"Normal" menu planning is resumed.

Pork Ballotine expressed as a Kaleidoscope.  :-)

If you can call it that - normal - anyway!

I suppose it's a whole lot more normal (or should it be "usual"?) than Ballotine of Pork was.

As much as I enjoyed making the Ballotines, I have to admit that it is nice to get back to planning "ordinary" meals again.  In fact, this year, I'm going to have a go at a bit more planning in advance.  Some kind soul on Twitter posted up a link to a "Food Events" calendar, which has enabled me to have some prior warning of times like "Farmhouse Breakfast Week" or "Sausage Week".  In the past, these dates have appeared as if out of the ether and I've always been woefully behindhand with them.  Now I guarantee nothing, but I'm hoping that I'll remember to consult the calendar regularly in order that I can plan some relevant blog posts.  I think that'll make life fun for us - and make for some interesting reading.  Hopefully!

It has already alerted me to the oncoming Burns Night, which has cheered me up no end as it means I get to have Haggis again!  Yay!  Now, what recommendations has anyone as regards a good haggis?  My boss at the Hotel Piccadilly was going to get me one when they ordered theirs in from Scotland, but as I'm not working there now, that's scuppered that idea and I need to find a reliable source. 


So, what's on the menu for this week then?  Well, it looks like this :

Tues : Turkey meatballs in fennel & tomato sauce with corn pasta

Wed : Stuffed marrow with garlic mushroom couscous & mash for son & heir

Thur : Chicken filo pie with carrots, peas & broccoli

Fri : Chicken & chorizo jambalaya

Sat : Maple & black pepper pork steaks with roast parsnips, carrots & savoy cabbage

Sun : Slow Cooker Beef Stew with cheesy dumplings

Mon : Tuna Pasta Bake.

Add caption

Well we had the Turkey meatballs last night and although I found them a bit on the garlicky side, the chaps all loved them.  It was the first time (for ages) that we'd tried gluten free corn pasta (as opposed to the usual wheat pasta) and, although it took for ever to cook (way longer than suggested on the pack), it was really perfectly acceptable.

Pin It I won't witter on for ever about them here, as I will be posting separately the recipe for them.  It is very similar (sauce-wise) to the usual Fennel sauce recipe, but I made the meatballs with different ingredients and very nice they were, too.

Veggie marrow as opposed to marrow bone!

I'm really looking forward to tonight's Stuffed Marrow.

I haven't made a stuffed marrow in years, largely because I think I overdid it and served it a bit too often, in the past.  However, we were watching a Hairy Bikers' programme just recently and they were making stuffed marrow.  Hubby was making appreciative noises and it encouraged me to put a marrow on the menu for this week.  I'll be adopting the Bikers' method of using a thick cheese sauce, rather than simply sprinkling cheese on the top of the marrow, as it appears to make the whole dish more unctuous (such a lovely word!) and rich, as opposed to just having a hard casing of baked cheese over it.

I thought I'd venture out into a couscous dish to accompany the marrow, so rather than go down the normal route of mediterranean vegetables, or herbs, I thought I'd experiment with mushrooms.  Of course, this rules son & heir out of the equation for the dish, so I've invested in some pre-made mashed potato just for him - which he's already got his eye on!  He is the self-styled "mashed potato tester" in the house, which might tell you a bit about his love for the stuff.  Sadly, prior to this anti-inflammatory diet, I was exactly the same - which flags up a few warning signals as regards son & heir's health in the future!

The Chicken Filo Pie is a recipe from Hollowlegs' Blog, which I've had tucked away just waiting for the right moment.  This appears to be it - and I'm looking forward to it.  Everyone likes Filo pastry and so long as I make the pie filling with lovely thick flavoursome gravy, we should be home and hosed!

Photo c/o BBC Good Food website

Friday's Chicken & Chorizo Jambalaya is the one recipe this week that I'm feeling a bit dubious towards.  We've tried a recipe for Jambalaya in the past, which was a singular failure that was verging on the disgusting.  I'm hoping that it was one of two things, either the recipe was at fault or the spice mix that I used was a bit old (very likely!).  So, with a change of recipe (Good Food Magazine again!) and a new spice mix (just bought yesterday), I'm crossing my fingers.  We shall see!  I can't believe that so many people can like this dish so much, for our last attempt to be representative of it.  I'm hoping that's true, anyway!

Now, speaking of dishes that I'm looking forward to cooking - the Maple & Black Pepper Pork Steaks (or chops) is one of them.  The photograph in Good Food Magazine looked To.Die.For - and I just hope that the end result comes out looking just as mouthwatering.  I'll be using a combination of chop (for me) and steaks (for the chaps), but I don't think that should matter.

I just love the idea of Maple Syrup and Black Pepper together in a savoury dish.  Of course, I have to be careful of the degree of Maple Syrup that's used - from a diabetes point of view - but if you divide 150ml between three people, that's only 50ml per serving.  If I'm sparing about how much of the cooking juices I pour over hubby's portion, that will reduce it still further and I think it should be fine.

I'll be serving it with some roast parsnips (to represent the carbohydrate aspect) and carrots with savoy cabbage, which will also go well with the maple syrup flavours.  Yum!

I'm back to opting for an "easy" dish for Sunday.  It certainly doesn't get a lot easier than a lovely beef stew made with shin of beef, done in the slow cooker.  A bit of chopping and frying, then into the slow cooker and enjoy the cooking smells until dinner time.  I'll also be putting together some of those lovely cheesy dumplings that I made for a chicken casserole fairly recently, to cope with the carbohydrate issue for the chaps.

So that brings us to Monday, when we'll be making use of the store cupboard and indulging in the best that Homepride can put into a jar - their Tuna Pasta Bake.  For me, this stuff is very akin to Macdonalds coffee, in that I'm sure they put something terribly addictive in it.  I have never found - even home-made - a Tuna Pasta Bake recipe to beat it.  Considering that, at one time, I really disliked Tuna Pasta Bake - this is really going some, for me.  Plus, it's so easy - open the jar, mix with the pasta, add some water, add some tuna, add some cheese, bake - eat.  Doesn't get a lot easier than that.  So, in culinary terms, we'll be slumming it on Monday.  *grin*  As they say in America, "so bite me". 

As for "extra" cooking and baking, I've been nursing a James Martin recipe for an Orange and Ground Almond cake for the last week or more, which I'm hoping to get made this week.  It's a very different type of recipe in both ingredients and method, so it has caught my interest for those reasons alone.  If you factor in that oranges and almonds are both incredibly good in an anti-inflammatory way, it's only a wonder I haven't made it already!

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The good, the bad & the frustrating!

Yum!  I could eat that all over again.

This post is just to round up on last week, as I've a number of small things to report.

So let's begin with "the good", which accolade is almost entirely restricted (apart from a really nice Chilli con Carne on Monday) to the scampi in breadcrumbs dinner that hubby made for us all.


It wasn't so much the scampi - which are gorgeous no matter what you do with them - but the accompaniments, that made the meal.  He'd obviously put some serious thought into what he was going to do to go with them and had made some super-yummy croutons (or crunchy crauters, as they've become known) as well as concocting a devilish mixture of iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, almond slivers and spring onion as a salad.


Those croutons are a thing of great beauty and, as they're made from a lovely light bloomer loaf, are already on their way to being light and crunchy before they even hit the oven.  With a sprinkle of olive oil and some herbs and sea salt, they are absolutely terrific in a salad.  To be honest, I'd just nibble my way through a plateful of them while watching t.v. if I could!  (But I can't 'cos that'd be terribly bad for my waistline - but believe me, I've thought about it!).

Meatballs : good - curry : bad!

The other "good" thing, was the turkey meatballs that I made for the curry.  They consisted of turkey mince, breadcrumbs, chopped coriander and half a finely chopped red chilli.  I pinched one for tasters after they'd been pan fried and they were absolutely gorgeous.  I reckon they'd be lovely on their own, in a pitta bread with some salad and maybe some tzatziki or a gentle chutney.  I'll be investigating this further in the future!


However, this also leads us on to "the bad".  I completely shot the poor old curry in the foot by including too much garam masala.  I do have a reason for it, which is that the stupid "medium" curry powder I bought from Asda is no more "medium" than fly to the moon.  More like "blisteringly hot", I think.  So, as I didn't want to increase the heat of the curry, I reduced the amount of curry powder and increased the amount of garam masala - so that it would "taste like curry", without being hot.  Well, it certainly did taste like curry, but it was so gritty from the ground spices that it was a bit nasty.  I enjoyed the sweetcorn in it, though - which was fresh and I'd taken from a cob earlier.  It provided the sweetness without having to rely on sugar - which is quite a good thing, with a diabetic in the house.

Not mine, I'm afraid.

Now.  What about "the frustrating", eh?  Well, this is represented by my attempting to produce Nigel Slater's Cardamom & Citrus Jelly (aka "Grown Up Jelly").  It looked so gorgeous in the t.v. programme (Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers) that I just had to give it a go.  I have no idea what happened, but it just would not set.  I gave it enough gelatine to slay a horse - in two instalments, ultimately - and it still stubbornly refused to set!  In the end, I stuffed the thing in the freezer and turned it into sorbet.  Which was nice, but not quite the idea.


Now I have three theories regarding the non-setting problem.  The first is that I had four sheets of gelatine left from a packet which had been in the cupboard for a number of months.  Does gelatine go off?  It was still within its "use by" date, but I wonder if perhaps it had lost some of its effectiveness, with age.  The second theory, is that because the existing packet was a super quality gelatine, but the second packet was just Asda's own, I wonder if the lower quality gelatine didn't have as much effectiveness as the "silver quality" version?  I'm not sure about this one.  Lastly, is the very great probability that I got my maths wrong (twice) and didn't calculate enough gelatine for the quantity.  It should have had 5-6 sheets for 1 litre of juice - and I had used 10 sheets by the end of it.  It's a mystery.

Smiley faced pan says "yay! An egg!".

Lastly, son & heir was cooking himself a fried egg for breakfast at the weekend and as he was heating up the olive oil, it looked like a smiley face.  He was sufficiently amused by that to take its photograph and although it's a bit fuzzy, I think it's recognisably a smiley faced pan.  Cute!








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From Cottage Pie to Chicken & Bacon Stew : a round-up of the last two weeks

Medicinal Cottage Pie - just what the doctor ordered!

As I had been struck down with a case of the nasties, my meal planning for the last two weeks has been a bit different to normal.

For the first week, I had to come up with meals that Hubby could make without too much difficulty, as it was quite apparent that I wouldn't be doing very much in the kitchen other than making toast!

So, on that Monday we had shop-bought chicken in spicy breadcrumbs, in a wrap with lettuce, salsa and guacamole.  Son & heir was very happy with this (well, apart from the guacamole, but hubby very wisely put his guacamole separately on the side of the plate as he'd anticipated problems there) and it was a doddle for Hubby to put together.

Son & heir was going on his first parent-free visit to the cinema on the Wednesday, so when we'd collected him and his friend, we wheeled them off to Macdonalds for a celebratory burger.  I had one of their sweet chilli chicken wraps, which was actually quite palatable.  We got home and I went back to bed.  LOL

I was paying for the outing the following day, so Hubby prepared a medicinal Cottage Pie, with carrots, broccoli and celeriac (for Shepherd's Pie, just use lamb mince instead of the beef mince used for Cottage Pie).  Unfortunately, the potatoes let him down in that they simply disintegrated in the pan, but the meat part of the pie was delicious as ever.  I felt much restored, thereafter.

Friday was good old Bacon & Leek Pasta.  It is one of the simplest recipes to cook and Hubby did a great job with it.

He'd got the bit well between his teeth come Saturday, and ventured into curry!  We had a really lovely chicken curry with rice and shop-bought puppodums.  There was intentionally nothing fancy, nothing special about the curry, but it was saucy, flavoursome and rich - a perfect everyday curry.

Is that not a very creditable looking roast dinner?  :-)

We've recently discovered that Hubby makes a great line in roast dinners, so for Sunday, he cooked roast chicken breasts with roast potatoes, parsnips and assorted vegetables.  He did the Marco Pierre White thing with the chicken breasts, in that he let down a stock cube with a little water and rubbed it into the meat, together with a little lemon juice.  It was really yummy!   He even found some yorkshire puddings hiding in the freezer, so they went into the oven too.  A cracking good dinner.

Monday is always a "rely on storecupboard goods" day, as either the veggies have all been used up, or it's too long (from shopping on Friday) to expect salad to keep nicely.  So we had good old sausage, mash, baked beans and peas - using Spring Fields lovely Cumberland sausages, of course.

So that was the first week, successfully completed.  I think Hubby deserves a medal, as he was carrying the entire household on his own two feet.

The second week, I was starting to feel a bit more human and anticipated being able to return to kitchen duties.  So, when I was planning the meals I went for ones I've done successfully before, that barring catastrophe, would be almost guaranteed to turn out how they should and be enjoyed by everyone.

Tuesday was cop-out day and we all had frozen supermarket pizza.  Well, it's easy!

See the purple basil?  Cute!

Wednesday was my first day back in the kitchen and although my legs really weren't ready for all this, I struggled on through and made a Sicilian Pork Ragu with Spirali pasta.  I had only made this once before, but it ranks right up there with my favourites.  Hubby did a lot of the getting stuff out and putting stuff away again, so I can't claim to have done it completely on my own - but it was a start.  I was a little concerned about how the Spirali pasta would behave with the Ragu, as the original recipe (care of "A Glug of Oil") uses Tagliatelle and knowing how Willie insists on using the right pasta for the right sauce, I was firmly crossing my fingers.  Happily, it behaved impeccably and everyone cleared their plates (well, all except for a few pieces of pasta - which the dogs soon took care of in their dinners!).

Thursday, I was back at work and Hubby was exploring further along the curry route.  This time, he made a chicken Biryani.  See how artistically he presented it?  I absolutely love boiled egg with curry (well, boiled egg with just about anything really!) and the tomato - which looks a teensy bit overpowering in the picture - in fact was a lovely juicy counterpoint to the rice mixture.  Hubby polished off the leftovers the following day for lunch, so that proves how nice it was!


Friday dawned and we had a guest for dinner that night, as Son & heir had a friend staying over for a sleepover.  I had booked in my Turkey meatballs in a tomato and fennel sauce for that night, which proved perfect as we just had to buy a little extra Turkey mince and the rest stretched.  I found the cooking a little easier to do, this time, too.

Mmmn - tenderstem broccoli!

So that brings us to last night, which was my lovely one-pot chicken & bacon stew, which I served with tenderstem broccoli.  I set off doing the prep. for the dish and suddenly it dawned on me - but not until I was pretty much half-way through - that I should be using half the quantities stated!  It was the 1 litre of chicken stock that alerted me - for 3-4 people, it would have been swimming!  So I had to back up a bit and do some adjusting of the quantities that I had prepared, but even so, I put too much onion, bacon, tomato puree and bay leaves in the mix.  Oddly enough, the result tasted absolutely gorgeous - and a marked improvement on the original (which was pretty darned good, as it stood!). In fact, I've just eaten the leftovers for breakfast, which might tell you how good it was!


Tonight, I'm planning a Pork and Caramelised Apples dish which will be started on the hob and wind up in the oven, just to ensure the pork is tender.  I'll be serving it with mashed potato, runner beans (hopefully some from our garden), carrots & broccoli.  I'll get some vitamins and minerals into those boys if it's the last thing I do!


Tomorrow, Monday, Hubby is back on the curry trail - this time he's planning a vegetable curry, in which he'll use up whatever is leftover in the vegetable drawer and has a secret weapon - a cauliflower!  Curried is the only denomination of cauliflower he enjoys, so a cauliflower was a must for a vegetable curry.  He's planning on serving it with rice and naan bread and I'm really looking forward to it.  There's quite a selection of bits and pieces of vegetables in the veggie drawer, so it should have plenty of variety!


Now, all that leaves me to do is to work out what the heck we're going to be eating this coming week!  Wish me luck!


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Turkey meatballs in tomato & fennel sauce

Prior to being doused with a whole heap of Parmesan!

This recipe is nothing short of a triumph - for many reasons.

I chose it because I was intrigued by the idea of tomato & fennel sauce and reckoned that if it worked, it'd be worthwhile the pain of making the meatballs.  However, it proved to be not only extremely cheap to make, but extremely easy to make.  It was also our first go at wholemeal pasta (delivered in error) for years - and the final accolade was that everyone enjoyed it!

I had scheduled it for a Wednesday, as because I don't work on Wednesdays, I'd be free to make & cook the meatballs in advance, so ensuring it didn't turn out to be a long haul in the making.  This was important, as having been out the day before, my energy levels were fairly low.

The meatballs are almost a pleasure to make, as they are simply a matter of combining the turkey mince with breadcrumbs and garlic.  I had a flash of inspiration and added a teaspoonful of grated lemon zest and some seasoning, which was oddly missing from the original recipe.  They didn't require chilling, as everything had come straight from the fridge in the first place and the little meatballs were hanging together perfectly.

So, I just fried them off and left them under the grill (covered with silver foil so that they didn't dry out) until the sauce was made, later on.

The pasta was a happy accident.  I'd ordered just ordinary fusilli, but what was delivered was wholemeal fusilli.  I was about to send it back, when hubby suggested we try it, just in case the quality has improved over the years.  I have horrible memories of nasty gritty pasta that went under the name of wholemeal, so I was a tad dubious.  However, it was perfectly fine.  Not gritty and for once actually tasted of something.  I have found that most supermarket pasta doesn't taste of a great deal, but this had a bit of a nutty flavour which was very acceptable.  It's also better for hubby, as being slightly diabetic, it's good to have carbohydrates that release slowly, which wholemeal does.

So, with some grated parmesan for sprinkling over (and cheddar for son & heir, who isn't a parmesan fan), it made a great mid-week dinner for the family.

I like Willie's idea of adding a little cube of cheese to the meatballs, and might try that next time - but I reckon I'll leave the lemon zest out, in that case!  lol

TURKEY MEATBALLS IN TOMATO & FENNEL SAUCE  (serves 3)

Ingredients :

400g turkey mince (I made mine with 350g which was fine for 3 people)
25g fresh breadcrumbs
2 garlic cloves, grated
zest of half a lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, diced small
1 tsp fennel seeds
400g chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
2-3 splashes of Worcestershire Sauce
400g fusilli, cooked, to serve
grated parmesan or cheddar, to serve.

Method :

1.  Put the mince in a mixing bowl with the breadcrumbs, lemon zest and half the garlic.  Season and mix well to combine.  Using your hands, shape the mixture into small balls, around 15-16 or so and chill for 10 minutes if necessary.

2.  Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a pan and add the onion, carrot and remaining garlic.  Cook for 5-6 minutes or until softened.

3.  Pop the fennel seeds into a pestle & mortar and grind them lightly to just break them up a bit.  If you don't have a pestle & mortar, just put them in as is.  Add the fennel seeds and cook for a few seconds, stirring to combine.

4.  Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, tomato ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.  Add a half a can of water, season and stir to combine well.  Allow to simmer for some 15 minutes or so until thickened and reduced.

5.  Using a non-stick frying pan, fry the meatballs for 8-10 minutes until cooked through.  Transfer them to the sauce and simmer until piping hot.

6.  Serve with the fusilli and with cheese sprinkled over.

Yum!

Menu plan : 31 May - 6 June 2011

Here we are again with the meal plan for this coming week and already we're two days into it.  Mind you, we did take one day out to drive around the New Forest and see this year's crop of foals, which was a lovely sunny day which everyone enjoyed.  We took a picnic and stopped at Bolderwood where they've got a well organised picnic area with loos and even an ice cream stand.

This week's menu is following on with the lighter, less calorific, fresher meals - well, as much as is possible!

One deviation from this is Saturday's curry, which is taken from the Gurkha part of the British Army Cookbook - a copy of which (just the Gurkha part, not all of it!) was given to me by the generous Willie who I am sure you will have noticed in the comments sections of my blogs.  Goodness only knows where he got it from - and we won't ask.  ~taps the side of her nose knowingly~  LOL

So, this is how the week's menu has shaped up :

Tuesday : Chicken Jhalfrezi, basmati rice and Peshwari naan

Wednesday : Turkey meatballs in tomato & fennel sauce, with wholemeal pasta & doughballs

Thursday : Chilli Prawn Noodles

Friday : Paprika chicken with Jacket Potatoes

Saturday : Fried Pork Curry with sauce & mushroom rice

Sunday : Pork Shoulder, roast potatoes, carrots, corn on the cob, spring greens & apple sauce

Monday : Chilli con carne & rice.

As I am writing this on the Wednesday evening, we have already sampled the Chicken Jhalfrezi, which was spectacularly successful.  I was a little bit dubious about it, as it was a "healthier" recipe which didn't sound like any curry I'd ever produced.  Not that that's a bad thing - it's always good to learn new techniques.  I was just a little concerned that it would be a bit left-field for the menfolk.

The curry itself was made with chicken marinated in yoghurt, tomato puree, chilli and lemon juice.  You cook the onion and green pepper and add the marinated chicken, cooking the whole thing until fairly dry.  Then - and this was the left field bit - you serve the curry on a bed of salad leaves (I chose watercress, although spinach would be good too) that have been dressed in lemon juice & sea salt.

It was, as they say, blindin'.

This evening's fare was a dish of home-made meatballs in a tomato & fennel sauce.  The meatballs were made with turkey mince which is as economical as it is gentle in flavour.  However, with a clove of garlic, some breadcrumbs and lemon zest - not to mention a good hit of sea salt & freshly ground black pepper - a fairly uninteresting pack of mince turned into some cracking good meatballs.  The sauce was great - the fennel seeds gave it an interesting fragrance and a hint of aniseed on your tongue.  I'll be blogging this one once I've done the Jhalfrezi!

Thursday is hubby's night to cook and he's trotting out his famous Chilli Prawn Noodles.  I can't wait, as I really enjoy this dish - and we've a few interesting ingredients in the cupboard now that we didn't have previously.  Hubby may opt to stay with the approved recipe - but with things like Mirrin and Fish Sauce just sitting there, they'd be hard to resist.

Friday brings the second attempt at the Paprika chicken that got bumped from last week's menu.  Fingers crossed, it makes it this week.

Saturday is Ghurka curry night and, because I couldn't rustle up 10 or 50 friends to come and share, I'll be having an interesting time scaling the British Army's recipes down to suit 3 of us!

I'm really looking forward to Sunday's roast.  I haven't done a roast for a few weeks now and have been yearning for a piece of pork.  I figure a slow-roasted piece of shoulder will fit the bill perfectly.  I've managed to accumulate enough dripping in my fat cup for roast potatoes, and we'll be having Chantenay carrots, corn on the cob and spring greens.  I'll try to avoid doing Yorkshire puddings, in the interests of keeping the whole thing on the lighter side of "thumping great roast dinner".

Which brings us back to Monday, when we'll be trotting out another old favourite - Chilli con Carne.  Well, it is possible to make it without incurring the wrath of the calorie police, plus Son & heir really enjoys a good chilli.  It won't be the mega-chilli of late, which involves beef shin, but a more demure version using minced beef.  I've got a few aces up my sleeve that were used in the mega-chilli, so it'll be interesting to see how they translate in the more demure version!

So there we are.  It would seem as though meat-free Monday has taken a bit of a back seat again, which is very naughty of me.  I'll have to do better for next week!

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