Scarborough Fairly Meatloaf - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme!

You may not be altogether surprised to hear that the name of this meatloaf is one of my own devising. Of course, it's because the herbs involved are parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. LOL

You see, I was after a midweek, no frills, relatively plain, good and savoury, tasty meatloaf that could be served with some denomination of potato dish and a selection of vegetables. A meat & three veg. meatloaf, if you like!

I used beef and pork mince in a two thirds/one third combination because the pork mince just serves to lighten the texture of the beef. Adding loads of extra flavours - mustard, herbs, onion & garlic granules - helped pep up the savouriness and my now indispensable method of draining off the cooking juices halfway through the cooking time as ever, resulted in a good firm loaf. I do so hate meatloaf that you could serve with a spoon. Gak!

Now you might be wondering why I used the onion & garlic granules instead of adding fresh onion and fresh garlic. Good question! I find that fresh onion has to be almost grated or minced, so as not to leave small pieces of quite firm, almost crunchy, onion behind in the mix. Some people might like that, but I'm not a fan. Grating or mincing the onion just serves to increase the liquid in the mix, which I pour off at half time anyway so its not a good method.

It's a similar thing with garlic. I'm allergic to raw garlic, so it has to be incredibly finely chopped to wind up cooked sufficiently for me. Hitting on a piece of semi raw garlic is so overpowering to the other flavours, that again, it's just not a good method for me. However, if I add onion and garlic granules - which are simply dehydrated and finely minced - I get all the benefit of the flavour and none of the drawbacks. It's a personal taste thing. If you like to find onion or garlic in your meatloaf, or have the time and energy to pre-cook and caramelise them, then by all means go ahead and use fresh!

Oh and I'm also assured that this meatloaf is fairly epic when used, cold, as part of a sandwich. Happy days!

SCARBOROUGH FAIRLY MEATLOAF   (Serves 5)

Ingredients :

1 bread crust, blitzed into breadcrumbs
500g reduced fat beef mince
250g pork mince
1 large egg
1 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
pinch of sea salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1 tsp onion granules
half a tsp garlic granules
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped fine (dried parsley would work too - use 1 tsp)
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp dried rosemary
half a tsp dried thyme
1 tsp beef stock powder or 1 tsp Bovril.

Method :

Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.

Place all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix together well, using your hands.  Try not to over-mix or the meatloaf will become tough, but ensure all the ingredients are distributed well across the mix.

Line a 1lb loaf tin with silver foil and pack the meatloaf mix in well.  I find it best to put half in and press into the corners, pushing it well down and ensuring all air bubbles are out, before adding the second half and repeating the process.

Using your fingertips, create a small space along the edge of the mix between the loaf tin and the ingredients - a gutter, effectively!  This will help when it comes to draining off the excess liquid, later.

Place onto the middle oven shelf and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the meatloaf from the oven and carefully drain off any accumulated liquid.  Take care not to let the loaf slip from within the tin, into the sink!

Place back into the oven for another 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and, using the silver foil, pull the meatloaf from inside the loaf tin.  Place onto a chopping board and carefully unwrap.  Cut the meatloaf into slices and serve with mashed potato and seasonal vegetables of your choice.

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Bacon with Red Pepper Pesto Pasta - done in a twinkling!

What a success this one proved to be!  Mind you, I don't know why I'm sounding surprised because it uses three of my favourite things - bacon, mushrooms and Asda's ricotta & red pepper pesto.  To my way of thinking, it was a winner before I even took my knife to the bacon.  However, sometimes what seems like the perfect combination of ingredients turns out to leave a little to be desired in one way or another - but happily, not so here.  Plus, of course, it has the added bonus of being simplicity itself to prepare.

Oh and as a little aside, have you noticed how often my food seems to turn out to be orange coloured? I don't try to make it that way, honest I don't, it seems as though my choice of ingredients has a marked lean towards the orange.  But then, the menfolk grumble if there's too much green on the plate, grumble again if I serve them "brown food" and would justifiably grumble at being served black food, so aside from white I guess that just leaves the red/yellow/orange palette as there's not too many blue foods out there!  So this one is following along in the tradition of being the seemingly man-friendly colour of orange. 

Now, let me recommend to you Asda's little pot of Ricotta & Red Pepper pesto.  This seemingly unassuming little jar contains one of the most delicious substances that I have used in everything from sandwiches to pasta.  Along with the rich ricotta and flavoursome red pepper, it also has a sneaky little bite from red chilli that just makes it glorious.  I would be very happy if you were all to rush out and buy some, love it and continue buying it, as that would mean it will stay around on the shelves for ever!

The pesto marries up with bacon perfectly, of course.  The celery adds a welcome freshness that prevents the dish from becoming too heavy on the palate and the addition of the small amount of sour cream helps to loosen the pesto into a sauce without impinging on the flavour at all.

I call this one a very definite win.  The empty bowls and enquiries as to whether there was any left, gave proof to that belief, too.  As a mid-week, easy, relatively cheap dinner, you can't go wrong.

BACON WITH RED PEPPER PESTO PASTA   (serves 3)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil
350g smoked back bacon, trimmed of fat and diced
1 large onion, diced finely
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
2 sticks of celery, diced finely
black pepper
half a tsp dried oregano
200g quartered mushrooms 
190g jar red pepper & ricotta pesto
1 tbsp sour cream
200ml water
250g dried pasta shapes - tubes are good.

Method :

Heat the olive oil in a large deep sided frying pan and add the bacon.  Fry over a high heat until all the moisture has evaporated and the bacon is cooked through.

Reduce the heat to moderate and add the onion, garlic and celery, along with a pinch of black pepper and the oregano.  Fry until the onion is transparent and the celery is beginning to soften.

Add the mushrooms and continue to fry until they are beginning to soften.

Three quarters fill a large saucepan with water and add a pinch of salt.  Bring to the boil and once boiling, add the dried pasta.  Remember to give the pasta a stir every so often to ensure it's not sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Cook for 10-12 minutes, or to manufacturer's instructions.

Add the contents of the pesto jar to the bacon mix, along with 100ml of water (you can use it to rinse out the pesto jar, so as to get every last little bit!) and stir to combine.

Once the ingredients are looking mixed, stir in the sour cream.  Simmer on a very low heat until the pasta is ready.  You may need to add a little more water from time to time to keep the mixture saucy.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it well and return it to the hot saucepan.  Take the bacon mixture and decant it on top of the pasta and stir gently, but thoroughly, through.

Serve in warmed bowls with some garlic bread to accompany.

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Midweek braised pork steaks with mushrooms

In days gone by (more days than I care to consider), I used to write a blog on another platform.  When that closed, I saved all my recipes and pictures and although I have cherry picked from them over the years, I have been meaning to get back to them in some kind of structured way.

So I shall be including them as I go along and these posts are going to be fairly brief (blessedly so, you may say) but they all represent a recipe that I think is worth passing on. 

The first of which is this, my midweek braised pork steaks with mushrooms.  

Firstly, I just happened to have some home made pork stock in the freezer.  However, if you don't have that and need to use a stock cube, you may want to include a finely chopped carrot in with the onion, celery & garlic.  This will give the sweetness and a further depth to the flavour of the sauce/gravy.

Secondly, the pork steaks I have used here are loin steaks.  As such they don't need a lot of cooking to become tender, unlike a leg or shoulder steak.  Hence you might need to adjust the braising time to suit whichever cut you have at the time.

Lastly, the Bisto Best gravy granules aren't essential if you're ethically opposed to them for some reason, just use whichever thickener you prefer - cornflour, or plain flour, or some other proprietary brand.  I use Bisto Best because a) they provide the best flavour of all the gravy products available and b) they mix in really easily, without leaving great sticky clumps of goo.  Goo is definitely not essential to the success of your pork dinner. 

MIDWEEK BRAISED PORK STEAKS WITH MUSHROOMS    (serves 3)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
3 pork steaks (I used 2 each as they were very thin, so 6 in all)
1 onion, chopped finely
2 sticks celery, chopped finely
(1 carrot, chopped finely - optional)
1 large clove of garlic, roughly chopped
sea salt and black pepper
750ml home made pork stock (or chicken - or at a pinch, use 1.5 good low salt stock cubes)
125g chestnut mushrooms, cleaned and quartered
1 tbsp Bisto Best pork gravy granules.

Method :

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan or wok until smoking hot, then add the pork steaks (three at a time, if necessary, so as not to overcrowd the pan) and brown them lightly on both sides.  Remove to keep warm on a plate.

Once all the steaks are browned, reduce the heat and add a little more oil if necessary, then add the onion, celery and garlic (plus the carrot, if you're using it).  Stir fry gently until softened and just beginning to colour.

Replace the pork back into the pan and add the stock and mushrooms.  Stir to combine.

Bring up to a lively simmer and taste for seasoning.  Adjust if necessary.  Place a lid onto the pan and cook for 30 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until the pork is tender.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the gravy granules, stirring quickly to prevent any lumps.

Serve with steamed new potatoes and an assortment of in season vegetables.

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Midweek beef mince with black garlic - not scary at all!

How do you elevate a midweek minced beef recipe?  Why, add black garlic of course!

Black garlic is exactly that - it's garlic and it's very black, having been aged in balsamic vinegar.  Balsajo is the black garlic I used today and we love it.  The cloves are stickily dark like soft liquorice, but they don't taste of liquorice!  If you're expecting it to taste of raw garlic, it doesn't do that either.  It has a taste all of its own, being sweet but slightly tangy and incredibly delicious.  I haven't yet eaten an entire clove like a sweetie, but the thought is there!

So today we were due to have just plain common or garden beef mince in gravy, which I always try to make as flavoursome as possible.  Just because it's a midweek dish, doesn't mean it should be lacking in flavour or interest.

Having received the Balsajo as a competition prize a few days ago, I was keen to try it out in as many different incarnations as possible - so I backed off on a few ingredients that I would normally include in a midweek beef mince and added a nice whack of black garlic.  The challenge to it was clear - see what you can do with this!  

Because the black garlic has a quiet, sweet flavour, it's effect on the savouriness of the mince dish wasn't a big slap in the face sort of effect but very much one of infusing that mellow richness throughout the meat and gravy.  Just gorgeous.  Every so often you picked up a little chunk of black garlic on the fork, enabling a more intense flavour to come through.

I was astounded at the price for our Balsajo black garlic.  Being so keen on it we were eager to replace our bulb once it was finished and so looked online to find out more.  The Balsajo website has a handy "Where To Buy" section, from which we discovered that if we turned up at our local Sainsbury's with the princely sum of £1.50 (December 2015 price) clutched in our hot little hand, all would be well.  Now how often does that happen?  Not very often, not with "artisan" products that are unusual and slightly off the wall, I've found.  Colour me seriously impressed.

So all that has made me very happy.  After all, it's one thing being given an item to review (although, as I say, I won it in this instance), but quite something else if once you've decided you love it and cannot be without it, to find out that you need to re-mortgage the house in order to do so.  As long as Balsajo keep making this delicious product, I'll keep on buying it and I recommend that you do, too.

MINCED BEEF WITH BLACK GARLIC   (serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil
500g reduced fat minced beef
smoked sea salt (normal is fine)
ground black pepper
1 onion, chopped finely
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
1 bay leaf
2 tomatoes, chopped
4 cloves black garlic, sliced
quarter of a tsp ground cinnamon
half a tsp dried rosemary
1 Knorr Rich Beef stock pot
1 tsp Bovril
1 heaped tsp French mustard
2 tbsp Bisto Best beef gravy granules.

To serve : mashed potato and seasonal vegetables (I used carrot, broccoli, runner beans and peas)

Method :

Heat the olive oil until really quite hot in a large, deep frying pan.  Add the beef and break up the block into small pieces as it cooks.  Add a small pinch of smoked sea salt and a good helping of black pepper.  Fry until the beef has all browned, the moisture has evaporated and there is just oil left under the beef.  Leave the beef to caramelise for at least two turns, then remove it with a slotted spoon into a bowl.

Remove all but 1 tbsp of the fat from the pan and reserve in case you need more as you cook the vegetables.

Add the onion, garlic and bay leaf and fry until the onion is transparent and soft.  Do not let the garlic burn.

Add the tomatoes and black garlic and stir to combine.  Fry until the tomatoes are starting to break down.

Add the cinnamon and rosemary and stir to combine.

Add the stock pot and sufficient water to just under the level of the mince.

Add the Bovril and mustard and stir to combine.  Bring to a lively simmer, then cover the pan and leave to cook for some 10-15 minutes.

Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary - the dish can cope with lots of black pepper but remember that the gravy granules are high in salt!

Pull the mince to one side of the pan and remove from the heat.  Sprinkle in the gravy granules and stir immediately.  Return the pan back to the heat and stir gently.  Once the gravy has thickened, you are ready to serve.

Serve with mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables.

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Bacon & tomato gnocchi bake

This unctuous, decadent and totally yummy dish is one of those "made it in the past, didn't get around to blogging it" meals that really should have been blogged long before now.

I've only made it twice (so far) and I'm sure it will appear on the menu again before too very long.

The first time, I added some veggies such as green and red pepper to the mix because I had them there and needed to use them up.  This time, I went with just the mushrooms and we all loved it on both occasions.

I would point out that the dish isn't, strictly speaking, a "bake" but more of a "grill" as you simply grill the sliced mozzarella to melt it and give it a little colour.   However, it really is by the by - I just thought I'd clarify in case you were puzzled by it.

I must be getting old, as the guilt over the calories involved (bacon, cream, cheese ... need I say more?) resulted in my serving it with a side salad instead of the garlic bread we had previously.  You know what?  I actually preferred it with the side salad.  At which all the men in the audience may now take a sharp intake of breath - salad being an anathema to the majority of man-kind, as I'm given to understand.  The majority of the laydeez may take this opportunity to nod wisely.

It was the contrast in textures, though.  The richness and softness of the gnocchi beside the freshness and crunch of the salad ingredients, just worked beautifully for me.

Not that it wasn't extremely good the first, garlic bread accompanied, time.  No, it was pretty darned horny (if you'll excuse the expression - borrowed from my husband, you understand) then, too.  In fact, I think it'd be fairly irresistible no matter how or when you served it.  I'd even give it a go for breakfast, it's that good.

Plus - and this is a big plus - it is another from the age-old and much favoured school of "chop and peel, put into a pan in order and serve" cooking.  Perfect for when you've spent all day chauffeuring your progeny around from school to concert hall, or just plain worn yourself out doing some retail therapy.  Assuming, of course, that the gnocchi is either already made and in your freezer, or already made and in a bag in your fridge.  Don't tell anyone, but mine was made by Mr Asda.  Their fresh gnocchi is very acceptable indeed.

If you've got any teenagers in the house, don't expect there to be any leftovers for lunch.  Even after a perfectly adequate serving with salad alongside, they will still find a corner for a little bit more.  I'm not sure, but I think son & heir may even have licked the plate.

As for COOK'S TIPS, it really is so simple that there aren't many.

Firstly, it is as well to use the best ingredients you can afford with this one.  The simplicity of the dish is such that if you use cheap tinned tomatoes (for instance), it's going to show.  For the sake of the few pence that's involved, go for the best you can afford.  It really is worthwhile.

Lastly, don't be tempted to use double cream.  Not even if you've got some left over in your fridge without a home to go to.  Buy some peaches and use it on them, if you must.  Single cream won't leave you with the clagginess that double will, when used in this context.  It really is a very rich tomato sauce - and extra fat is neither required nor welcome.

Either saladed or garlic breaded, this is a great one for a weekday dinner.  Your menfolk will thank you, either way.

BACON & TOMATO GNOCCHI BAKE   (serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil
340g back bacon, diced
1 large shallot, diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp paprika
half a tsp smoked sweet paprika
6 good sized chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 large tasty tomato, chopped
400g can of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
150ml water
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp sugar
half a tsp finely ground black pepper
2-3 tbsp single cream
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
500g fresh gnocchi
2 balls of mozzarella cheese, sliced.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a large deep sided frying pan and once hot, add the bacon pieces.  Fry until the fat has begun to render and the pieces have begun to caramelise.  Do not allow to burn.

2.  Add the shallot and garlic and continue to fry until the shallot has softened and turned transparent.

3.  Add the two types of paprika and stir to combine.  Fry for another 30 seconds.

4.  Place a large saucepan of slightly salted water on to boil.

5.  Add the mushrooms and the tomatoes in all their guises, the Worcestershire sauce, water, sugar and black pepper.  Stir well, then allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes to allow the flavours to combine and the sauce to thicken and reduce.

6.  Once the sauce has reduced to a thick, chunky texture, remove from the heat and add the cream and parsley.

7.  Put the gnocchi into the boiling water.  Once they float to the surface (3 minutes, no more), they're done.  Remove from the water using a slotted spoon and add them to the tomato sauce.  Stir them in gently, making sure each gnocchi is coated with sauce.

8.  Place the sliced mozzarella over the surface of the gnocchi/sauce mixture and place under a hot grill.  Once the mozzarella has melted and begun to colour, you're ready to serve.

I served mine with garlic bread and on the second occasion, with a side salad.  The choice is yours!

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