Salad? Don't be silly!

*phew* No lack of salad here!

As I sit here and look at the menu plan for this week, I'm seriously hoping that the weather forecasters are right and the hot hot sunshine is going to take a bit of a back seat for a few days - because we're all out of salad, here!

Son & heir has been moaning about the amount of salad he's had to munch his way through just recently, poor dear.  Yes, I know - but he's practising to be an ungrateful teenager and is doing quite nicely at it, currently.  As a result, we've had to think of meals that don't insist on a side salad to go with them.  He probably hasn't twigged to this, but being without a side salad inevitably means that cooked vegetables will appear on his plate instead.  I won't let him get away with just pasta meals for ever, you know.

He's also - very kindly - distributed a cold germ about the place and hubby has succumbed and I'm just about to, if my throat is anything to go by.  So, personally, I'm very glad that we opted for an easy one to start the week!

Let's have a gander at what's on the menu list, then :

Tues : Pizza

Weds : Pork schnitzels, potato salad and corn on the cob

Thurs : Chicken Murry with mushroom rice

Fri : Beef in black bean stir fry

Sat : Baked trout with green couscous and parsnip crisps

Sun : Roast beef, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots, broccoli, peas, Yorkshire puddings and creamed horseradish with gravy.

Mon : Beef & mushroom pie, new potatoes, peas and carrots.

Ssssh!  Don't shout too loud about those trout, or Asda will have sold out before we can buy two on Friday.

So, pizza tonight and we're both very happy with it.

That's not a Wienerschnitzel - that's a continent!

The Pork Schnitzels on Wednesday will be a creation from hubby's arsenal.  Having done the egg & breadcrumb thing with the fishcakes last week, he's as keen as mustard to try the same thing with an escalope.  It sounds like it's likely to be a bit of a blast from the past - and will take me back to meals in Germany when Bockwurst wasn't on the menu and I opted for Wienerschnitzel instead.

Oh and I have got to tell you about the Rose Veal thing - but that's for another blog post.  We rang our butcher to investigate getting some Rose Veal to make the schnitzels with, you see.

A Murry from the past ... ah, fond memories!

Thursday's Chicken Murry is a chicken curry - but not one made to anyone's recipe or with any particular style in mind.  It's a "Mummy Curry", i.e. one which I made up as I went along and is jolly blinking good.  I'll be giving the diced chicken from our local butcher a go with this one, crossing my fingers that it'll be a suitable substitute for the chicken breasts that we used to use when they were on special offer.  If it looks a bit ropey, then I'll have to buy a couple of legs and dice the meat up myself.

Hubby has found a use for the other half of the Silverside we bought for last week's curry, in the Beef in Black Bean stir fry.  It's going to be a noodle & broccoli stir fry, so hopefully son & heir won't do his normal downcast "oh!" when he hears it's a stir fry for tea.

Something that looks like this would be good!

Saturday's baked trout is going to be a new challenge for me. I've wanted to cook a whole fish in paper for almost as long as I can remember - and I figure that two whole trout will be enough for the three of us for a dinner.  I'll be putting it with some of Ottolenghi's Green Couscous and making up some parsnip chips - the thin ribbon kind, as opposed to the fries kind.  It seems easy enough to do, so I reckoned I'd give it a go.

Sunday's dinner is the roast beef that we moved on from last week owing to the weather.  It really was madness to think of having a roast beef dinner on such a hot day - which is this weekend's gain as we get to have it then instead.  My mouth is watering at the idea of roast beef, so I'm hoping the weather won't intervene and send it off to next week again!

We're reckoning (and hoping!) to have some leftover roast beef, which I'll incorporate into a pie with some whole shallots and mushrooms.  Served with some lovely Jersey Royals together with peas and carrots, it should be cracking!

Maybe something a bit like this?

Now, as for everything else, well I'll have to think of something to have as a dessert on Sunday, plus I can feel another cake sneaking up on me.  I'd like to make a sponge cake this time, I think.  Something lighter for the warmer weather - maybe with fresh fruit involved somewhere along the line.

I'm not sure whether hubby has any plans to make anything extra this week - so we'll just have to see what turns up!

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Meal planning around many different requirements!

Empty plate - that's what we're after!

Sometimes, I wonder about the monster I've created here with this blog.  Particularly when we find ourselves on a Monday morning trying to juggle all the menu plan's different requirements.

For instance, I agreed to join in with the Lean on Turkey campaign (remember the Petuba Canneloni?) and challenge no. 2 has just been announced.  I needed to come up with a low fat/healthy meal for 4, for £10.

Then there is the Mic's Chilli products that I agreed to review, and the Spice'n'Sizzle curry kits that I promised to review.

Of course, along with all that is son & heir's commitments with band and choir practice, necessitating a late pick-up from school on two days in the week.

Considering how difficult it used to be to just think of nice dinners to have for a week, I think I must be a sucker for punishment.

Not that I'm complaining!  (Well, alright, it might SOUND as though I'm complaining).  All this does wonders for keeping me off the streets.  After all, I might be out there in my slippers shouting at the neighbourhood kids, or running my stick down the railings or worse.  Okay, it's not likely, but it might happen!  Instead, I'm here in my cave exercising the grey matter, in between stumbling about the kitchen, muttering and stirring, chopping and tasting.

So what sort of plan did we come up with, that took into account all the above elements?  I think we did quite well - but if you could hear hubby swearing about those fish cakes right now, you'd wonder.  *chuckle*

Tues : Turkey & Asparagus Impossible Quiche, buttered Jersey Royals and salad

Wed : Smoked Haddock Fishcakes & salad

Thur : Beef Massaman Curry & rice

Fri : Pasties, chips and baked beans

Sat : Barbecue Burritos with chopped salad

Sun : Roast Beef, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots, savoy cabbage, Yorkshire puddings & horseradish sauce

Mon : Tuna Pasta Bake with garlic bread.

You'll notice I planned in a couple of "days off" for us there!

Well, last night's Lean on Turkey meal went off without a hitch.  Considering it was one of the late school pickup nights, it fitted into the time available very well.  I was very pleased with how the Impossible Quiche came out, as I'd never made one that wasn't bacon & cheese before.  I'll be blogging it next, so won't say more than that just at the moment.


Tonight's Fishcakes are hubby facing his nemesis.  He loves fish, but really dislikes potatoes.  You would think, therefore, that he'd be keen to make the Thai fishcakes - but no, he's gone for making ye olde English style fishcake.


He's out in the kitchen right now, making the mashed potato and cooking the fish in advance of the egg & breadcrumb maelstrom that he's determined to put himself through in order to create HIS kind of fishcake, as opposed to MY kind of fishcake.  *chuckle*  My kind of fishcake is fish & mashed potato (with seasoning & herbs), fried.  Apparently, that's not a "real" fishcake - not without being pannéd anyway.


Rod for his own back?  As they say on LOLCats, aithinkso.  *smile*  Still, I'm sure the fishcakes will be gorgeous - after all, smoked fish and mashed potato?  What could go wrong?

Thursday's Beef Massaman Curry is another matter entirely.  We'll be taking advantage of the local butcher's special offer on silverside for this curry - and also trying out the Massaman Curry Spice'n'Sizzle kit.  I have already tried the Korma curry kit - which I made according to their instructions.  This time, I'm using the spices included in the kit but adding my own ingredients to the mix - so we'll see how we get on this time!

It's another late school pickup night on Thursday, so I've planned - being beef - to use the slow cooker for the early cooking and transfer to the cooker top once we're back home (if necessary).  I'm hoping it will be a good flavoursome curry - as slow cooking the beef will ensure it is tender.


I'll blog the results once we're done and it will be interesting to see what we think about the two methods and how they worked.


Friday is very definitely a day off.  Chuck some shop-bought Cornish Pasties in the oven along with some oven chips and heat up some baked beans.  Slumming it in a big way - but who cares, it'll taste great and we don't have to spend an hour creating it!

Saturday's Barbecue Burrito's will give me a chance to use the Mic's Chilli Barbecue Sauce, which looks yummy in the jar and will hopefully be as yummy on the plate!  We've also got four (yes, four!) chilli sauces to try - and a sweet chilli sauce, too.  I thought it would be interesting to use pork mince instead of the obvious beef - and I'm quite looking forward to this one.


Sunday finds hubby back in the kitchen roasting a lovely piece of Beef Silverside.  We're staying traditional with this one and are looking forward to a good old style roast dinner.


Monday's Tuna Pasta Bake will come as welcome relief at the end of a busy week.  As I've said before, we all love the Homepride Tuna Pasta Bake mix - and with hubby's delicious home made garlic bread, it's just perfect.


I don't (currently) have any plans for any additional bakes or makes, but who knows what will occur to me in the meantime!  After all, I've two enormous rhubarb plants out in the garden glowering at me and challenging me to create something luscious for dessert on Sunday - and the Gooseberry bush is coming along nicely, too.


Hmmn - it'd be interesting to make a sort of rhubarb fool that's a lot healthier than the regular (gorgeous) rhubarb fools ... I'll have to give that one a ponder.


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A nice bit of Brisket!

Roast beef on a Sunday.

Apart from the rib of beef that I roasted for Christmas dinner, I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a piece of beef on an “ordinary” Sunday.

However, since I discovered my local butcher, beef has appeared on our menu-planning list as a regular event – but until this last weekend, not as a roasting joint.

It all began when I stopped roasting chickens and started pot roasting (or poaching) them instead.  I had such marvellous results that I’ve sworn never to roast a chicken again.

Since then, I’ve also done a pot roast with a gammon joint, again with a great deal of success.

I was reading through some of the food blogs that I follow, when up popped an entry regarding a pot roasted brisket.  Mmmmn, that sounded good.  However, I didn’t take it any further (other than mentally marking it, if ever a piece of brisket came my way) and life continued.  Right up until I saw, in the butcher’s window, a notice saying “Special Offer : 1kg rolled brisket : £3-something”.  Well, it didn’t exactly say “£3-something”, it’s just that I can’t exactly remember how much it was, other than the £3 bit.

Two things struck me about this.  Firstly, that the price was only around 50p more expensive than my usual target for the meat for a Sunday meal.  Secondly, that 1kg of brisket is one heck of a lot of meat, even allowing for shrinkage in the cooking.

It’s amazing how I find that I can remember a recipe, but I can’t remember the name of my next door neighbour (who shall be forever known as “Flossy next door”).  Immediately, I remembered the pot roasted brisket recipe, which sounded not only a great way to cook the beef, but about the only way of ensuring as little shrinkage as possible.

When Sunday dawned, I will admit to being a little bit nervous about cooking this gorgeous great hunk of beef, as it was just too good to ruin.

I started off by searing the outside of the beef on all sides – quite apart from the gorgeous smell it gives off, I do think that it adds flavour and colour which just pot roasting (which is little more than poaching) would provide alone.

Then, I added water and a stock cube and the following : two carrots, an onion and two sticks of celery – all quartered.  Plus two cloves of garlic, a big handful of fresh parsley and a bay leaf.

I then brought the liquid up to the boil, and put the whole lot in the oven for 2 hours, after which I turned the beef and put it back in the oven for another hour.

Not only was the beef the kind of texture that you could cut with a spoon, but also it tasted utterly divine.  I served it with roasted potatoes, parsnips and cauliflower with green beans – but the unexpected advantage is the stock.  If you try this recipe out, please please make your gravy from the stock.  You’ll probably never have had gravy like it before.  I’ve two pots of it in the freezer, just waiting for the next piece of brisket.

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