I cooked!

For the first time in the last fortnight or so, I cooked.

~ cue applause ~

I'm feeling lots better now and remembered my way back to the kitchen (which was an achievement, if you know my memory at the moment!) and I made a lovely Kedgeree.  Click on the link there and you'll find the recipe, if you're curious.

I didn't overcook the rice, the onions were cooked perfectly and okay perhaps I did overcook the fish just a tiny bit - but the rice needed draining.  ~shrug~  It was that or soggy rice.

Hooray!

Now, because we have passed so many days of lovely meals that I have been in no fit state to tell you about (other than occasionally on the Facebook page), I thought I'd do a quick run down on the best of them now.

However!  Before we get started, I have to tell you that hubby has a new camera!  Woo!
In my opinion, the photographs he took with the old camera were pretty darned good - but this new camera has been turning out amazing results.  The above photograph of the Kedgeree was taken with the new camera - it'd be interesting to see whether you can tell which are "new camera" photographs and which are from the old!

Don't forget that you can click on the photographs and open them up larger, for close inspection!

Now heading backwards in time, at lunchtime today I will admit to having a little practice in the cooking stakes and suddenly wanted poached eggs on toast - and only poached eggs on toast.  Have you ever had one of those moments?  (Not necessarily with poached eggs).  I just had to - and for once the eggs behaved, the toast was crunchy and with a teensy sprinkle of celery salt and black pepper they were a fabulously satisfying lunch.

Just look at that runny yolk.  Cor!

We've had a pretty torrid time of it just lately, coming down with this horrid flu bug one after the other.  I don't think we've ever used so many tissues or swallowed so many paracetamols!

Dear hubby took pity on me and took over all kitchen duties immediately he realised that I was almost sick unto death.  Now if you ask him, he'll tell you that he has made some real howlers of bad meals - but it's not true!

Just look at this creamy chicken & blue cheese pasta dish - does it get any better than this?  I don't think so.  It was perfect, non-confrontational, easy eating stuff that was exactly what the Doctor would have ordered, if he'd have known about it.

Because hubby knows about my liking for Cottage Pie (or Shepherd's Pie) and how it has often been utilised as medicine (and worked very well), it was on the menu list.  However, with a new twist!  While I was sitting sniffling in the car, hubby was purchasing three individual Cottage Pie dishes under the pretext of doing some essential shopping.  Sneaky, eh?

Lo and behold, at the appointed time, out came a gorgeously crunchy topped individual Cottage Pie with its side serving of an assortment of vegetables all designed to put a bit of a spring back into our family's step.

So, be prepared for some individual fish pies, lasagne's, moussaka's - oh, basically, anything that will look great in an individual dish!

Oh and of course - I haven't shown you our Christmas Dinner!

Ta daaaa!  Christmas turkey dinner!

I managed to get through making Christmas dinner by the skin of my teeth.  The fact that we’d cooked the turkey in advance, carved it and put it in the freezer in some stock, was just such a boon!  It was a fairly simple matter, thereafter, of making a gravy with the stock and putting the turkey in gravy into the oven to heat through.

In the meanwhile, the pigs in blankets, stuffing balls, potatoes and parsnips were roasting, the other vegetables were steaming and I was making bread sauce.  It was a simple matter of just serving everything at the right time, thereafter.

Yes, they are purple Brussels Sprouts!

I can thoroughly recommend this as a course of action for the future, so long as you don’t have to present a bronzed and roasted turkey at the table, of course.  I don’t think a casserole dish of carved turkey meat has quite the same appeal.

You might remember my Heritage Christmas Pudding that I’d made a little taster pudding of?  Well, it was superb by the time Christmas came.  I’d resisted all calls to “feed” it with booze and was very pleased with the rich, fruity flavours.  In fact, my Mum commented that it was a bit too boozy – which was odd, considering all it had in it was best part of a bottle of Guinness and a couple of tablespoonfuls of spiced rum!

This Christmas was the first time we’ve ever managed to eat an entire Christmas pudding over several mealtimes.   Ordinarily, the last few slices get tired of and wind up in the local birdies, but not this year.  Sorry birdies!

I’m quite looking forward to next year’s pudding, now!  I’m also going to have to do a few other types of steamed pudding, now that I’ve broken my duck so successfully.

A quick word about our Christmas breakfast.  We try to have something different each year - and after quite literally years of observing the American fancy for pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, we finally succumbed.

For ease (well, the next thing on the agenda was the present opening), we had bought some pancakes which it was a simple matter of warming up in the microwave.  In retrospect, I think a knob of butter would have been a good ruse to just help moisten the pancakes a little more.  The bacon was delicious as usual and the maple syrup was beyond decadent.  With a glass or two of Buck's Fizz, it started our Christmas morning off a treat.

So, looking ahead, what culinary challenges have I got lined up for myself?

Well, there’s the big old terracotta Tagine that I got for Christmas.   Once I've done the whole palaver of seasoning it (soaking overnight, baking in a cool oven for 2 hours), I shall have to find a suitable recipe and give a “proper” tagine a go.  I’m sure I won’t have trouble finding a recipe, as I also got Yotam Ottolenghi’s cook book “Jerusalem” for Christmas.  I’d found three recipes that I want to make, within the first five pages!

Then there’s the Rosti question.  My hubby has yet to find his rosti-making muse and has (apparently) turned out some undercooked efforts, which have burned edges.  This must have been before I met him, as I don’t ever recall such a thing.  However, I have accepted the rosti challenge and shall be grating and squeezing potatoes - and we've got some of our favourite Greenvale Farm Fresh Jelly potatoes - in the hope of creating something worth eating!  You’ll know if I get it right, as I’ll be somewhat cock-a-hoop and no doubt, telling everyone.

If you are currently confined to bed suffering with this horrid flu - I do so hope you get well soon.  Just think of this blog post as evidence that you CAN get better, because if I can do it - anyone can!

Gammon, pot roasted in Cola

I was having trouble, just then, working out whether to call this "Gammon, pot roasted in cola" or "Pot roast cola gammon" or even "Cola braised Gammon ham".  It's a tricky one.

Either way, what it was trying to convey is that this blog post is all about a boneless smoked gammon joint, that was cooked in a saucepan of cola drink, celery, onion and carrots.  You can make your own mind up as to what to call it.  I call it yummy - but a terror to clean up afterwards!

I had been pondering over what to cook the bacon joint in - or whether to just pop it in the oven and roast it - for some time before hubby mentioned that we had a spare bottle of cola that I could use, if I wanted.  Having already made a ham cooked in cola (albeit a much bigger one, the Christmas before last), I thought it would be interesting to see how it translated to a much smaller piece of meat.

Has definitely succumbed to the "cola" effect!

The joint I had was around 800g, so just a little fellow - but just enough for a Sunday dinner, with a little left over for sandwiches the next day.

As is my habit, I soaked the gammon overnight to reduce its salt content.  It smelled lovely when it went into its chilly bath (I just used water, as I was only interested in getting rid of the salt, rather than getting additional flavours into the meat) and I was quite hopeful of a good dinner the following day.

I roughly chopped up the two carrots, an onion and two sticks of celery and used them to create a trivet upon which to put the meat, as I've known the bottom of a piece of meat become quite scorched when cooked this way.  In went the gammon and I poured the cola in until just covering the top of the meat, whilst still leaving a gap at the top of the saucepan.  I didn't want it boiling over - not with cola involved in it, anyway!

I left the gammon chuckling away on a low simmer for approximately an hour and a half.

What I didn't think about though, was that as the pot simmered the steam gathered under the lid and ever so slightly lifted it.  Enough for a splurt of cola/steam mix to decorate the top of my cooker, the buttons on the front of the cooker, the saucepan, the worktop to the side - and anything else that wanted to get in the way, with a sticky dark brown goo that was extremely hard to remove.  Oh - and the goo that had managed to creep in between the saucepan and the hot plate and then burn, was virtually welded on.  *sigh*  I'll have to think of a better plan, if I'm going to do this again in future.

I had used a big jam cauldron for the Christmas piece that I cooked in this way, and it obviously didn't have the same effect between steam and lid, as this hadn't happened then.

Served with roast potatoes & parsnips, creamed leeks, cabbage and carrots - delicious!

Still, the end result was worth all the mopping up and cleaning.  The ham emerged looking pleasingly dark and, when cut, demonstrated a lovely distinction between the cola-flavoured outside and the pink, succulent inside.  Between the soaking and the cooking, the ham had wound up delightfully moist and very acceptably mild in flavour.  There wasn't a very distinctive difference in flavour between the inner and outer, which is nice because you don't really want a strong cola influence in your roast dinner.

Roasties close up - no dribbling, now!

I had used the gorgeous Greenvale Farmfresh Jelly Potatoes for my roasties and can report that they are utterly perfect when used in this way.  I par-boiled them - at which they behave impeccably, not collapsing, or dissolving, or remaining bullet-like - and roasted them for the prescribed 45 minutes at 200degF.  The end result was a perfect, crispy, gently potato flavoured roastie, which we all agreed was one of the nicest roast potatoes we'd had in a very long time.

Next on the list for these potatoes is to try them in potato salad, after which I'm sure will come some mashed potato.  I can't see son & heir letting me get away without mashing them, for very much longer!

.

Huddersfield Hash - comfort food to rival a Cottage Pie

Huddersfield Hash.

Now there's a new one for me!  Have you ever heard of it?  I hadn't - but I'm jolly glad I found out about it - as it's all set to become one of our new family favourites.

I found it on www.cookitsimply.com (follow the link to the original recipe) when I was searching for minced beef recipes and was a tad sceptical to begin with.  That is, until I read the recipe and imagined the flavours together.  Hmmmn, yes - now that looked promising.

I could see that I'd need to increase the spicing a little, as hubby likes to be able to taste the spices that went into a meal - and at "a pinch", the likelihood of his being able to do so was minimal.  I didn't increase them much, however, just to a level teaspoonful.  I didn't want them to dominate all the other flavours.

In order to reduce the fat content of the dish, I also turned the cooking process around a little bit in order to drain the fat from the meat, without losing any of the other flavours.  I do think that it is well worth doing this, as most supermarket purchased minced beef will have a percentage of fat involved with it - and there's no need to be eating it.

I will also admit to including a tablespoonful of that fabulous secret ingredient that cheers up most tomato-based sauces, which is - of course - tomato ketchup.  Aaah, where would we be without tomato ketchup.  I find it far better to add a tablespoonful of tomato ketchup, than to add the same amount of tomato puree.  There is just such a lovely combination of spices in ketchup - and sugar - that it can't help but cheer up a lonely tomato sauce.  Very often - and particularly if I've used Tarantella organic tinned tomatoes (yes, that's a plug and no, I'm not being sponsored by them!) - I find that I don't need to add additional sugar, if I've used tomato ketchup.  (Which illustrates how much sugar you're throwing down your neck, when attached to your chips!).

I made the cheese sauce earlier on in the day, which meant that it was stone cold by the time I was assembling the dish.  I think it is very well worth doing that, as it not only makes "making dinner" a little bit easier, but helps the texture of the sauce once you've added the egg.

I served mine with plain boiled carrots, parsnips and broccoli, along with a new variety of potato that I had been sent to try out by the lovely people at Greenvale Farm Fresh - the "Jelly" potato.  With its rich yellow flesh, distinctive buttery taste and creamy texture, this is a potato worth taking note of!

This first try-out was a simple test of a potato, but it showcased the flavour - which was surprisingly very nice indeed!  I say "surprisingly" because I find that potatoes fall into two camps - the very "earthy" tasting ones and the rest (which don't taste of much at all).  These Jelly potatoes are blazing the trail for a third type of potato - one which doesn't taste "earthy", but does taste of potato!  Even hubby - who would happily see all potatoes loaded into a space rocket and fired into the face of the sun - was happily tucking into his! 

Another point of note for the Jelly potato is the ease with which they can be peeled.  As a disabled person with limited sensation in her hands, I found peeling these potatoes to be an absolute pleasure.  I can see how they have got the name "Jelly", as although they aren't in the least bit jellified, their close texture has a smoothness that means the peeler just glides through.  I'm looking forward to trying them out in different incarnations!

If you're a Shepherd's or Cottage pie devotee, as I am, I reckon you'll really enjoy this Huddersfield Hash.  Give it a try - it's the perfect weather for it, at the moment!


HUDDERSFIELD HASH  (feeds 4)


Ingredients :


For the sauce :

20g butter
2 heaped tbsp plain flour
milk, from 1 pint (although you probably won't need the full pint)
half a tsp English mustard powder
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of cayenne pepper
150g mature Cheddar cheese, grated
1 egg, beaten.


For the meat mixture :
500g minced beef
1 tbsp olive oil
2 small courgettes, sliced
1 large Spanish onion, finely chopped (I used a red onion)
1 bay leaf
half a tsp of paprika
half a tsp of ground cumin
half a tsp of ground coriander
1 garlic clove, chopped fine or grated
500g minced beef
400g canned tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato ketchup.

METHOD :

1.  Begin, earlier in the day, by making the cheese sauce.  In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour.  Mix until the flour has absorbed all the butter and cook out for a minute or so on a medium heat.


2.  Slowly, and whisking all the time, add the milk until the sauce reaches a gorgeously thick and gloopy consistency.


3.  Add the mustard powder, cayenne and nutmeg and whisk through until properly combined, then remove from the heat and add the cheese.


4.  Stir the cheese through and it will melt in the residual heat of the sauce.  You can adjust the texture of the sauce by adding a little more milk now if it is too thick, but don't boil the sauce (to reduce it if it's too thin) now it has the cheese in it, or it might split.  It is far better for it to be too thick!


5.  Set the sauce aside to cool.

6.  The next stage is the meat mixture.  Pre heat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.   In a large frying pan, dry fry the mince until it is beginning to caramelise where it touches the pan and has given up all its fat.

7.  Remove the meat to a warmed dish and reserve.  Drain the fat (into the dog's bowl, is always a good idea!).

8.  Add the olive oil to the pan and the sliced courgettes.  Cook until beginning to brown - on both sides - and reserve in an oven proof dish.

9.  Add the onion to the pan and cook on a medium heat until softened.  Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

10.  Return the meat to the pan and stir to combine.

11.  Stir in the bay leaf and spices and make sure they are well distributed through the mixture.

12.  Add the tomatoes and ketchup.  Break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon, but leave them fairly chunky.  Simmer for some 15 minutes or until the mixture has thickened.  Season to taste.
13. Turn the meat mixture into the baking dish and level the top.

14.  Take the egg and whisk it into the cheese sauce, then cover the meat mixture with the sauce.

15. Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

16. Serve. 

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