifetime ago!

First of all, I have to publicly thank Dominic for the box of Picota Cherries that reached us safely on Saturday morning.  Such a cute box!  I set out with great intentions of making a cherry clafouti, or individual cherry tartlets - but fate just has a hand in these things sometimes and unfortunately, I didn't get around to making anything other than the odd lovely bowl of "fresh from the fridge" cherries with greek yoghurt on top.  I am ashamed to say that I didn't even (goodness knows how) manage to get a photograph of them.  I hang my head in penitence.

What Pad Thai SHOULD look like!

On the Sunday, we were due to have the Pasticcio - but due to unforeseen circumstances, I lost all will to cook the darned thing at around 3pm that afternoon.  So, we opted out and had a Chinese Takeaway instead.  From No.1 Wok, it was predictably yummy - all except the Pad Thai, which was so over cooked, it had degenerated into a sloppy, slimy mess.  The Nasi Goreng was lacking in chilli and had obviously been seriously westernised, but the King Prawn curry, Honey Chilli Chicken, King Prawn sweet & sour plus all the rices were delicious.

Monday saw hubby doing battle with the smoke alarm, as he cooked his way through grilled sausage, grilled bacon, fried egg, mushrooms, baked beans, tinned tomatoes and a fried slice of his own home-made bread, for everyone.  It's just as well we've got a kitchen door which shuts effectively, or I'd have been camped out under the smoke alarm with a fan!

As ever, Tuesday is shopping day.  We go directly after dropping Son & heir at school, which gets us to the supermarket at around 8.30am.  This ensures that a) there will be a disabled buggy available and b) that it will be charged up and ready to go.  It also has the added bonus of there not being too many people around, at that time in the morning.  In fact, by the time we leave, the car park will have just about filled up.

Needless to say, we haven't had breakfast by then and so we tend to pick up something to have with a cup of coffee when we get home.  On this occasion, it was a pack of two innocent-looking Belgian Buns from the Bakery.  Which were very nice - a naughty treat - right up until I began to feel a bit peculiar later in the evening.  In fact, it was just as I was about to serve up our home-made Cornish Pasties (of which, a blog will appear later)!  This "feeling peculiar" continued across the next two days, hubby joined in around 2-3 hours after I began to go down with it and we both were completely out of action (barring taking Son & heir to school and collecting him again, then making him something to eat) for the next two days.

Just as well I don't have claws, really!

We were both fighting nausea, had debilitating stomach pains and I broke out in an alarming-looking itchy rash.  It occurred on my arms on Tuesday evening, but progressed to my back by Wednesday evening - but the odd thing was that it went away during the day.  It was very like the rash I get when I've had too much garlic, so I take it to be my body's way of dealing with something it really doesn't like.  Poor old Son & heir was quite concerned about the pair of us, although he did get the added bonus of a particularly nice pizza which we'd bought for him on Wednesday evening, as a defence against having to cook.

So there we are.  The sorry and somewhat un-nerving tale of our lost two to three days.  I think I'm just about over it now, and hubby is following along - although he's had a rather harder time of it, as he was required to pitch in and do a whole heap of housework on the Wednesday, before the Occupational Therapist arrived to check out our new patio.  Poor soul, he did a brilliant job that obviously didn't do him any good at all, health-wise.

Of course, all this has thrown my meal plan into disarray.  Although, I am ultimately happy to report that we've been able to keep to the plan for every day other than Wednesday, when we opted for the ready-made dinners in Sainsbury's chiller cabinet, rather than cook.  What did I have?  Well you won't be surprised to hear that I chose a Shepherd's Pie.  What else would do the trick?  Hubby chose sausages, but ultimately had one of the leftover Cornish Pasties from the day before and Son & heir chose what looked to be a completely gorgeous pizza with a stuffed crust.  It was only the circumstances that prevented me from mugging him for a taste.

That's an 8-inch plate it's sitting on!

So!  These Cornish Pasties - completed against the odds (and I have sampled one since) are truly the best Cornish Pasties I've managed to produce, to date.  I kept the recipe simple - just potato, swede and onion, plus the best steak mince I could find - and a whole heap of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt.  I also used the mandolin to cut the vegetables, as I figured they would benefit from all being a similar thickness.  Seemed to do the trick!.

They baked up to be the most enormous pasties I've ever seen - one each was more than enough for a dinner, with the addition of a few baked beans to help them go down.  As said before, hubby managed one before being struck down by the lurgy and Son & heir happily waded his way through his, with a big smile on his face.

I've dealt with Wednesday above, but Thursday should have been Calzones & salad.  Hubby was in no fit state to be making bread dough, so the Spicy Lamb Mince & Ottolenghi's Green Couscous that we should have had on Wednesday, filled the gap.

It's the first time I've cooked this Spicy Lamb Mince and I have to say that I'll very definitely be doing it again, as it was really delicious.  Together with the Green Couscous - which came up trumps and was as gorgeous as the first time I made it - they went really well and made a healthy plus flavoursome meal for jaded tastebuds.

I won't deny that both hubby and myself had a bit of a tummy-twinge thereafter, but it was worth it to get some "proper food" down your gullet!

Well, that brings us to tonight and the rest of the week, which is shaping up as follows :

Friday : Mozzarella Bolognese Bake

Saturday : Ras-al-hanout Chicken with salad

Sunday : Chicken & Fennel Ragu with Jacket potatoes & peas

Monday : Sausage meatballs in gravy, with mash & vegetables.

I don't think anything there jumps out at you as being particularly special or even challenging - which is just the way I like it, at the moment!

The Mozzarella Bolognese Bake is based (lightly) on the Pasticcio idea, but with a view to using up the two Mozzarella balls that are left over from the Calzones that didn't happen.  I make a Mozzarella & Sausage Pasta Bake which is a family favourite, so it's going down those sorts of lines.

Saturday's Ras-al-Hanout chicken is an incredibly simple dish of chicken rubbed and marinated in Ras-al-Hanout, then grilled and paired up with a salad of chargrilled peppers, olives, cherry tomatoes and lettuce with some buttered new potatoes.  Nothing to frighten the horses involved with this, but hopefully will prove to be very nice, all the same.

Now the Chicken & Fennel Ragu on Sunday is something I'm looking forward to cooking.  I picked it up from the internet somewhere - but for the life of me I can't remember where and I forgot to note down on the page where I got it from.  Hence, if it's your recipe - do let me know and I'll credit you with it!  I've managed to get some of the lovely Marabel baking potatoes again, which were so nice the last time we had them.  I can't see it requiring much more than a few peas to bring colour to the table, so again, another simple but (hopefully) lovely meal.

Hubby's in charge on Monday again, and he's further exploring his sausage meatball line.  This time, it's going to be sausage meatballs in gravy (I'm hoping for onion gravy), with mashed potatoes and vegetables - probably involving carrots and broccoli.  Well, if that doesn't get us back on our feet, nothing will!

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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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OMG! Couscous!

Just a quick note to say that last night, I made Ottolenghi's Green Couscous (Page 255 of "Plenty") and it was flipping awesome.  We're still talking about the many layers of flavour and how appallingly good for you, it all was.

There's not many recipes that I feel moved to report back like this, on - but this is one of them.

If you're thinking about Couscous for a meal sometime in the future, you could do far worse than to have a go at their Green Couscous.

I will, of course, be blogging the recipe (which was slightly different to theirs, but based on theirs) shortly.