Cheesy Ham and Potato bake - a trip back in time

Oh I only wish I could show you how excited I am by this dish - and how completely stuffed but happy I was by the time I'd eaten it.  You see, it took me back to years ago when I would spend a week at my cousin's house and then she would spend a week at ours.  Happy days!  My aunt would cook dinners like this - comforting, kids' dinners of potatoes and cheese.

A Facebook friend was responsible for the inspiration for this dish, though.  She posted photographs of a very similar thing, but with sliced potatoes instead of chunks, that instantly reminded me of this sort of meal and how much I liked it.  Her recipe was very much made for adults though, being a version of scalloped potatoes and using garlic, much more double cream and some creme fraiche.

So I looked at various recipes and tried to recall the way my Aunt's dinner looked and tasted - and this is the result.  No, it won't win any awards for gastronomy but I suspect it could win a few where reminiscence is concerned!

It really is simplicity itself.  Par-boiled potatoes are mixed with diced ham, sliced spring onions and a good, thick and cheesy sauce seasoned with English mustard powder and nutmeg.  Cover with cheese and bake in the oven.  I love dishes that have a great payoff for minimum effort - and this is definitely one of those.

You can tinker about with the recipe as much as you like, to your own preference, too.  Add peas or sweetcorn, use a cooked supermarket ham hock for the meat instead of sliced ham - just shred the meat before you add it.  Add the chopped chives to the cheese sauce.  Maybe adultify it a little by adding garlic granules to the sauce.  All manner of tinkering about could go on!

I served mine in two ways - I served mine simply with a baked tomato.  For my son, I cooked some sausages and gave him some raw tomato that had been tossed with chives as growing boys need their protein and he doesn't like cooked tomato.  Oh boy, it was so good!

CHEESY HAM & POTATO BAKE   (Serves 2-3)

Ingredients :

4-5 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced into half inch pieces
4 spring onions, sliced
10-15g salted butter
2 tbsp plain flour
300ml skimmed milk (you may not need it all)
100ml double cream
1 tsp plain Philadelphia cream cheese
a scant pinch of sea salt
a good pinch of ground black pepper
a quarter tsp of grated nutmeg
1 tsp English mustard powder
250g of mixed cheeses, grated (I used Gouda and mature Cheddar)
200g thick sliced ham, cut into half inch pieces
30g of grated cheese (I used Red Leicester)
chopped chives to serve.

Method :

Place the potato dice into a saucepan with salted water and bring to a boil. Cook for 1-2 minutes until just slightly softened, then drain and tip the potato into the baking dish.

Slice the spring onions and add them to the potato in the baking dish.

In a non-stick pan, melt the butter and once melted, add the flour and stir well. Cook over a moderate heat for 1-2 minutes, then add a little milk and remove the pan from the heat. Stir the milk into the butter/flour mixture until lump free, then return to a reduced heat and add a little more milk. Stir that in and add the cream, cream cheese, seasoning, nutmeg and mustard powder and stir through.

As the sauce heats, make sure to keep stirring to prevent it from catching on the bottom of the pan. You need a fairly thick sauce at this stage, you can always add more milk once the cheese is melted, if necessary.

Add the mixed grated cheese and remove from the heat as it melts. You need the sauce to be fairly thick, but still of pouring consistency. When you are happy with the sauce, plate it on one side.

Add the ham pieces to the potato/onion mixture and stir through. Pour the cheese sauce over and give a light stir, just to make sure the sauce is right the way through the potatoes. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and place into a pre-heated oven at 180degF/350degC/Gas 4 for 45 mins or until the potatoes are soft and cooked through.

Sprinkle with chopped chives for colour and serve.

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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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Stuffed Marrow - a blast from the past

Is it me, or do The Hairy Bikers appear to be all over the place at the moment?

Every time I turn the t.v. on, there seems to be a programme on one or the other channel that stars the hirsute lads, with their quirky humour and yummy recipes.  They're almost as omnipresent as Jamie Oliver used to be.

So, the other day, there I was doing a bit of channel-surfing when I spot the Bikers in the company of a marrow.  Being a bit partial to a chunk of marrow or two, I stopped and was treated to their rendition of a Stuffed Marrow.

Now I've looked extensively online for this recipe and I'm darned if I can find it.  For sure I can find various Hairy Bikers recipes for stuffed marrow, but not the one I saw them create.  If anyone knows where to find the recipe I'm after, let me know where and I'll link to it.  (Thanks to "Anonymous", who directed me here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/italian-style_stuffed_63676).

Anyway, all this got me to thinking about the stuffed marrows I used to make when we were living in Chatham and things were particularly hard.  You could always guarantee a good feed for very little cash, with one of those.

With the boys' recipe in mind, I decided to have a little go down memory lane and update my version.

Ooooh, hand me a knife and fork, quick!

I know that hubby likes to have a marrow with highly flavoured stuffing, so that gave me a guideline upon which to work.  I also remembered various problems with getting the marrow itself to cook, so made sure there was plenty of room in the roasting pan and that I had plenty of time in which to cook it.

I wanted to use mushrooms in the stuffing, but am aware of son & heir's likes and dislikes - which very definitely include the texture of mushroom.  Now, because I'd be using minced beef, I figured that if I chopped the mushroom finely enough (very much how you would for a mushroom duxelle), then the chances were that he wouldn't detect it.  Which he didn't.

I was impressed by the Hairy Bikers' idea of making the cheese coating in the form of a thick cheese sauce, rather than just grated cheese sprinkled over which then bakes to an impermeable crust.  Making the roux-based sauce is simplicity itself and son & heir was very happy to do his part in the washing up of the cheese sauce saucepan, although that didn't go as far as involving washing up liquid, rather more of some serious work with a finger and his tongue.  Ah well.  If he hadn't have, I would have.

Garlic mushroom couscous - a very acceptable accompaniment

I served the marrow with mashed potato for son & heir and a garlic mushroom couscous for hubby and I.  In fact, hubby had a bit of both!

We each wound up with two-thirds of each half of marrow on our plate, which was a gargantuan portion and I was glad I hadn't made more vegetables to go with it.  I figured that what with the carrot and celery in the stuffing mix, plus the marrow itself, we'd probably got sufficient vegetable matter to satisfy the veggie police, should they have decided to show.

All three of us left a small amount of marrow, as there's only so much marrow one can send stomach-wards at one time.  The cheese sauce worked beautifully and I felt that the stuffing followed along particularly British lines in its flavours.  Hubby could have done with it being a little more highly flavoured and less "juicy".  However, I do feel that the "juiciness" originated from the marrow itself, rather than the stuffing - which was virtually dry by the time it went into the marrow.

We were each happy with the meal in varying degrees.  Son & heir would have liked less marrow, hubby would have liked more flavour, I would have liked more of the "overflow" (the bits that landed up on the roasting tin).  As an occasional dish - i.e. I wouldn't want to make it regularly - it was a lovely blast from the past.

STUFFED MARROW  (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :

A marrow
1 tbsp olive or sunflower oil
500g beef mince
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 celery stick, de-strung and diced finely
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced finely
3 chestnut mushrooms, chopped finely
1 beef oxo cube, made up with 200ml hot water
1 tsp bovril
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp horseradish sauce
half a tsp of dried sage
1 tsp English mustard powder (or half a tsp ready-made mustard)
a good shake or two of Worcestershire sauce.

For the cheese sauce :

25g butter
2 tbsp plain flour
1 pint milk
strong cheddar, grated, to taste
half a tsp English mustard powder.

Method :

Pre-heat your oven to 180deg F/350deg C/Gas 4.  Be aware of how long your oven takes to heat up and don't turn it on before you need to - saves energy!

Take the marrow and cut it equally down its long length into two halves.  Shave off a slice from the underside, so that the marrow will sit without rocking and remove the pips by scraping them out with a spoon, and discard.

Heat a frying pan and dry-fry the mince until brown, just beginning to caramelise, and the fat has rendered out.  Remove the mince with a slotted spoon to a bowl and reserve to keep warm.  Discard the remaining fat in the pan.

Add the oil and the onion.  Cook on a medium heat for around 5-10 minutes or until soft and golden.  Add the garlic and cook for another minute, then the celery and carrot and cook until heated through, then add the mushroom and stir through.

Replace the mince back into the pan and stir through.

Add all the remaining ingredients then stir through and leave to cook for some 10 minutes or so, or until the "gravy" has reduced down to almost nothing.  Taste to check the seasoning and correct if necessary with a pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.   Place to one side, whilst you make the cheese sauce.

In a small pan, melt the butter, then add the flour and stir through.  Cook over a gentle heat for a minute or two.  Add a small amount of the milk and stir furiously, repeating as necessary until you have as thick a sauce as you can bear.  Remember, it's going to have to sit on top of the stuffed marrow and not run everywhere!  Add the cheese and stir gently until it has melted.

Next, assemble the dish.

Place the marrow pieces into a large roasting dish that will allow plenty of room around them - and leave a gap in between the two halves.

Fill the marrow pieces with the mince mixture - if your diners aren't too keen on marrow, you can always scrape a little bit more away, thus leaving more room for the mince mixture.

Spoon the cheese sauce over the top of each marrow half and place into the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until the top is golden and bubbling.  Check the marrow is cooked by inserting a vegetable knife into the thickest part.  If it needs a bit longer in the oven, you can always form a "hat" out of silver foil to go over the top and stop the cheese sauce from burning.  Don't be tempted to serve until the marrow is completely cooked, as uncooked marrow is yuk!

Serve with mashed potato or your favourite couscous dish.

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Celery gratin with pot-roast bacon and roasted vegetables

It occurred to me, when I was pondering on how to cook the enormous piece of bacon that we'd procured for Sunday lunch, that as I had the slow cooker out still - it made sense to use it.

I had previously been intending on pot-roasting the bacon, however it was such an enormous piece that I doubted it would fit into any of our saucepans.  So having a sudden brainwave about the slow cooker solved that problem and also got it out of my hair for the cooking period.  I could then concentrate on cooking the other components of the dinner.

At the end of some six or seven hours in the slow cooker, the meat just fell apart.  The top surface had become a slightly odd colour, which I take to have been due to the celery, carrot, onion and other vegetables in the stock.  The flavour was just divine!


I had two fresh beetroot left over from the Borscht and decided to roast these along with some potatoes, carrots and a butternut squash.  I'd wanted to try roasted beetroot for quite some time, so that played into my hands beautifully.  Who knew that roasted beetroot was as lovely as that?  The flavour was very akin to those beetroot crisps you can get, but with the intensity of the softer centre.  Just lovely.


I doused the butternut squash pieces in cumin powder and a little pinch of chilli flakes, which always go so well with butternut squash.  Following roasting, it made for an interesting change of pace in the flavour profile of the whole meal.

However, the unexpected star of the whole proceedings was the Celery Gratin.

Many years ago, I would ring the changes in my diet of microwave dinners by every so often buying a can of celery hearts and mixing up a cheese sauce to pour over them.  I so enjoyed this for a change and the Cauliflower Cheese we made the other day reminded me of it.

Now I know I had resolved to make another cauliflower cheese to have with roast bacon, but I had a feeling that a celery version would be well received by the assembled masses (a.k.a. hubby and Son & heir).  I was right where hubby was concerned, but it was a bit of miss where Son & heir was concerned, who had to be "encouraged" to eat the celery.

However, I thought it was gorgeous - and even had the leftovers for lunch the following day, which tells you how nice it was.

In this, rather more serious version, I used fresh celery and par-boiled it before baking, as I hadn't made one before and wasn't sure how long it would have required to cook from raw.  As it turned out, the 2-3 minutes par-boiling was just perfect as its texture was tender but still fairly firm at the end of the 45 mins baking.

I sprinkled it with breadcrumbs and a little more grated cheddar, to give a nice contrasting crunch.  All in all, it rather upstaged both the bacon and the beetroot!

CELERY GRATIN (serves 4)

Ingredients :

2 celery hearts, or alternatively, 2 bunches of celery - tops, bottom & hoary outside stems removed (use the tops and stems in a stock)
150g butter
2-3 tbsp flour (depending on how thick you like your sauce)
1 pint semi-skimmed milk
half a tsp Cayenne pepper
100ml double cream
1 tsp Dijon mustard
250g mature cheddar, grated
25g parmesan, grated
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat oven to 180deg C/Gas Mark 4.

2.  Prepare the celery by making sure it is scrupulously clean.  This may very well mean you have to dismantle the structure of the hearts, but better that than grit between your teeth!  Chop into pieces some 2 inches long and put into a pan of boiling water for 3 minutes.  Drain and place into a deep baking dish.

3.  Arrange the celery evenly across the dish and set to one side.

4.  In a non-stick pan, melt the butter and when foamy, sprinkle on the flour.  Stir like billy-o, ensuring all the flour is swallowed up by the butter.

5.  After 2-3 minutes cooking, add a splash of milk and stir like crazy to avoid lumps forming.  Continue to add milk and stir until the sauce achieves the quantity and consistency you're looking for.

6.  Add the cayenne, mustard and cream and stir to combine, keeping the sauce at a low simmer.

7.  Add all but a handful of the cheeses and stir to combine.  Taste and adjust the seasoning.

8.  Pour the sauce over the celery, making sure every bit of the celery is covered.

9.  Sprinkle on the breadcrumbs and the last handful of cheese and place into the oven for 45 minutes.

Serve.

Bacon & Mixed Pepper Lasagne : a lot of work, but so worth it!

I find cooking Lasagne and Moussaka a hard old slog, these days.  I suppose it's because they have at least three main processes, in that the meat, then the sauce need cooking, then the whole lot requires layering up, before you can put it in the oven and put your feet up for five minutes.

When I put this Lasagne on the menu list, we had temporarily forgotten that we would be out on Sunday evening, at the Bournemouth Folk Club.  Had I have remembered this, there was no way on this earth I'd have ever put Lasagne down as a definite.  However, there it was and all I could do was struggle on through.

For an able-bodied person, I suspect the making of the Lasagne would be simple enough but the thing that I find so difficult is the amount of time spent in front of the cooker stirring one thing or another, plus the time spent cutting and chopping.  There's an awful lot of cutting and chopping involved!  By the time I'd reached the layering assembly point, I could no longer feel my hands - and even though I was sitting down for a lot of it, my legs and knees had definitely had it.

However, after all that moaning - and if you've reached this far - let me say that it is very definitely worth it.

The Lasagne is a thing of beauty once created - and it has so many layers of flavour.  If I was to say that son & heir eats it without complaint - and bear in mind that it contains largely red, green & yellow peppers - then it might go a long way to validate just how nice a lasagne this is.

Oh - and one other thing.  It can easily be converted to a vegetarian dish simply by not including the bacon.

Lasagne : about to go into the oven

BACON & MIXED PEPPER LASAGNE  (feeds 6)

Ingredients :

Pack of bacon (leave this out if opting for a vegetarian lasagne)
5-6 mixed peppers, cored and cut into slices
1 small onion, chopped
clove of garlic, grated
6 large vine tomatoes (the tastiest ones you can find), roughly chopped
1 tbsp fresh basil, torn
half a tsp of dried oregano
splash of Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
ground black pepper to taste
1 pint semi-skimmed milk
1 heaped tbsp flour
25g butter
cayenne pepper to taste
225g cheese, grated - I use red leicester or mature cheddar
lasagne sheets.

Method :

1.  Fry the bacon pieces and remove from the pan to keep warm.

2.  Fry the onion & garlic until soft and browned and remove to keep warm with the bacon.

3.  Fry the sliced peppers until soft, then add the tomatoes, puree, ketchup, herbs, Worcestershire sauce and return the bacon and onion to the pan.  Cook for another ten minutes or so, allowing all the flavours to combine and the lot to become saucy.  You may need to add a little water to encourage the "sauciness".

4.  Place the milk, flour and butter into a pan and slowly bring to the boil, whisking like mad until it reaches boiling point and starts to thicken.  Add three quarters of the cheese and stir until it has melted.  Season with a little cayenne pepper.


5.  Begin to layer into a large lasagne dish by starting with a layer of the cheese sauce, then a layer of lasagne sheets, meat mixture, then the cheese sauce, repeating until you finish with a layer of peppers then cheese sauce.  Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.


6.  Bake for around 45-60 mins at 180deg C until golden brown and smelling lush.


Serve with garlic bread and a side salad.

A thing of beauty

.