Wrassling with Rissoles

Hubby will say that the Rissoles just aren't worth writing about.  However, I disagree.

I do so because of one simple reason - a photograph.  It is quite the best photograph (taken by hubby - the Blog Photographer) of its type, I have seen in ages.

So - the rissoles.  Well, they were (in my opinion) around 50% successful in that they had an interesting flavour and a surprising texture.  However, from hubby's point of view (who was attempting to re-create a flavour from his childhood), they failed miserably.

Before cooking

The mixture of lamb, onion and parsley all combined very well and apart from their drying out in the cooking procedure, they were really quite nice.  I even didn't object to their dryness - which wasn't intended, but resulted in a certain crispiness that was flavoursome and very savoury.

However, they weren't right - so I haven't blogged the recipe, but if you like "as it happens" photographs of food cooking, get a load of this one :

A rissole, frying madly in amazingly frothy (why did it do that?) oil.  Love it!

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"Turn the meal plan for this week over to me" he said ...

... and because I don't particularly like Bernard Matthews Turkey Steaks, I didn't.  *chuckle*

However, I did let hubby take the lead on this week's menu plan - only reserving the right of veto over things like putting two major carbohydrates together in a tart case.

My very favourite meal when we lived in Germany

I think we've wound up with an interesting combination of meals.  Although, our first choice for Tuesday (Bockwurst & Kartoffelsalat - a german sausage with german potato salad) had to be dropped at the shopping stage.  For starters, we couldn't find the Jelly potatoes that we've been lapping up (they're only available in some Tesco stores, which obviously weren't the four we went to) and secondly, the supermarket(s) we were in hadn't ever heard of Bockwurst.  ~rolls eyes~

So we wound up with pizza.  Desperation struck, I'm afraid.

Retro - but flipping gorgeous!

Regrettably, I think we're going to have to re-think Sunday's Beef Olives, too.  We weren't sure what cut of beef to get - and decided upon Sirloin - but the price for the quantity we're going to need - even downgrading the cut - is just prohibitive.

I'd quite like to do a pot roast of Brisket or maybe a Chicken, but done in the Slow Cooker.  I'm really not sure about that one yet, I will have to ponder it further - but I've got time for that.

So, what does the menu plan look like?  Why, like this ...

Tue : was Bockwurst & Kartoffelsalat, became pizza

Weds : Rissoles, baked Sweet Potatoes with chilli lime cream, plus peas.

Thurs : Hearty Pasta Soup and Soda Bread

Fri : Smoked Haddock & Fennel Tart with Greek salad

Sat : Chicken kebabs with salsa & greek yoghurt in pitta bread

Sun : Beef or Chicken with potatoes of some kind, broccoli, carrots & peas.

Mon : Meatballs and pasta.

Because the majority of the dishes are hubby's ideas, he is inevitably doing a fair amount of the cooking.  It is difficult to take an idea and not convert it to your view of "how it should be" as he will obviously have a picture in his mind of how he wants the dish to turn out.  As we don't have the technology to be able to download these pictures for public consumption, he's going to have to cook them!

How I imagine Rissoles to look

Case in point being tonight's Rissoles.  Now I can't ever remember eating a Rissole.  Not the kind of Rissoles that he has been speaking about - made with lamb or beef mince, coated in seasoned flour and fried.  For hubby, however, this is part of his childhood and not only does he have a picture in his head, but also the memory of a flavour - which I have neither.  I'm intrigued to find out about these Rissoles, having heard a fair amount about them over the years!

Because of their potential for being high fat, we've decided on having a baked sweet potato with the lovely chilli/lime cream dressing.  For all that it's sour cream based, I'm quite sure there's less fat involved than using a great dollop of butter - and with the green peas to accompany them, hopefully a balance will have been struck.

Picture c/o BBC Good Food website

The Hearty Pasta Soup is my choice and it is a BBC Good Food recipe that I've known about for (literally) years and have put on the menu a couple of times, but each time it's been bumped off and I've never got to make it.  So, I'm having another go.  I was hoping to be able to get some of the walnut & blue cheese tortelloni (which is double yum) to be included in the soup, but  - probably because I was after some - there was none in the shop.  I settled on a spicy sausage tortellini that I'm hoping will have some flavour.  So many of these filled pastas are just little knots of flavourless Plasticine, but I'm hoping that due to the "spicy" aspect these will be different.  I'm looking forward to it - and I will be making some soda bread rolls to eat with it.

Eggs, versus ...

Friday's Smoked Haddock and Fennel Tart is a concept that came about through exhaustive brainstorming one evening.  I do so enjoy making tarts and can't quite decide - in this instance - whether to go down the "eggy quiche" route with it, or deviate into a "white sauce" route.  I know both the fish and fennel will be happy in a thick white sauce that has the fish poaching milk used in it along with maybe some herb or another (possibly parsley & the ferny fronds from the top of the fennel) and perhaps a light sprinkling of cheddar over the top that will melt when baked in the oven (sounds gorgeous).  However, the eggy quiche route is a much more reliable route to the final product.  You know, I can feel an inexorable pull towards the white sauce going on.

....... white sauce?

I think (hope!) that it would be nice when paired with a Greek salad of large sliced tomatoes, cucumber, olives and red onion with a sprinkling of Feta cheese - but is that too much cheese for the fish?  Hmmn, possibly.  We might have to lose the Feta, if so!

Saturday's Chicken Kebabs is another brainchild of hubby's.  He's envisaging strips of chicken that have been marinaded in lemon, thyme & olive oil, laced onto skewers with alternating pieces of courgette, cherry tomatoes, mushroom, aubergine and possibly apple.  He's proposing to grill them (maybe in the char grill pan, I'm not sure) and then once done, release them into a pitta bread.  Slosh on some Greek yoghurt and some suitably tasty salsa and you're done.  Sounds pretty darned yummy, to me.


I touched on Sunday's dinner earlier - and since then I notice that our local butcher is doing whole chickens for around £2.50!  Even if they're tiny little things, for that price we could get two.  I'm contemplating having a crack at jointing the chicken(s), which is something I've never done but would be interested at having a go at.  I'm assuming it'd be easier with a smaller chicken and I know my "Big Knife" (as it's known) is man enough for the job, it just depends on whether I've got the oomph to push it through a chicken!

Monday's meatballs and pasta is going to be an interesting one.  Yes, I've been having a bit of a meatball fest just lately - but I spotted a bag of frozen meatballs in Asda the other day, for a very affordable £1.55 for 500g of cook from frozen.  Now my guess is that these are going to be parlous as best and inedible at worst, but they've just got to be tested.  They purport to be 80% beef and have an encouragingly short ingredients list that doesn't appear to contain anything that would make your eyebrows lift in horror.


I'll be making a lovely powerful tomato sauce (possibly with a little chilli) to put them in and we'll have some grated cheese to sprinkle over the pasta.  It's rather like having your favourite curry the first time you use a new Indian takeaway, just to test what they're like.  Before I try doing anything startling with them, let's try them with a bog-standard sauce and get their measure.  I'm sure you'll hear, whatever the results are!


Apart from that, I still have three types of packeted rice pudding to try out (we tried the chocolate one the other day) and report back on.

I am STILL intending on cooking the Dorset Apple Cake - and had better get cracking on it, because the Bramleys I bought for it are slowly getting older and older!


I've also entered a Watercress Soup competition - so I'll soon be trialling a few recipes before deciding on my potential competition winner.  It's a good job son & heir is out for 5 lunches out of 7, as he'd probably leave home if faced with successive bowls of watercress soup for lunch!


Something else that's going to require some thought is what to cook for National Pie Week!  I'm considering steak and kidney, at the moment.  I do love a good steak & kidney pie, but it needs to contain loads of lovely pieces of kidney as well as be in a luscious rich beefy gravy.  Goodness, I've just made my own mouth water!  It is just such a good job that you can't put weight on by just thinking about food - I hope.

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What's for dinner this week, then?

Very good question!

This week's menu's have largely been brought to you care of Delia Smith's "Frugal Food" and the BBC Good Food website, with one element of Jamie Oliver.  The week's programme began to write itself fairly early on in the previous week, when I got down to having a serious (as opposed to a quick flick through) look through Delia's recipe book.

Incidentally, can anyone tell me the difference between a "cookery book" and a "recipe book"?  The Cambridge Dictionary defines a "cookbook" as "a book containing recipes which tell you how to prepare and cook particular dishes", whereas it doesn't carry a definition for "recipe book".  I'd have thought that a "cookery book" contained paragraphs on "how to" as well as recipes (as with "The Constance Spry Cookery Book"), whereas a "recipe book" is just the recipes.  Maybe I'm wrong in that, though?  There seems to be almost as many descriptions for books regarding cookery as there are books!

So, anyway, I digress.

Here's what's on the menu this week :

Tuesday (which is tonight, as I write this blog) : this is a Delia night.  We had Devilled Chicken Pieces with onion rice.

This is the photo that went with the
recipe - but it's not how they looked
when I'd finished making them!

This was an experiment on two counts.  Firstly, as a first go at Delia's recipe for Devilled Chicken Drumsticks (albeit we had pieces) and secondly, as a first go at having chicken pieces (i.e. drumsticks & thighs) instead of breast fillets.  Because of the hike in price of frozen breast of chicken fillets, it has now become almost impossible for us to afford them and, because we have so many chicken recipes, I was keen to find a replacement.  I pondered on buying a whole chicken and jointing it - but I could immediately see that would be a non-starter on a busy day.  A bag of frozen drumsticks and thighs cost less than an entire chicken (and provide you with 5 of each, drumstick and thigh) and have the benefit of being extra-tasty in comparison to a breast fillet.  Of course, you can't stuff them, but you can use them in casseroles and stand-alone roast type dishes such as the Devilled Chicken.

Well, it proved a success.  Not exactly a resounding success - but that was down to Son's difficulty with handling chicken on the bone, rather than any other problem.  The recipe is a good one (I'll blog it eventually!) and although - next time - I might add a little more spiciness to the devilling, it was suitably finger-licking good.  I gave Son a drumstick and a thigh.  The drumstick he coped with just fine, the thigh was a little more challenging.  However, it's nothing that a little practice won't cure.

The onion rice, however, was more than a little ho-hum.  I won't bother blogging that one as we definitely won't be trying it again.  It was just too bland and uninteresting, even though I tarted it up with some cinnamon bark and broad beans.  I'm sure I can make a vegetable rice that will provide more interest.

Wednesday : Spirali al Pesto Rosso

Please don't pick me up on my Italian - it's just a humorous "at home" name for Spirali pasta with Red Pesto and Kielbasa sausage.  I'm looking forward to this one, as we've bought a red pesto which involves walnut and which should go with the Kielbasa (Hunter's Sausage) really well.  It's hubby's first cooking night, so fingers crossed it goes well for him!

[Edited on Wednesday evening, to say that the Kielbasa sausage (Hunter's Sausage) is TDF (to die for) and the Pesto (Red Pepper and Walnut, made by Dress Italian) is absolutely lovely.  I have rarely seen such a simple pasta dish wolfed in shorter time!]

Mace, bagged up
and ready for export

Thursday : Rissoles, potato wedges and peas

Thursday is hubby's second cooking night and tonight he's attempting to re-create a taste from his past - Rissoles.  The recipe he's using is another Delia one, which also uses ground Mace.  Now, I can't remember the last time I ever used Mace in anything so I was intrigued to have a sniff once we'd bought some.  Immediately my mind travelled to Rice Pudding, not Rissoles, so it'll be interesting to see what the Mace brings to the Pork Mince that is being used.

Friday : Sausage & Mozzarella Pasta Bake

By dint of the frequent requests, not to mention the puppy-dog eyes that accompany them, we will be indulging in gorgeously spicy tomatoey pasta with sausage pieces, broccoli and that creamy, gooey, cheesy mass that is melted mozzarella.  *sigh*  Happy happy.

This is the Jamie Oliver inspired one, which I have blogged about on a previous occasion back in September, but you can find its recipe here.

Saturday : Tuna & Lemon Pasta with garlic bread

Photo from BBC Good Food
Wonder what my version will look like?

It's another "eat on your lap, whilst watching Strictly Come Dancing" job again.  We've not had this one before and the idea of tuna alongside lemon, with fine green beans and pasta shells, appeals to my taste buds.  In fact, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Sunday : Pot Roast Chicken, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots & green vegetables with Yorkshire Puddings.

I just have to try the pot roasting method on another chicken.  It was SUCH a resounding success the first time, I have to check and see whether that was just a fluke!

I'm also going to attempt to make my own yorkshire puddings.  I haven't told you about the disaster, nay tragedy, that was my Toad in the Hole - and I never will.  Suffice to say that I'm not holding out much hope for wonderfully risen Yorkies.  However, I'll keep on trying because one day - one day - I'll make it.  One day.

Photo from BBC Good Food

Monday : Lemon & Chilli Chicken Noodles

I think maybe I'm coming down with a cold or something, because I have a serious yearning for all things lemony at the moment.  I'm not sure what a yearning for noodles means, but I seem to have a constant hankering for those, too!  This is another BBC Good Food recipe which makes admirably good use of the other half of the chicken from Sunday.  I just hope that the fresh stir-fry mix I buy on Friday will last until Monday!

Apart from a marked lean towards the pasta, I think this week's dishes are a little more balanced than last week's "heavy on the Yorkshire pudding" week!