Bobotie - the more simple version, but just as good!

It just goes to show how behind I am with keeping the blog up to date, that this blog post is about last Thursday's Bobotie!  I blame the advent of Christmas (literally!) with all its shopping and organising - not to mention racing Son & heir all over the neighbourhood, to keep up with his social engagements!

This Bobotie, however, just had to be blogged.  I've made Bobotie once before from a Rachel Allen recipe and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  That recipe, however, was a touch more complicated than this Kevin Dundon version.  I would liken the difference between the two to being a situation where you'd use the Rachel Allen one for a dinner party, whereas the Kevin Dundon version is far more suitable for a mid-week dinner for the family.

As such, it was perfect.  Satisfyingly simple to prepare, it even gave me time to cook some lovely carrot & parsnip mash (which I'd make again - simply boil some cut carrots, then add the parsnip when the carrots are nearly done.  Drain, add plenty of butter and black pepper and blitz until smooth.  Got the thumbs up from the whole family) and shredded cabbage, all of which went perfectly with the Bobotie.  I have since made the Bobotie again, this time pairing it up with BBC Good Food's yellow rice recipe, which was also great.

Bobotie consists of a fairly dry mildly curry spiced, lamb mince mixture.  However, there are a couple of interesting turns that the meat mixture makes, not least the inclusion of a couple of slices of bread which have been soaked in milk.  On first reading, you need to suspend disbelief for a while and really concentrate on how you feel the flavours will meld together.  

Hand me a spoon, I could dive right in!

Owing to my having drained the fat from the meat, I found that I needed to add around 200ml of water to the meat mixture prior to putting it in the oven to bake, which next time I would make into lamb stock rather than just water - and have included in the recipe below.  However, the flavours were gorgeous.  Slightly sweet, slightly spicy, very lamby and with a tangy edge, the egg mixture that is poured on top adds a mildly foamy, interesting layer once it has been baked.  It didn't resemble scrambled egg, or an omelette, or baked eggs - it has a texture and a flavour all of its own.

January 2019 version!

BOBOTIE (the easier version)  Serves 3-4

Ingredients :

1 slice of bread
160ml milk
1 tbsp sunflower or olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped fine
1 clove garlic, crushed
½ tsp grated ginger root
1 flat tsp mild curry powder
½ tsp turmeric
500g minced lamb
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp tomato chutney
¼ of a lemon, juiced
30g raisins
100-200ml lamb stock
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 large eggs.

Method :

Pre-heat the oven to 170deg C/325deg F/Gas 3.

Soak the bread in the milk for around 10 minutes, then strain (I helped it along with a little squeeze), reserving the milk and fluff the bread up with a fork.

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a moderate heat and add the minced lamb to the pan and increase the heat to maximum.  Break up the pieces of mince with a wooden spoon as it fries.  Season with a little sea salt and ground black pepper and fry until well browned to the point of caramelising.  Chase all the meat over to one side of the pan and drain off the worst of the fat (if necessary), removing the meat to a bowl.  (I use the onion/garlic bowl and tip them in beside the meat, then remove the meat into the empty bowl).  

Anyway, however you do it, add the onions and garlic and fry until softened over a reduced, moderate, heat.  Add the garlic, ginger, curry powder and turmeric and mix quickly to coat the onions in the spices.  Cook on for around 2-3 minutes.

Add the lamb back to the pan and stir well to combine.  Add the sugar, mashed bread, chutney, lemon juice and raisins to the mixture and mix well again.  Add enough stock until you have the mixture moistened sufficiently, without becoming "saucy".  Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Decant the mixture into a casserole dish, level the top and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

For the topping, whisk the milk and eggs together with a little sea salt & black pepper, then remove the casserole from the oven and pour the egg mixture on top of the meat.  Bake for a further 20 minutes or so, or until the egg mixture is browned on top and the edges are starting to sizzle.

Printable version

Cobbler, Bobotie, Wraps, Curry, Stew & Pasties - meal planning!

Gosh, I must be getting better at this - it's only Wednesday and here's me telling you about this week's meal plans.

Last week finished up okay, with the Corned Beef Pie which I've yet to blog about.  I'm happy that I managed to recreate it as per my memories of the flavours involved - but for me, the real star of that show was the Red Cabbage and Cranberries.  I'll also blog about those, as the recipe could come in very handy for Christmas!

We've finally managed to settle upon what meat we're having as our Christmas dinner.  Thanks to Knorr, we've already done the Turkey - and as we're very unlikely to have cause to invest in such a glorious bird, thought we'd go sideways from the many fowls that are available at Christmas time.  Hence, this year we'll be having Roast Beef.  In fact we've just been and ordered our 1kg of Sirloin, which was the best compromise we could come up with where a piece of Beef was concerned.  You see, hubby would always have a piece of Silverside or Topside because of its lack of fat whereas I would always have a Rib roast because of its marbling of fat.  So, to compromise, we settled on Sirloin as it has a layer of fat which is restricted to one side of the meat.  So now I'll be happy because the fat is there to baste the meat and provide flavour, whereas hubby will be happy because it's easily removed.  Job done.

Now then!  What about this week, I hear you ask?  Here's what's on the menu :

Tue : Pizza

Wed : Sausage & Leek Cobbler with carrots & cabbage

Thur : Bobotie with carrot & parsnip mash and cabbage

Fri : Spicy Chicken Wraps with Salsa & Sour Cream

Sat : Chicken Dopiaza with white rice & puppodums

Sun : Carmargue Beef Daube with Parsnip apple mash & peas

Mon : Ham, cheese & celeriac pasties, baked beans & hash browns.

Well, owing to my having forgotten to do the banking required, we didn't go shopping on Tuesday as normal.  Hence, we all indulged in pizza on "pizza night".

Having corrected the bank account, we set off for the shops today and came back with two packs of Debbie & Andrew's "Perfect Pork" sausages that were at half price.  I think they'll be lovely in the Sausage & Leek Cobbler that's on the menu for this evening.

The Cobbler is another recipe that I made in the days before writing Rhubarb & Ginger, so we've had it before and liked it very much then.  Fingers crossed, we'll like it as much again!

My earlier batch of Bobotie

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Bobotie.  I have made this before, using Rachel Allen's recipe, but this time I'm using a recipe from Kevin Dundon.  It doesn't differ by a lot, but seems a little easier to put together - particularly for a mid-week meal.  The combination of mildly curried lamb mince together with the eggy topping is really moreish.


Friday is son & heir's last day of term, so to celebrate we're having one of his favourite meals - Spicy chicken wraps.  This doesn't involve a whole heap of cooking - just some baking of some breadcrumbed shop-bought spicy chicken pieces which are then sliced and put in a wrap with salsa and soured cream.  I might be able to sneak a little lettuce in there, but only if he's not looking!


I'm going to have a go at creating a Chicken Dopiaza on Saturday.  I've been quizzing both Bipin at Bipin's Curry Pots and Dan from GreatCurryRecipes.net for ideas, so we'll see what I wind up with!


Sunday's Carmargue Beef Daube is a recipe from Trish Deseine that looks gorgeous.  We've been ready for a lovely beef casserole/stew for the last couple of weeks, so the slow cooker will be back in use, while we all gather around it and sniff the delicious aromas.

I'm serving it with a parsnip & apple mash which came from "Affairs of Living" - a wonderful blog site that deals with gluten free and allergen-friendly food.  As you know, I'm supposed to be steering clear of the carbohydrates as much as possible (and have lost 10lbs in weight, owing to this anti-inflammatory style of eating), which is why you won't be finding too many potato or pasta recipes here for a while!  This recipe is intriguing owing to the method, as you are required to roast the ingredients so as to reduce their water content prior to mashing.  Otherwise, as you can probably imagine, mashing parsnips and apples together could get extremely messy.  I am hoping the mash will go very well with the Daube of beef - again, fingers crossed!

Poor ugly celeriac!

So now we're back to Monday.  I found a little recipe (one of the little "afterthought" recipes) in the latest Good Food magazine for Ham & Cheese pasties.  The ingredients (apart from ham & cheese, of course) included potato.  Now, a little potato wouldn't have been an altogether bad thing - but coupled with the pastry, just made it a double felony.  What could I use instead?  Well, you can't make a pasty without pastry - so that had to stay and I needed to find an alternative to the potato.  What flavours go well with ham and cheese, that might also take the form of a carbohydrate replacement?  Why, celeriac of course!  Thinking back to my Cheesy Celeriac Slice, I don't see any reason why these pasties shouldn't wind up being totally delicious.


Apart from all that lot, I'm still pondering on light fruity desserts made with apples, cranberries and plums.  I've got one such in mind that I'm hoping to experiment with tonight, if I get time.  The Cinnamon Plums with Cranberries was so gorgeous and easy to prepare, there has got to be all sorts of different variations on that theme!


I've also got a lot of caraway seeds left over after the Red Cabbage & Cranberries.  I love a good old-fashioned Seed Cake and have been pondering over the combination of an American style pound cake, made with the caraway seeds.  I can't see any reason why it won't work - all I need is the time to give it a go!


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Menu plan : Week 12 - Pizza through Bobotie to Celeriac

The Sunday morning ritual of scratching one's head and juggling with ingredients is over for another week and, with two dinners left to go from last week's Menu Plan, I've placed the order for my online shopping.  Now all that's left to do is cross my fingers that a) it all works out how it's supposed to; b) everyone's in a fit state to eat the dishes and c) I'll be in a fit state to make them.

Point b) became an issue last week when hubby damaged a tooth/gum and it became very difficult for him to chew anything particularly chewy.  Even a cream cheese sandwich was too much on the day after it happened, poor soul.  Having planned out the menus for the week, needing to cater for a sore mouth, or an upset tummy, can be quite tricky.  I think For the future, I'll have to make sure we keep a tin or two of "gentle on the tummy" and "easy eating" soups in the cupboard!

So, Maestro, what's on the menu list this week then?

Well, we'll kick off the week with son & heir's favourite - pizza.  This is largely because I will be in and out during the day and can't guarantee to be here for the online order to be delivered.  I've organised it to arrive after son has come home from school, as I know we'll be here and available then - and the dear chap can help put it all away.  Once we've done all that, I know I won't be in any fit state to cook - so Pizza is the order of the day.

I'm rather looking forward to Wednesday.  I'm going to be doing a Beef & Cauliflower Curry with naan bread, adapted from my curry recipe that I used for hubby's birthday.  It will be utilising my current favourite of beef shin - and using the other half of the cauliflower that I bought in for last Sunday's roast.   Hence, effectively, all I'll be buying to make this one will be the beef shin and some naan bread.  Everything else is in the larder or the fridge!

Thursday is another new recipe, being a Chicken & Chorizo Jambalaya.  We made a Jambalaya shortly after Christmas, but for all that it was tasty and quite nice, it didn't really hit the spot.  So, we're having another go - this time with a different recipe.  I've already got the chicken in the freezer, so that's another one that has worked out to be relatively cheap.

Friday brings one of my favourite meals - Bobotie.  Now I've only ever made this once before (and really enjoyed it then), but I can recall how a seemingly odd collection of ingredients managed to magically amalgamate into a really delicious whole.  Again, I already have the lamb mince in the freezer from a BOGOF offer previously.  I'll be serving this one with savoy cabbage and some carrots.

Saturday, and hubby has promised us a meal of Sausages with red cabbage & apple, together with mustard mash.  Yum!  Once again, I've already got the sausages in the freezer, from this week's trip to Sainsbury's for their sausages - which are streets ahead of Asda's miserable, hard, tasteless efforts.

Sausages always make me think of "The Perishers" and Marlon cooking sausages while Boot looks on

I shall be breaking with tradition this coming Sunday and not indulging in a roast.  I think it does us good every now and again, to kick over the traces and go for something different.  I hate to think I'm getting into a rut along the lines of "fish on Fridays".  So, on this Sunday we shall be travelling to the Orient (oh, I wish!) with Beef & Butternut Squash (using brisket, this time) together with home made fried rice.

Celeriac - looks like an alien!

So that just leaves us Monday, which shall be our meat-free day.  (Sssshhh, don't tell the boys - who are strict carnivores!).  We're having a Celeriac & Cheese Slice - which is basically celeriac mash, mixed with cheese (two types) & spring onions, wrapped in pastry and cooked.  There's only one thing that would go with this, in my opinion - baked beans.


What does that translate as, then?  Three types of bread product, two different cuts of beef, two different rice dishes, one curry dish, one chicken dish, one lamb dish, one pork dish.  Looking at the vegetable side of things, there's five dishes which involve fresh vegetables of one sort or another, plus the baked beans - which are a superfood, you know! I think there's balance in there - somewhere.


If you're looking for inspiration via other people's Menu Plans, then look no further than Mrs M's blog and her "Menu Planning Monday" feature.  I wonder if Menu Planning Sundays qualify? ...


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