Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable & Cheese Quiche

Well, once again it's been an age since I've committed a recipe to the blog but this one was so good, it looked so pretty and was very successfully tasty that I've had lots of requests for the recipe.  So here we are!

I won't go into a long old rigmarole about the quiche, just suffice to say that I was looking to achieve a quiche that had to be tasty, I didn't want it to be too wet (the contents, that is!) and it had to be vegetarian.  For me, this creation ticked all those boxes but be aware that my hubby thought it was a little bit "squishy", so if you've got texture-centric diners it's probably worth subbing some other vegetable in for the courgette, as I suspect that was the culprit.

I managed to avoid most of the "squishiness" by oven roasting the majority of the vegetables, which dried them out nicely.  Take care to cut the sweet potato pieces into very small chunks to avoid it overpowering the contents.  It will spread out better as smaller pieces.

Ready for the oven

Hubby thought that perhaps the addition of some sweet corn would have been nice, so maybe I'll try that in the next version.  :)

As ever, if you try the recipe and have any problems or confusion with it do let me know and I'll do my best to iron those problems out for others!

ROASTED MEDITERRANEAN VEGETABLE & CHEESE QUICHE   (serves 4-8)

Ingredients :

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into small chunks
1 small red onion, peeled and cut into quarters
1 medium courgette, top & tailed, then cut into small chunks
8 button mushrooms, sliced finely
Frylight sunflower oil cooking spray
sea salt & black pepper
300g approx ready rolled shortcrust pastry (or you could make your own)
3 large eggs
1 tsp English mustard powder
100ml double cream
100ml semi skimmed milk
2 pieces of chargrilled red pepper from a jar (rinsed), cut into small pieces
3 sprigs of fresh basil, sliced fine
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
half a tsp dried oregano
30g Gruyere or Gouda cheese, grated finely
30g red Cheddar or red Leicester cheese, grated finely
50g mature Cheddar cheese, grated finely
50g Greek salad cheese (Feta-alike, so if you've got Feta, that would be fine) broken into small pieces
1 medium tomato, sliced
1 tbsp fresh chives, chopped.

Method :

Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/340degF/Gas 4.

Place the sweet potato, onion and courgette pieces onto a large baking tray and spread them out evenly.  Spray well with cooking spray and sprinkle with a little sea salt & black pepper.  Place into the oven to roast for 25-30 minutes or until the sweet potato is tender.  Ideally, the vegetables should have small areas of charring on them in order to get the best flavour.

With 10 minutes to go, sprinkle the vegetables with the sliced mushrooms, give a quick spray with the Frylight and replace into the oven until the rest of the veggies are done.  Remove from the oven and place to one side to cool until required.  Once cool, cut the onion quarters into smaller pieces.

While the veggies are cooking, prepare your pastry case by lining a loose bottomed 8 inch sandwich tin or quiche dish with pastry that has been rolled out thinly, making sure it is pressed into the corners of the tin and without any air bubbles underneath.  Cover the pastry with a layer of baking paper and fill with baking beans.  Once the vegetables are done and removed from the oven, place the pastry case in to part-bake for some 20-25 minutes.  Again, when the time is up, remove and leave to cool until required.

While the pastry is part baking, you can get on with making the filling.  Take a large bowl and break the eggs into it.  Give them a light whisk to break the yolks and combine with the white.  Add the cream, milk, some black pepper and the mustard powder and whisk to combine.

Add the sliced red peppers, basil, parsley, oregano and all the vegetables from the oven which should be fairly cool by now.  Add most of the grated cheeses but reserve a little to sprinkle over the top and give the whole lot a good, but gentle, stir so as not to break anything up.  Add the Greek salad cheese and give everything a light stir, just to combine.

When the filling is ready, take the part baked pastry case and carefully pour the filling in.  Gently encourage the contents to spread evenly across the pastry case to avoid any areas that are just egg mixture.  Sprinkle the surface with the reserved grated cheese and lay the tomato slices in an attractive pattern on the top.  Sprinkle the chives across the surface and give the tomato pieces a tiny sprinkle with black pepper.

Place into the oven to bake for 30-35 minutes. Check the quiche after 25 minutes and turn it if the surface is browning unevenly.  When cooked, the centre of the filling should feel fairly firm to the touch, but have a little spring in it and the whole thing should be a golden colour.

Remove the quiche from the oven and allow to cool for some 15-20 minutes.  In the case of a loose bottomed sandwich tin, gently remove the quiche from the tin and leave on a baking rack to cool completely.

Serve with chips or Jersey Royal new potatoes and salad.

Printable version

Chicken sausage, pea & courgette risotto - fresh and tasty!

As much as I would like to, I can't take credit for this delicious risotto recipe. No, that accolade needs to go to Heck Sausages. However, I found the recipe because it was featured on lovefood.com 
with credit going to Heck - so I suppose this is the great-grand daughter recipe recommendation, if you like!  I have changed the recipe a tiny bit, but it's only re-organising the order of play and not changing the ingredients.  Now I could have just placed the link here and not bothered to reproduce the recipe, but I have learned that sometimes favourite recipes disappear from the internet never to be found again - so I'm immortalising it here for future reference.

If you're still with me after such a meandering explanation, well done.  LOL

It has been ages since I made a risotto.  Hubby is ordinarily the risotto chef in our house - and he does a cracking job at it too.  However, he was otherwise engaged so I decided to give it a go.  I'd made some good risottos in the past, so my track record wasn't bad.

For all that it is currently autumn - and a good time for risotto - I have to say that this recipe would be very much at home in a springtime capacity.

The addition of the courgette and petit pois, with the light touch of the chicken sausages, definitely made us think of the relief of coming out of the heaviness of winter and into a relatively lighter menu, as spring comes around.  However, as all the ingredients aren't reliant upon seasonal produce (although, again, it is the perfect time for young courgettes), you can enjoy its fresh tasting loveliness at any time of the year.

As with all risottos, they live or die on the quality of the stock you are using. So at this point I have to blow my Essential Cuisine trumpet once again.  I used 75% Essential Cuisine chicken stock and 25% Essential Cuisine vegetable stock for this risotto and it was fantastic.  The very best part of the Essential Cuisine stable of stocks is their wonderfully intense flavours, however, because they are a stock powder (and they have a new range of liquid stocks, too) it is so simple to just increase the intensity by adding another half a teaspoonful as required.  For a risotto stock, this works perfectly.  So - I recommend them.  'Nuff said.

As for Cook's Tips, I have two :

Firstly, I wasn't looking forward to the unzipping the sausages and separating the sausagemeat into individual little meatballs.  It's a gacky thing to have to do, even if you baste your hands liberally with cold water so that the sausagemeat doesn't stick.  Then, I had this brilliant idea.  I unzipped each sausage from its skin, ran my chef's knife under the cold water and chopped each sausage into five pieces.  It worked, too!  You have to wet the knife in between each sausage, but it is SO much more of a pleasant way to do it.

Lastly, if you're wondering what pan to use to cook the risotto in, well I used our new wok.  It's quite compact, with high walls and fits nicely onto each burner so there are no cold spots to contend with.  So if, like me, you were worried about the rice catching on the bottom of your pan and/or can't see in to the top of a tall pan (alright, so I'm short and most unhelpfully, have to sit to cook), consider using a wok.  It worked absolutely perfectly for me.

So, without further ado, here's your recipe :

CHICKEN SAUSAGE, PEA & COURGETTE RISOTTO    (serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

1-2 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
8 chicken sausages (Heck or Asda are our favourites), skinned and each sausage formed into 5 small meatballs
450g approx of courgettes, cut into half centimetre dice
1 sweet onion, diced small
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
125g Arborio risotto rice
pinch of sea salt
quarter of a tsp ground black pepper
1 litre of good quality hot chicken stock, or chicken/vegetable combined
half a tsp of ground nutmeg
1 heaped tsp of Dijon mustard
300g defrosted petit pois (peas)
1 handful basil leaves (I used Thai basil as we prefer it)
grated Grana Padano, Parmesan or Manchego cheese to garnish.

Method :

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and once heated, add the sausagemeat balls. Fry on a medium/hot heat until deeply golden on at least three sides, then remove from the pan into a bowl and reserve.

In the meantime, make up the stock in another saucepan and place on the heat to simmer.  Just before you are due to add the peas to the risotto, give them a few minutes in the stock pan to take the rawness off of them and heat them up.

Leaving the sausage flavoured fat in the pan, add the chopped courgettes and fry until just beginning to soften and take on colour.  Remove from the pan to the same bowl as the sausage balls and reserve.

Decant what little fat is left into a high sided saucepan or wok and add a little more oil if necessary.  Once the oil is hot, add the onion and garlic and fry over a medium/hot heat until softened and transparent.  Add the sea salt and black pepper and stir through.

Increase the heat under the pan to maximum and add the dry rice.  Stir well, to cover the rice in the flavoured oil and cook until you can see the rice is beginning to toast.  Add a ladleful of the stock and stir well, to release the starch from the rice.  Add the nutmeg and Dijon mustard and stir in.  Once the stock has all but disappeared, pour in another ladleful and stir consistently - it is the stirring that ensures you wind up with a creamy texture to your risotto. Once the pan is again almost dry, repeat with another ladleful of stock and continue this way until the rice is very nearly cooked through.  You may find that you have a little too much stock, or you may need to add a little boiling water as your last ladleful - it all depends on how much you stir and how starchy your rice is.

Add the petit pois along with your last ladleful of stock and stir through, then add the courgette/meatball combination and stir through.  Make sure to bring the pan contents to piping hot and add the torn basil.

Serve immediately, on warmed plates and with grated Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese as garnish.

Printable version

Quick lunch : sausage & vegetable pot

Lunch - two sausages, each broken into three pieces and fried, then removed from the pan and three mushrooms and half a sliced courgette went in to cook.  Once softened, a huge handful of curly kale went in, a shake of Worcestershire sauce, a pinch of sea salt and a tablespoonful of double cream.  Toast a pitta bread, return the sausages to the pan for the last 30 seconds, then decant into a bowl and eat with a huge smile on your face.

Oh yes.

Today's dinner : a creation borne of a too-full vegetable drawer!

I decided to call this evening's dinner Chicken & Vegetable Pilaff, but it really - strictly speaking - is more of a "rice'n'stuff" than ever it is a pilaff.

It was all because our vegetable drawer in the fridge was beginning to groan under the weight of so many veggies.  This weekly veggie box delivery malarky is forcing us to use many more veggies than we would normally.  Now you might think that this is no bad thing, but I'm already getting grumbles about the personal veggie quota having been exceeded.

This dish involved a lot of cutting up of various veggies, but the cooking of it was fairly uncomplicated and went really rather well.

Start off by cutting up all your veggies into the correct size and shape, then put them on plates in order of appearance in the pan.

In a big old wok, heat some groundnut (or any oil really) oil to seriously hot, then slip in a couple of finely sliced skinless chicken breasts.  Add a grind or two of black pepper and cook until golden and just cooked through.  Remove to a good sized bowl.   Immediately add diced courgette and aubergine to the pan and cook that also until it is golden on at least two sides and softened.  Remove that to the bowl with the chicken.  A slotted spoon is great for this, as it leaves the oil in the pan.  Add a little more oil if you need to, then add chopped red onion and finely sliced chilli.  Cook until softened, then add two sticks of celery and half a yellow pepper, also finely sliced.  You don't want to be waiting hours for them to soften, you see, so the more finely you slice them, the better it is.  Cook until softened.  Then add 2 tsp of ground cumin, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, half a tsp ground allspice and 1 tsp of caraway seeds.  Stir this lot in and cook for a minute or two, then add four chopped good sized tomatoes, three cloves of finely chopped garlic and a whole heap of button mushrooms.  Add a good half teaspoonful of sea salt.  The tomatoes will cook down into a sauce-like consistency, whereupon you can add the contents of your bowl back into the mix.  Add a small handful of flaked almonds and allow the mix to simmer while the flavours combine and the tomatoes cook down.  After around 10 minutes, test for seasoning and add a little more salt if necessary.  Add a handful of thawed garden peas and some cooked rice.  Stir through and allow to heat up, then serve.

Well, the veggie drawer is a lot lighter now!
 

Paprika Chicken & Chorizo Bake - looks good and tastes even better!

This week has been a bit of a bumpy one for the poor old meal plan, as between one thing and another, we've had to move meals around and change them at short notice.  Amazingly, I actually planned to have meals that could be moved and changed at short notice - which doesn't happen often!

So all this shuffling around, meant that this Paprika chicken & chorizo bake dish wound up as our Sunday roast - which it did very well at.  A lot better than expected, actually!

The dish had been inspired by a Hairy Dieters recipe for Spanish-style Chicken Bake which I'd seen in the BBC Good Food magazine.  It's basically a multi-vegetable tray bake with chicken, but the bit I liked the most was that it purported to be low in fat.

Now I will admit that in the changes I made to the recipe, I included a tablespoonful of rapeseed oil.  However, having swapped their chicken thighs with the skin on, for skinless chicken breasts, I felt I was swapping the potential chicken fat for an oil that was actually really good for you.  Rapeseed oil has every good thing that olive oil does - and more.  The chicken breasts needed some oil in order to stay juicy and marinating them in it, along with the paprika and oregano, was a jolly good idea as it just added to the depth of the flavours.

I wasn't overly confident that the amount of vegetables would be sufficient for my menfolk, either.  The addition of a courgette and some mushrooms - plus the change from an indigestible (well, that's how I find them anyway) green pepper to an infinitely more digestible long sweet red pepper, made all the difference.

I served the dish with some home-made potato wedges that I'd tossed in a little Umami paste - and which were yummy.

I had the makings for a side salad, just in case it didn't look very much on the plate, but they stayed in the fridge as it was more than adequate, as you can probably see from the photographs.

As for making it, well that couldn't have got a lot easier!  I find that getting down to the oven is becoming more of a trial these days, but the 20 minute intervals weren't too uncomfortable to administrate.  Because everything is cooked in the oven you don't have to juggle the timings for vegetables on the hob to coincide with your oven baked components being done - which makes life a lot easier.

Two things are well worth pointing out from a cook's perspective.  Firstly, is the garlic.  Don't be tempted to leave the garlic out.  Now I know not everyone is keen on garlic and you can come away from a meal like this feeling like you've just eaten a garlic sandwich made with garlic butter on garlic bread - but not in this case.  The three cloves of garlic - one each - cook through beautifully and become softly sweet and gently flavoured.  Squash some out of its jacket and eat with a mushroom - and you'll know why I'm saying to make sure to include it.  Simply gorgeous!  By all means include more than the one clove each, if you really like your garlic!

Secondly, is the roasting tin.  I have a lovely, deep, non-stick roasting tin - but I always line it with non-stick silver foil.  I will admit that this was, initially, at hubby's urging as he had got fed up with trying to scrape bits of food from roasting tins whilst trying to leave the "non-stick" coating intact during the washing up.  It seemed wasteful to me, to be using a non-stick silver foil on what was supposed to be a non-stick roasting dish.  However, I do have to agree with him that it is well worth it, to be able to wash up the roasting tin in a twinkling of the time it used to take.  Very well worth it.  So it is up to you - but I recommend adopting the same approach, particularly if you have any disability or your hubby does all the dishes!

So what did the meal taste like?

Well, the chicken was just divine.  The rapeseed oil had kept it beautifully juicy, as had the steam rising from the cooking vegetables.  It was subtly flavoured with smoked paprika and oregano, which complemented the paprika in the chorizo.  The chorizo had let go of its fat, which had combined with the juice from the tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers and provided just enough moisture to keep the whole thing tasty.

The sprinkling of chopped fresh parsley not only makes the plate look extremely pretty, but adds to the flavour.  It provides that dash of freshness that lifts all the cooked vegetables and is very worth including.

All three of us, with our differing likes and dislikes, really enjoyed this dish.  There was sufficient diversity provided by the different flavours and textures of vegetable to keep our interest right to the last bite - and low fat!  You couldn't ask for more.

Oh - and don't forget, you can click on the photographs above and see them in a much bigger format.  However, you might want to avoid doing that if you're hungry.  *wink*  Hubby has been honing his photography skills!


PAPRIKA CHICKEN & CHORIZO BAKE     (Serves 3)

Ingredients :

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
½ tsp sweet smoked paprika
½ tsp dried oregano 
1 red onion, cut into 8 wedges
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled - just remove the root end
4 tomatoes, quartered
1 courgette, sliced
1 sweet red pepper, seeds removed and sliced into chunks
4 mushrooms, quartered
120g picante chorizo, sliced
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped, to serve.

Method :

1.  Take each chicken breast and lightly score across, twice, to create a diamond pattern.  Place into a bowl with the rapeseed oil, sweet smoked paprika and oregano and toss until thoroughly coated in the herbs and spices.  Set aside.

2.  Into a deep roasting tin, place the onion, garlic and tomatoes.  Season well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas 4 for 20 minutes.

3.  When the 20 minutes is up, remove and toss the contents around to loosen them up a bit.  Add the courgette, red pepper, mushrooms and chorizo and give another mix.

4.  Place each chicken breast on top of the vegetables & chorizo mixture and season with a little sea salt.

5.  Place back into the oven for another 20 minutes.

6.  Remove from the oven and remove the chicken breasts to a warmed plate.  Turn the vegetables and chorizo mixture, then test the chicken to see whether it requires much more cooking.

7.  If the chicken is done, cover with foil and reserve to keep warm.  If the chicken requires a little longer, cover it lightly with three pieces of silver foil cut to match the size of the chicken.  This will help to prevent the chicken from drying out.  Turn the oven up to 200degC/400degF/Gas 6 and return to the oven for another 10 minutes or until the chicken is done and the veggies are all tender.

8.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with potato wedges.

Printable version

 

Sweet Chilli Pork Stir Fry - or "how to use the other half of your pulled pork"

This is the final destination of the other half of our pulled pork joint.

Now it was supposed to be a "sort of" roast dinner - with accompanying roast potatoes, parsnips, butternut squash, Yorkshire Puddings and gravy etc.  However, we forgot to take one of the tubs of stock out of the freezer at the same time as the pork, which meant that we'd have to forgo using it to make the amazing gravy - which would be a shame.  True, I could have got it out anyway and defrosted it in the pan - but in the time before I was due to start making dinner, I started to think sideways.

Initially, I started to think about gravy alternatives such as making a sauce.  I contemplated fruity sauces, but couldn't think of anything that didn't demand going out to the local Sainsbury's for supplies - and I didn't want to have to do that.  I seriously contemplated making an onion sauce, mainly because I love onion sauce and haven't had it for an aeon.  I thought it would go quite well with the pork (even better with lamb - but we didn't have any of that) and onion sauce always goes well with vegetables and roasties.  However, when I contemplated the washing up that would result at the end of the dinner, that put me off the sauce idea completely.

After all, I'd have a pyrex dish for the pork to be heated up in, the roasting tray for the roasties and a pyrex bowl that I'd used to oil and season them in, another tray for the Yorkshires, the three-part steamer pan for the other vegetables - and that was before I'd begun to think about the gravy or a sauce!  I was going off the idea rapidly.

So I began to think even further sideways - about things that weren't roast dinners.  Now, what would I be likely to do with some leftover roast pork, if I wasn't going to make it into a roast?

Wraps - I could put it in wraps with some BBQ sauce.  Don't have any wraps though - and don't want to have to go out and get some.  A pie - it'd make a nice pie.  Mind you, then I'd have to make pastry - and I refer you back to the washing up problem.  So what doesn't make a lot of washing up?  Hmmn .. something made in the wok.  Aha - now we're onto something.  A stir-fry.  Oh, but son & heir doesn't like stir fries - and I don't have any traditional stir fry vegetables in.  Well yes, but this IS pulled pork we're talking about stir frying - and son & heir is a sucker for pulled pork.  Add some chilli to the lure and I'm sure he'll forgive the stir fry effect.  So what vegetables have I got?  A red pepper .. two courgettes .. the taggy end of a head of broccoli and plenty of onions.  Wish I had some mushrooms!

So okay, what sauce could I put the whole thing in?  I've got a Blue Dragon Black Bean sauce, but one won't be enough and anyway, I don't fancy the oh-so-savoury route.  Wish I had some Hoi Sin sauce!  I've got Oyster sauce .. hmmn, once again not enough.

It was about this time that I remembered I had a bottle of Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce in the cupboard that we'd not tried as yet.  I knew I also had a part-used bottle of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce in the fridge.  The sweet chilli was going down the right flavour route - sweet and hot - and the BBQ sauce would add the complexity to the flavours.  Add a little bit of Mirrin (Japanese rice wine) and a dash of Fish Sauce and I reckon we'd have it.  I had the bottle of Cider Vinegar standing by, just in case the whole thing came up too sweet - but didn't need it.

The vegetables behaved themselves in the pan and I even got to exercise a tip I'd seen demonstrated on the t.v. - that of stir frying the onions and peppers, then including a small amount of water in the wok and steaming the remaining vegetables for 2-3 minutes, before continuing the stir frying.  I did this just after including the broccoli pieces and it worked like a charm.  The combination of the two sauces was a complete masterstroke, if I say so myself - and the whole thing came together in what felt like minutes.  The washing up consisted of two pans and a chopping board - can't complain about that - and best of all, it was flipping delicious.

As a last-minute avoidance of making a roast dinner, I'd say that was a complete score!

As regards the Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce, what a winner that is!  I'd already got a huge bottle of Thai sweet chilli sauce on the go - and had been waiting to finish that before breaking out the Mic's Chilli version.  However, the Thai one is so rampant with garlic that I didn't fancy including it in the stir fry or we'd have been burping garlic for ever more.  Mic's Chilli's Sweet Chilli Sauce has a degree of garlic - much as you'd expect - but it also has some lovely deep toffee flavours going on in there.  The chilli effect, for all that it declares itself to be just "one chilli hot" was still pretty darned awesome when combined with a dash of Chinese five spice and the BBQ sauce!

So there you are - want something different to do with the other half of a pulled pork joint?  Raid the fridge! 


SWEET CHILLI PORK STIR FRY   (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 medium onions, peeled, quartered and sliced thickly
1 red capsicum pepper, cored, de-seeded and sliced thinly
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1 courgette, sliced into batons
4 broccoli florets, quartered
500g cold cooked pulled pork
100ml sweet chilli sauce
75ml barbecue sauce
1 tbsp Mirrin
1 tbsp Fish sauce.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a wok and add the onions.  Cook on a high temperature until softened and just beginning to caramelise, stirring all the time, then add the red pepper.  Continue cooking and stirring until the red pepper has softened.

2.  Add the five spice and stir to combine.  Add the courgette pieces together with the broccoli and continue to cook and stir for another couple of minutes.  Add approx 100ml of warm water and cover the pan.  Let the contents steam for around 3-5 minutes, pausing to stir once in this process.

3.  Add the pork, chilli sauce, barbecue sauce, mirrin and fish sauce and stir to combine.

4.  Turn the heat down and cook for another few minutes, to allow the flavours to marry up and the pork to heat through sufficiently.

5.  Serve on a bed of white rice.

Printable recipe

Egg & Vegetable Curry

It has been a long time since I made a curry.  Well, a curry from scratch that is - you know, without the "benefit" of a shop bought curry paste or suchlike.  One where you devise the spicing yourself and pray it comes out okay.

Now I have made a couple of meals that involved curry in the recent past and all have been pretty darned poor.  Take the Kedgeree that I made only a couple of weeks ago.  It really was horrid.  For some reason I overcooked the rice and also used a pre-made curry paste that was really bad.  I've no idea why I didn't spice it myself and have no clue as to why we seemed to go back to buying curry paste - as the marked decline in my curried fortunes seemed to coincide with that.

I have been having a dalliance with "authentic" type curries recently, which has meant that hubby hasn't been too pleased with them.  You see, generally, "authentic" i.e. not British Indian Restaurant style curries are a lot wetter than the BIR style ones.  I've talked in the past about hubby's hatred for "pond water" (i.e. broth) rather than a more robust sauce and these "authentic" style curries (such as Malay and Thai) just aren't his "thing".  It's a shame, because I was quite keen to investigate these more "brothy" types of curry and explore the flavours involved.  Hey ho - another single person lunch project, maybe!

Looking like magma with a couple of eggs inside it!

Hence, I had made a mental note that my next curry was to be a BIR style one - and I suspect that the curry paste came along because I'd lost confidence in my ability to cook a curry from scratch.

However, the meal on this night wasn't supposed to be curry at all.  It was supposed to be cornish pasties!  Not a lot of difference there, is there?

I served mine with curried flatbreads

Well the cornish pasty thing got scotched (or cornished) when I realised that I'd left the beef in the freezer and it wouldn't be defrosted by lunchtime, when I was going to be making the pasties.  This demanded a bit of a side-step and an audit of the contents of said freezer and the fridge, for alternative ideas.

I'd accumulated a fair amount of little bits of vegetables that had been left over from previous meals and which set me to thinking about a vegetable curry.  At this point, a lightbulb went on and I remembered that I'd been vaguely hankering after an egg curry, after seeing a photograph of one on the excellent Facebook page "The Food Court".  Obviously, I couldn't make simply an egg curry, as hubby's sensitivity to eggs would rule him out of one of those - but a veggie curry with a couple of additional hard boiled eggs for son & heir and myself was sounding increasingly good.

A quick rummage in the tin cupboard turned up a tin of coconut milk and a small tin of chick peas and a rummage in the larder cupboard turned up a carton of tomato passata.  Along with a bit of leftover single cream in the fridge and a well stocked spice cupboard, I had just about all I needed.

The curry was delicious.  Hubby really enjoyed his vegetable version and son & heir loved his egg along with the curry.  My vague lusting after an egg curry was assuaged and we all went away smiling.  Can't ask for more than that - especially from a last-minute decision of a curry that was made out of leftover and forgotten ingredients!


EGG & VEGETABLE CURRY    (serves 3)

Ingredients :



1 tbsp vegetable or groundnut oil
15g butter
2 onions, one chopped fine and one sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
2 heaped tsp ground coriander
1 heaped tsp ground black pepper
1 flat tsp ground turmeric
a hefty pinch of red chilli flakes
1 heaped tsp Madras curry powder
3 green cardamom, crushed
250ml tomato passata
2 carrots, peeled and cut into small chunks
1 medium potato, peeled and cut into small chunks
a quarter of a swede, peeled and cut into small chunks
400ml can of coconut milk
1 heaped tsp (or 1 crumbled cube) vegetable stock powder
220g tin of chick peas
2 big pinches of dried Methi (Fenugreek) leaves
1 courgette, sliced thickly on the diagonal, then halved
sea salt
200ml single cream
a knob of Jaggery (or 1 tsp brown sugar)
another (smaller) knob of butter
3 eggs, just hard boiled (around 7 minutes).

Method :

1.   In a deep saucepan, heat the oil and butter until the butter has melted.  Add the onion and fry on a medium heat until soft and deep golden brown.  Add the garlic and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.

2.  Add the cumin, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, chilli flakes, curry powder and cardamom and stir to combine.  Cook for another 3-4 minutes, stirring all the time to prevent the spices burning.

3.  Add the tomato passata and stir to combine.  Continue to cook until the mixture has lost a good deal of its water and the fat is being released.

4.  Add the carrots, potato and swede and stir well until the vegetables are all coated in the spice mixture.

5.  Add the coconut milk and vegetable stock powder and gently stir to combine.

6.  Add the chick peas and the methi leaves and bring to a simmer.  Cook, simmering, until the vegetables are softened, but not quite tender.

7.  Add the courgette, stir to combine and continue to cook until the vegetables are tender.  You may need to add a little water from time to time, if the curry begins to get too thick.

8.  Once the curry has thickened, add the cream, jaggery (or sugar) and salt to taste.  Once you are happy with the flavour and the cream is well combined, add the knob of butter and the three shelled hard boiled eggs.

9.  Allow the eggs time to heat through and serve on white rice, with the eggs halved and placed on top.

Serve with naan bread, chapatis or flatbreads.

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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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