Back to the Beef Stew - the changing face of Saturday's dinner!

Such a shame those dumplings were so nasty!

You remember how I was intending to make a beef stew with horseradish dumplings on Saturday, but then along came Martin with his intriguing sounding Red Dragon Beef pie?

Well, I'm afraid I had to go back to the beef stew because I couldn't find the Aduki (or Azuki) beans in time to have them soaked, cooked and ready to go.  I did find them, eventually, at Makka's Food Store in Parkstone (don't know why I didn't look there first, to be honest!).  So, I'm all set for this weekend and we'll have another go at it next Saturday.

So, that meant going back to the beef stew and horseradish dumplings.  Which was fine, except I then needed to send faithful Hubby out to fetch a parsnip and a swede.  Thus armed - and with 800g of beef brisket from Spring Fields butchers - I set about making my stew.

I love making stews because they always come out differently, depending on what ingredients you include.  This time, I didn't want to include flour as a thickener.  I thought I'd use red lentils and pearl barley.  The lentils just disappeared, which was lovely as they just added to the thickness and earthiness of the gravy.  The pearl barley just did what pearl barley does and became plump and yummy.  Unfortunately, Hubby isn't so keen on pearl barley and I can really only get away with using it in something like a stew, where it goes down along with everything else and doesn't really get in the way.  The stew came up beautifully thick and with a clarity to the gravy that just doesn't happen when you've used flour.  So I was happy with that.

It looked so good, too!

The beef, as ever, was lovely and wonder of wonders, I didn't over cook the parsnip.  In fact, I do believe some pieces were actually slightly under cooked!

However, I have to take issue with Olive Magazine's rendition of a horseradish dumpling.  The dumplings I made, according to their recipe, were not only a tad wet (which, on its own, would have been forgivable as I don't roll the dumplings but drop them straight into the stew in a kind of free-form pattern) but adopted a really odd kind of sweetness, which I imagine came from the fact that Horseradish Cream was used (as per their recipe).  Put it this way - I won't be attempting horseradish dumplings again, any time soon.  I shall stick to my good old herby dumpling mixture which always works a treat.

As a consequence, I haven't included dumplings in the recipe here.  I don't want to have you thinking that I've tried and tested the recipe and approve of it.

BEEF STEW  (serves 4-5)

Ingredients :

A tbsp of olive oil
800g beef brisket, trimmed of all fat and cut into chunks
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
1-2 onions, chopped
1 clove of garlic, grated
2-3 carrots, peeled and diced
half a swede, peeled and diced
a beef oxo cube
water, to cover
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp marmite or bovril
a pinch of dried sage
a glug or two of Worcestershire Sauce
4 tbsp dried red lentils
2 tbsp dried pearl barley
2-3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 parsnip, peeled and diced.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 160deg C.

2.  Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and, when hot, add half the beef and sear on all sides.  When seared, decant into a deep pan or casserole dish.  Repeat with the remaining beef.


3.  Add the onion to the pan and reduce the heat.  Allow the onion to cook for around 5 minutes or until it is softened and transparent.  In the last few minutes, add the grated garlic.  When cooked, decant into the casserole dish.


4.  Add the carrot and swede to the casserole dish.


5.  To the frying pan, add enough water to approximately cover the contents of the casserole dish and begin heating it as you add the oxo cube (crumbled in), the tomato ketchup, tomato puree, marmite (or Bovril), sage and Worcestershire sauce.  Allow to come to a boil, then decant into the casserole.

6.  Add the lentils and pearl barley and stir to combine.

7.  Cover and place the casserole in the oven and cook for 90 minutes.

8.  Remove from the oven and add the potato and parsnip.  If you are adding dumplings, you may need to add a little water to increase the gravy level.  Check the seasoning and give a good stir to combine, then replace in the oven for another 60 minutes.

9.  Serve!

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Lemon shortcake & Strawberry Stacks - or "how to impress your 12 yr old son"

To give credit where credit is undoubtedly due, I found this undeniably gorgeous recipe on the Sweet Hart's Cakes & Bakes blog.  It caught my eye as strawberries unfailingly do and looked simple enough that even a dunderhead like me could achieve it.

Having made the lovely Almond & Elderflower Cookies last week with resounding success, I was filled with confidence as to the biscuit making and the rest just appeared to be a matter of assemblage as opposed to cooking.

The cookie dough came together without any difficulty, however I have to say that I much prefer last week's approach to cutting out cookies (roll into a sausage, wrap in cling film, refrigerate and slice rounds from it) than this week's.  This one was the fairly classic way of rolling out the dough and cutting out rounds, then re-rolling to cut out the remainder, until you've no dough left.  I think this way runs the risk of over-handling the dough through repeated rollings, however having said that, my biscuits seemed none the worse for their repeated rollings!  I'll definitely go for the sausage approach in future though, as it is by far and away the easiest - and I'm all for easy!

I had no difficulty making the dough stretch to 9 biscuits and even had a little bit left over!

The biscuits took a cup of tea and a daydream to cook (or 15-20 minutes) and let go of the parchment with no argument.   In fact, they were very well behaved - especially considering how thin I had made them.

Assembly in progress!

I left the assembly of the stacks until after we'd had our main course, just in case the cream decided to make the biscuits soggy.  It was a relatively simple job to build the stacks.  I took Paula's advice in her blog about not piping the cream and have to say that it made the stacks appear to be ready to burst with cream peeping out from in between the strawberries, in luscious promise.

Four halves per layer - and a biccie

After a bit of a debate as to whether to bother with the coulis, I'm so glad I did.  I went with the strawberry coulis, instead of raspberry, as Paula had.  For all that I had made a sugar-free coulis (with half an eye to hubby's diabetes) it provided the delicious moisture that balanced the cream and brought the whole thing together.

Nearly there!

I was really chuffed with how they looked.  In fact, so pleased was I that I demanded to be there when Son & heir had his delivered, just so that I could see his face.  *chuckle*

Doesn't that coulis look mouthwatering?

So there we are - it's strawberry time, so if you don't make these stacks, you're seriously missing out on a fabulous dessert!

The recipe can be had from SweetHart's Cakes and Bakes if you go here and the original recipe is on the BBC's website here.

Chicken Ala Jao (or Chicken Adobo in liver sauce) from Adora's Box

This one very nearly didn't get made at all!

We had come back from an unexpected trip to Bournemouth and I was feeling a bit tender in the joints.  Which is funny, considering all I had to do was drive there and sit in the car, listening to The Archers on Radio 4, whilst Hubby ran around doing the errands.  For some reason, however, (probably the rain, as my knee problem is arthritic) my joints were begging for mercy by the time we got home.

Still, after a bit of a lie down and a cup of lemon tea (gorgeous stuff, that.  Would restore life into the lifeless), I had a review of the recipe and decided that if Hubby didn't mind doing the cutting and a-chopping of an onion, I wouldn't have to move around the kitchen much whilst doing the rest and so it was do-able.

Which I'm jolly glad about - now.  You see, this recipe was surprising, intense and very, very nice.  It's a definite do-again!

Looking at my version of it versus the photographs on the Adora's Box blogsite, I reckon I did a fairly good job with it.

It didn't take me anything like as long as is stated in the original recipe (which is available here on Adora's Box) which I can put down to the fact that I used breast of chicken instead of thighs, which take far longer to cook.

I will also admit to the fact that I didn't leave the chicken marinating for anything like as long as I should have, but we'd have wound up having dinner at bedtime if I'd procrastinated any longer!

As it was, the recipe is extremely easy to carry out and I even managed to cook rice and stir-fried veggies at the same time.  All without getting terribly stressed - which can occur when there's a lot of things happening on the stovetop all at once!

The seemingly eclectic mix of ingredients that form the marinade amalgamate into an eyebrow raisingly tasty sauce.  Additionally, the liver pate doesn't remain as a separate flavour, but instead forms a thickener that delivers an interesting amount of Umami to the overall flavour.  I have one word of warning though, which is to not panic when you realise just how intensely sweet the whole recipe has become.  I was so glad that I'd used white wine vinegar instead of the balsamic that had been my first choice.  (The type of vinegar isn't given, on the recipe, you see).  I reckon that balsamic would have tipped it over the edge into unbearably sweet.  However, with the plain white Basmati rice and the plain stir fried veggies (which I did with a little olive oil - and nothing else) they went perfectly with the intense, sweet sauce of the chicken and balanced the whole dish.  Don't be tempted to put anything even remotely sweet with it as a side dish!

I thought we'd like this one, as I'd made Chicken Adobo successfully in the past.  I just wasn't entirely confident about the liver pate's part in the deal!

Chicken Ala Jao (or Chicken Adobo in liver sauce) recipe is available here.

Meatballs in a Thai style sauce

I am very pleased to report that our summary failure with the Gnocchi did nothing to shake hubby's enthusiasm for his meatball dish.

The meatballs themselves were made from some Cumberland sausages bought from our local butchers.  It's just an easy matter of unzipping the sausage (or taking it out of it's skin) and breaking off chunks which are then formed into balls.  Job done!

He put some basmati rice on to cook and made an omelette to cube up and include in the rice when it was done.  In the last couple of minutes of cooking the rice, he added some frozen peas for colour and to provide a sweetness in the rice.

The thai-style sauce was provided by melting a knob of butter in a deep frying pan and sweating a couple of shallots until they were transparent.  Then, the Red Thai Curry Paste was added and cooked on for a minute or two before adding a tin of coconut milk.

The raw meatballs were then added and poached in the sauce until cooked.  You couldn't get away with doing this with cheap sausagemeat because of the fat content, but our butcher's sausages have little or no fat.  Towards the end, a handful or two of baby sweetcorn that had been cut into small pieces was added to the pan to cook through.

The end result was good looking, but a tiny bit confused as it didn't really know whether it was Thai, Italian or Chinese.  Hubby's intention with this recipe was to create something that was a) quick to cook, b) tasty and c) interesting.  Well, he certainly scored with the first one.  As to whether it was tasty or not, yes it was - but there was just something missing or out of place.  I suspect it was the very British sausage which had no place in a Thai sauce.  I felt they would have been perfect in an Amatriciana sauce with pasta, or if you were after something less predictable, perhaps in a Mexican chilli sauce.  For me, the sausage and the sauce did clash a little bit.  Which doesn't mean that it wasn't tasty!

As for being interesting, well, I suspect we've talked more about this recipe and it's adjustments than any other!  I think that next time, he's going to go down the Mexican route.  These sausage meatballs are really too good to not have again - just in the right context, this time!

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Observer Food Monthly Awards

Now, far be it from me to tell you who to vote for in the "Best Food Blogger" category (ahem!) but the Observer are now looking for nominations in all the categories, which include restaurants, best Sunday Lunch, best place to drink etc.


If you're interested in voting, (cough, cough) you can go here to do so.

Oh, and if you can rope all your friends into doing so too, that'd be very nice.  For the nominees, of course.

(furiously pointing at the "Best Food Blog" nomination).

*chuckle*

Spring vegetable chowder with ham - swerving the failed Gnocchi

You'll recall from the earlier Menu Plan blog that I was planning on having Gnocchi for dinner one night this week, but due to an oversight in the Sweet Potato front, the whole lot went in the bin.

Well, this left us with a whole heap of diced carrot, celeriac, fennel and asparagus sitting with no home to go to.

I'd already mentioned to hubby (who was doing the chopping and a-peeling) to keep the woody ends of the asparagus and I'd make some soup at the weekend.  (Darn it, just remembered we forgot to buy a leek in the shopping!).  Anyway, this throwaway request had obviously sowed a seed in hubby's brain as he suggested I make some soup with all the dice.

So, back he went to chopping and a-peeling-land and added an onion and two potatoes to the mix, finding some tinned sweetcorn on the way.

I had bought a litre of Jersey milk to make the sauce which was to have gone with the Gnocchi, so I had the basics for a really nice chowder-style soup.

The ham was a last-minute inclusion, but for all that it was the making of the soup.  It added that little bit of savouriness that otherwise would have been missing.

With some bread and butter for dipping, this made a perfect main course soup - and is  easy to have as a vegetarian option, by simply leaving out the ham.

This soup actually took me back to a time when I was vegetarian for a while.  It was just after I'd had my first horse, Baringa, put to sleep and the whole experience had made me turn my back on meat.  As often happens, it was the demon bacon sandwich that turned me back again! 





SPRING VEGETABLE CHOWDER  (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

A knob of butter
a splosh of olive oil
1 onion, chopped finely
2 carrots, peeled and diced small
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 celeriac, peeled and diced
100ml vegetable stock using half a stock cube

1 litre of jersey milk
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

1 fennel bulb, diced small and with herby fronds chopped & retained
a bunch of asparagus, trimmed and sliced to 1cm pieces
2/3 slices of thick cut ham, shredded thinly
crusty bread with butter, to serve.

Method :


1.  Melt the butter in a deep saucepan and add the olive oil.


2.  Add the onion and saute until transparent (around 5 minutes on a light/medium heat) - do not let the onion brown at all.


3.  Add the carrots and stir to combine.  Allow to cook for 4-5 minutes.


4.  Add the potato and celeriac and stir to combine.  Allow to cook until the heat appears to have penetrated the mass.


5.  Add the stock and as much of the milk as it takes to cover the vegetables.  Season to taste, being careful of the amount of salt that the stock may have brought.


6.  Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.


7.  Test a piece of potato.  If it is well on it's way to being cooked, add the fennel - but not the frondy fennel herb.  Continue simmering until the carrot is within minutes of being cooked.


8.  Add the asparagus and the fennel herb, stir to combine and simmer until the asparagus is done (around 2-3 minutes).

9.  Using a stick blender, whizz the soup until the majority of the cubes are pulverised, then add water until it becomes the consistency you are happy with.

10.  If you are using the  ham, add it now by either resting it on top of the soup, or mixing it in.


11.  Serve in deep warmed bowls, with crusty bread and butter.


Scrumptious!


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Almond & Elderflower Cookies : heavenly little biscuits!

Following on from a number of requests, here's the recipe for the cookies that went so beautifully with the Gooseberry Cream & Elderflower Jelly Pots.

The basic recipe is a Rachel Allen basic vanilla shortbread biscuit one, with the elderflower cordial instead of the vanilla and with some ground almonds added.

It really doesn't get any easier than this - unless you make use of a Kenwood Chef, like I did.  Well, it is helpful for when you run out of mixing power in your arms!

ALMOND & ELDERFLOWER COOKIES  (Makes around 18)

Ingredients :

200g softened butter

100g icing sugar

200g plain flour

half a tsp of baking powder

2 tsp elderflower cordial

100g ground almonds

caster sugar, for sprinkling.

Method :

1.  In a bowl, cream the butter with the sifted icing sugar until light and fluffy.

2.  Sift in the plain flour and baking powder, along with the elderflower cordial and  ground almonds.

3.  Mix them all in, only stirring as much as is necessary. Too much stirring will result in hard, tough biscuits.

4.  Once they are all combined, lay a large piece of cling film onto the work surface and tip the dough into the middle. Quickly form the dough into a sausage shape and roll it up in the cling film, twisting the ends tightly – so compressing the contents.

5.  Place in the refrigerator for a half an hour until firm, then pre-heat the oven to 180deg C (Gas Mark 4).

6.  Remove the cling film and slice into rounds of about a half centimetre thickness.

7.  Place the rounds onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper.  Sprinkle with a little caster sugar and bake in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes until light golden brown.

8.  Remove from the oven and give them a second or two to firm up, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Try hard not to eat them all! 

Smoked Haddock & Sweetcorn Tart - superb picnic food!

If you don't make anything else over the course of the next two weeks, do try and make this tart - you won't regret it!

I'd reached the point where I had decided on meals for 6 out of the 7 days for the week, when it occurred to me that I was trying to find something for Tuesday - shopping day.  The point here is that shopping day is a perfect choice for something fishy.  I hate having to freeze fresh fish, and would by far prefer to use fresh over pre-frozen, you see.

So I pondered on the recipes I already know that involve fish and nothing filled me with enthusiasm.  So, I looked on the web for "Haddock Recipes" - and turned up HaddockRecipes.co.uk, a simply brilliant choice for all kinds of recipes involving haddock.  Several were skipped over, until I found the tart recipe from Laura Young.

Isn't it funny, how some recipes just say "Yes!", whereas others don't light up your imagination at all?  The minute I saw the name, I thought "oh, now, this one looks likely!" and upon first read-through I could almost taste how it was going to turn out.

Of course, I didn't count on Asda having a superlative piece of smoked haddock that, I am sure, turned this from a nice recipe into a gorgeous recipe.

On the way to do the shopping, it dawned on me that I didn't have a tart tin big enough to accommodate this tart.  As it turned out, neither did Asda - but they did have a glass Quiche dish that was the perfect size and by happy coincidence, made the perfect receptacle.  Serving was something of a delicate exercise, but achievable.

This photograph is so evocative, it makes me hungry!

I give my version of the recipe below, because I've altered four things in it.  Firstly, I've included a lot more fish, as the amount given just wasn't enough to cover what was quite a large tart tin.  Secondly, I've changed the wholegrain mustard to Dijon mustard, as I found the whole grains sank to the bottom of the egg mixture.  When you poured it into the tart tin, the whole grains all fell out in one place instead of being spread across the tart.  I can't help but think that Dijon will stay evenly spread.  Next, is that I recommend poaching the fish via the microwave, rather than on top of the cooker.  I find it a lot quicker and easier.  Lastly, I have dropped the temperature for cooking, from 220deg C to 190deg C.  I found the higher heat too aggressive for the pastry, which was very nearly burned by the time the tart was done.  The tart will need longer cooking, but that's fine so long as the pastry doesn't burn!

Apart from the lovely fish, I also used three Burford Brown eggs.  Burford Browns are just so gorgeously rich and I felt a tart like this could cope with a richer egg.  The ensuing flavour was beautifully savoury, yet light, without being at all sickly - even with 150ml of Double Cream in the mix!

So, do yourself and your family a favour - and make this recipe.  You won't regret it!

SMOKED HADDOCK & SWEETCORN TART  (Feeds 5)

Ingredients:

Pack of shortcrust pastry
500g smoked haddock
100ml milk
3 eggs
150ml cream
150g sweetcorn, drained
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Handful of parsley
Salt and pepper

Method :

1.  Place the fish into a microwavable dish with the milk and some seasoning. Microwave on high for 3 minutes, to poach the fish until just shy of being done.  Remove it from the microwave and take each piece of fish out onto a plate to be flaked.  Reserve the milk.

2. Roll the pastry out to around 1cm thick and place it into a 23cm (9in) diameter loose-bottomed tart tin without trimming the sides. Line the pastry with baking parchment, and then tip some baking beans onto the paper. Blind bake the pastry for 15-20 minutes at 190deg C and then remove it from the oven and set it to one side.

3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the reserved milk and the cream. Finely chop the parsley and add to the mixture, along with the Dijon mustard. Season well.

4. Remove the baking beans and parchment from the pastry and then sprinkle the bottom of the tart with the sweetcorn and the flaked fish.

5. Pour the egg mixture over the fish and sweetcorn and then place the tart into the oven at 190deg C for 35-45 minutes, or until the surface no longer feels as though there is wet egg underneath it.

6. Once cooked, trim the excess pastry and then allow the tart to cool before cutting it into slices. 


For a main course, serve with new potatoes and a side salad.  Perfect also for picnics.

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Exciting menu list for Father's Day week! Meal Plan 14/6/11 - 20/6/11

Just lately, I seem to go through the week wondering vaguely what we'll be eating next week and keeping an eye open for interesting recipes - yet not finding any.  Then, when I sit down on a Sunday to trawl the cookbooks and internet for inspiration, suddenly there appears all those interesting recipes that had been hiding previously!  Now, I'm not complaining, but it's  a bit weird how it happens.

Anyhow, before we get into this week, let's deal with the end of last week.

We had a couple of meals that we won't be repeating.  Firstly, and most regrettably, was the Caribbean Chicken Curry.  When the curry was almost ready, I got Hubby to taste it with a view to whether it needed sweetening or not.  Bear in mind that he's mildly diabetic, so we're quite wary of the sugar content of ingredients.  However, after putting in ginger, pineapple, tomato, banana and a whole lemon's-worth of zest and juice (and it was a BIG lemon), I was understandably concerned that it was too acidic.  He declared it was okay for sugar, but terribly wishy-washy and weak and "didn't taste of curry".  Now I'd been tasting it as we went along and it tasted fine to me, I agree it didn't taste of curry - but I didn't really think that it would taste of curry.  Not the Indian Takeaway kind of curry, anyway!  After all, it was supposed to be Caribbean, not Indian.  I think I may have lost the plot at that stage, as I dumped a heaped teaspoon full of Garam Masala into it - which of course didn't help matters at all.  It then became a thoroughly confused curry, which we won't be repeating.


So that idea needs some refining, to put it mildly!


The other meal that we won't be repeating was the Venison sausages that we bought to have on Monday evening.  For all that they were quite nice and the venison flavour was good, there was also an odd stale flavour going on in there.  Like cheap stale pork sausagemeat that tastes really "piggy".  Do you know what I mean?  I don't think we'll be investing in the amount it cost to buy venison sausages, when their good old Cumberland are ten times nicer!


So, apart from those two, a dish that bit the dust was the Asparagus & Gorgonzola Risotto.  Hubby just wasn't in a happy place that evening and was having serious misgivings about this risotto.  He was highly relieved when I suggested that we have fish & chips instead.

However, the biscuits I baked to accompany the Gooseberry Creams were light, crisp and delicious - and the dessert itself was just beyond gorgeous.  So it wasn't all bad.


Now then, let's turn our attention to this week.  I'm a little bit late in posting this, as with one thing and another I've not had the opportunity.  As a consequence, this week has begun without you - but it does enable me to tell you that a) Tuesday's dinner was amazingly gorgeous and Wednesday's dinner didn't happen and became something else!


So here's how this week is looking :

Tuesday : Smoked Haddock & Sweetcorn Tart, Jersey Royals & salad

Wednesday : Sweet Potato Gnocchi with spring vegetables

(which became Spring Vegetable Chowder)

Thursday : Thai meatball curry with rice

Friday : Chicken ala Jao (or Chicken in liver sauce) with rice & stir fry veggies

c/o Adora's Box

Saturday : Beef stew & horseradish dumplings, but has since been changed to :

Beef Red Dragon & Aduki Bean Pie, veggies (yet to be decided).

Sunday : Father's Day takeaway

Monday : Chicken noodles.

So you can see how things have changed - and not all of them intentional.

Tuesday's Smoked Haddock & Sweetcorn tart turned out to be beautiful.  Largely, I think, because of a piece of top quality smoked haddock from Asda.  Kudos to Asda, because it really isn't often that the words "top quality" and "Asda" are uttered in the same sentence.

Anyway, I won't witter on about this here, as it will just spoil the next blog entry - which will detail the tart in all its loveliness.

Poor old Wednesday.  Oh dear, what a disaster the home-made gnocchi became.  It was a great idea, to make gnocchi with the three sweet potatoes and two huge baking potatoes I had left over, but I'd say that a) there's a reason why you can't find recipes detailing that mixture for gnocchi and b) there's also a reason why it is recommended you make your first two or three goes at gnocchi with just plain old potato.

The sweet potato mixture was just too wet, even though I oven-baked the potatoes to attempt to dry them out a little.  We put enough flour in the mix to have made several batches of scones - and the resultant gnocchi were just sweet potato flavoured plasticine.  Not nice.

Definitely Gnot Gnocchi!

All the dough went in the bin and I made a Spring Vegetable Chowder with the milk I was going to make the sauce with and the celeriac, fennel, carrot and asparagus.  I also added an onion, sweetcorn and potato just to bulk it up a bit.  As a last-minute addition, I remembered we had some ham in the fridge and some strips of that went in.  As it happened, it turned out to be a really lovely combination that we had with bread and butter, so I think it was a disaster averted.

It was a shame, because it was Hubby's brainchild and it will have knocked his confidence right at a moment when he could do without it, as he's up on Thursday cooking a Thai Meatball Curry, with rice.  This is another of his brainchildren and I suspect he won't be following a recipe other than the one that is in his head, so fingers crossed that he is happy with the results!

Friday brings a variation on a recipe (Chicken Adobo), that I've cooked in the past.  I found this recipe on the mouthwatering Adora's Box blogsite.  There are just so many interesting dishes on that site, I suspect it'll keep me busy for a while!  The one I'll be trying on Friday is Chicken ala Jao - or Chicken in liver sauce.

If Hubby is reading this, please don't panic over the "liver" bit.  The sauce comprises a hugely interesting combination of ingredients such as fish sauce, soy sauce, sherry (which we bought yesterday and which has been subject to some serious quality control.  I think I'll just need to check it once or twice again, before the day!), onion, liver pate and curry powder.  I'm imagining a rich, savoury mildly spicy and tangy sauce.  We'll see what it turns out to be!  Can't be worse than the Gnocchi.

Saturday - and the menu here has been subject to change thanks to my lovely Twitter friend @Martink10, who tweeted me the suggestion of Beef Red Dragon & Aduki Bean Pie.  It sounds so interesting - and uses the same brisket that I was contemplating using for the stew, that I did a bit of a swap around.  It involves finely sliced brisket with an assortment of spices, the Aduki beans, then covered over with potato slices and baked.  I think I can see where it is going, and am just hoping that it doesn't turn out to be a glorified cottage pie of sorts.  Once again, time will tell!

Father's Day is on Sunday and Hubby's one desire is not to have to do the washing up, all day.  :)  I'm sure we can accommodate that - and a lovely Indian Takeaway will do nothing but help that become a reality.

The prawn version!

Which leaves us with Chicken Noodles on Monday.  Again it's one of Hubby's recipes that is going to resemble the Chilli Prawn Noodles, except with chicken.  As I love the prawn version, I see absolutely no reason why I shouldn't love the chicken version and I'm quite looking forward to it.

So there we are.  Apart from a Strawberry Shortcake idea that's formulating in my mind for dessert on Saturday and maybe some muffins of some denomination, I suspect it'll be Sunday all too soon and I'll be sat here wondering what the heck to eat this week.  You never know, we might even be able to schedule some meals and actually have those meals - or am I being too hopeful?

Saving the best until last - Gooseberry Cream & Elderflower Jelly Pots

Have I told you about our Gooseberry Bush?  We've only had it for a year and following on from when we bought it and it had around 15 or so small gooseberries, this year it has gone completely mad and there are just bucketloads of gooseberries on it!

We're total novices as regards growing gooseberries, so it's all been a voyage of gooseberry discovery.

This last weekend, I thought that perhaps if we took off the biggest of the gooseberries then it would give the smallest ones a chance to reach their full potential.

So, out went Hubby in the pouring rain on Sunday morning and picked 150g of the sharpest most tongue tinglingly beautiful little green gooseberries in the world, all so that I could make the Gooseberry Cream & Elderflower Jelly Pots recipe that I'd found on BBC Good Food website, where you can find the recipe.

Having picked the little green caterpillar out of the dish and given them a jolly good wash, I set to with the topping & tailing, which is one of the most tedious jobs ever.  Although, with the promise of a delicious dessert as a reward, it's a pain worth undertaking.

The gooseberries cooked really very quickly - far quicker than I was expecting, in fact.  They didn't turn to mush, thankfully, but just be aware that they do cook extremely quickly!  I'm sure it's not just my gooseberries that do it.


I was fascinated by the way the cream behaved, too.  Just the addition of some 25g of sugar, then boiled and simmered for 3 minutes changed the character of the cream immensely.  Isn't cooking just the most fascinating thing ever?  I was amazed at how quickly the cream began to set, once you'd incorporated the gooseberries.


I had my first taste around this stage - and knew we were onto a winner.


The elderflower jelly was also incredibly easy to make, although I did make two mistakes with it.  The first was that I made way too much, believing that it wouldn't make any difference.  In truth, the sweetness of the elderflower cordial was so intense that it quickly became apparent that there was too much of it there.  However, it was so gorgeous that it was forgivable.  The second error was that I poured it when it was really too hot still, which caused the top layer of the cream to begin disintegrating.  This made the jelly a little opaque, which was unfortunate from the look of the thing, but didn't affect its flavour at all.


With the Almond & Elderflower Cookies that I'd made to go with the pots, the whole thing was (and I quote Hubby) a "thing of beauty".

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Three taste sensations in one dinner! Pork with rhubarb BBQ sauce and baked sweet potatoes.

The three taste sensations are :

1.  The rhubarb barbecue sauce;
2.  The baked sweet potatoes;
3.  The chilli cream that went in the sweet potatoes.

(And the pork was pretty special, too!  The salad, well, it was salad.  What can I say?).

Let's deal with the barbecue sauce first.

I put "BBQ Pork" on the menu list for this week, fully expecting to do my usual chilli/soy/honey mix for the pork steaks.  However, in browsing food blogs during the week I spotted a recipe for Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce from IslandVittles.com.  As I am sure you will appreciate (from the title of the blog, if nothing else!) any recipe involving rhubarb and I'm interested.  (I've also bookmarked their Rhubarb Gin for future reference).

It looked, from the recipe, as though it could be a bit of a fiddle to make.  However, it was rhubarb and deserved further investigation.  In fact, I couldn't have been more wrong.  The recipe (available on the IslandVittles.com blogsite) is easy peasy to make, involving chopping rhubarb and onion, then a bit of frying and mixing (sugar and tomato paste), followed by boiling and simmering (with herbs & spices), then a bit more mixing (with Dijon mustard, cider vinegar and honey).  Couldn't have been any easier.  Because I was making a half-size batch, I didn't simmer mine for the full hour as it seemed to be quite thick enough at around a half an hour.

I, too, used a stainless steel tea ball for the bouquet garni ingredients.  Well, all except the bay leaf which was easy enough to extract at the end.  I didn't have a whole dried chilli, so just included some dried chilli flakes into the tea ball.  One other difference was that as I can't abide cloves, I used a star anise which also went into the tea ball.  I reckon that tea ball was a genius idea for using whole spices which you ultimately want to extract - and I may well use it again in curries.

The end result was a Barbecue Sauce of some considerable character.  Tasted on its own, it definitely made your taste buds sit up and take notice, but when smoothed onto pork steaks, it moved from "great" to "superb".

I heartily commend it to you, especially as we are in the height of Barbecue season.  We must be, it's raining!

So, the second taste sensation was the baked sweet potatoes.  Why have we never considered baking a sweet potato before now?  We kept asking ourselves this last night, as we were tucking into that gorgeous sweet orange flesh that went so well with the Barbecue pork.

After all, they are easy enough to prepare for baking - a simple wash under the tap and a good old scrub with a potato brush and they're ready to be rubbed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and into the oven they go.  No different to a normal baked potato.

I was anticipating them taking around an hour, but in fact (as they were fairly small ones) they only took three-quarters of an hour to bake.  They looked a bit deflated and collapsed after baking, plus there was a worrying amount of baked-on sticky juice underneath them that made them look as though they'd been welded to the silver foil.  However, they came free from their moorings without any difficulty and held their shape to be transferred to the plate.  I had visions of them collapsing half-way.

Which brings about the next flavour sensation, which was the chilli cream which was used as a topping.  Boy, but did it go well with the sweetness of the potato flesh!  Goodness, but my mouth is watering with the memory.

It's a simple enough recipe, simply take a pot of soured cream and add the grated zest from a lime, a chopped red chilli (I abandoned the seeds) and some chopped coriander.  Add a little salt and pepper and mix.  Hey presto - chilli cream for use in baked sweet potatoes.

With a side salad of mixed leaves, beetroot, cherry tomatoes, radish, olives and red pepper, we ate like kings last night - and I can't believe how good for us it all was.  The pork was trimmed, so was virtually fat free.  Hence, the only fat was in the chilli cream - which was a teaspoonful or so and the small amount of olive oil that went into the Barbecue sauce.  I suppose there was sugar in the Barbecue sauce and natural sugars in the sweet potato, but other than that, it had to have been good for us. If it wasn't, please don't burst my bubble.  *chuckle*

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The Recipe Queen's Tave Me Presh (a.k.a. Baked Mince with Leeks)

This may, quite conceivably, be the first Albanian recipe I've ever tried - and if it is representative of an Albanian's cuisine, count me in!

I found the original recipe on The Recipe Queen's blog, along with the Paprika Chicken from last week.  In fact, this is representative of the worth of having food blogs around in the first place, as had I have found the recipe without a photograph or explanatory piece of writing, I'd have probably passed it by.  As it was, the photograph caught my eye to begin with and upon reading the explanation, it intrigued me and got my saliva glands working.  Always a good sign!

I had a couple of reservations as regards the recipe.  Firstly, I had taken note of the "brothy" nature of the gravy/sauce and as I'm sure you all know by now, Hubby isn't all that keen on "brothy" recipes.  The second worry was that it might be too gentle a flavour.  The ingredients are all fairly flavoursome, but there was nothing there that could provide a "punch", so I was concerned that Hubby's jaded tastebuds (after a lifetime of smoking - but he's just celebrated his 2nd year of being smoke-free! Yay!) might not register such delicate flavouring.  All of which might have you thinking "that Hubby is a picky wotsit", but everyone has their likes and dislikes and it's pointless my putting together a recipe that I'm absolutely sure he won't like.  So, adaptations need to be made.

In fact, the adaptations I made were simple.  I added 3tbsp of flour to the sauce/gravy, which thickened it up a treat.  Where the flavours were concerned, the simple addition of a shake or two of Worcester Sauce and Tabasco provided the lift to the flavour range that made the difference between "meh!" and "ooooh, yum!".

The original recipe also asked for either carrot or red pepper to be used.  Because Hubby so enjoys his red pepper and I really like carrots, I used them both.  I also had some leftover asparagus (from the risotto which got bumped off of the menu list) which I cut into two and added.  I haven't included the asparagus on the ingredients list, because it was simply using up a leftover.  I suspect that the recipe for Tave Me Presh is probably another one like Cottage Pie, in that there are many different versions and you could pretty much include any vegetable you really liked.  I apologise to all the Albanians out there, if my version has strayed from the traditional - but we liked it a LOT.

In fact, I liked it so much that I had the last portion for lunch today - and I can confirm that it was just as buttery and delicious as it had been yesterday.

I give the recipe, as I made it, below.  My method differs a bit from The Recipe Queen's, as I don't have a pan which will transfer easily to the oven.  Hence all the cooking and decanting!  If you aren't so bothered at having a thick sauce, then either refer to The Recipe Queen's recipe on her blog, or just leave out the flour!

UPDATE : It is now May 2014 and I have cooked this several times since that first go.  I absolutely love this dish and every time it comes out as soothing and satisfying as the first time.  Whether you include asparagus or mushrooms, so long as you include the leeks, red pepper and carrots, you just can't go wrong.

TAVE ME PRESH (a.k.a. Baked Mince with Leeks)  Serves 4

Ingredients :

75ml olive oil
4 leeks, cut into 2.5cm logs, then cut into half
1 onion, roughly chopped
450g lamb mince
3 tbsp flour
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 red pepper, de-seeded and cut into squares
1 carrot, peeled and chopped diagonally
500ml vegetable or lamb stock
a shake or two of Worcestershire Sauce
a shake or two of Tabasco. 

Method : 

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 190deg C (fan).

2.  Heat half the oil in a frying pan and fry the leeks over a low heat until soft, but not browned.  Decant into a casserole dish.

3.  Heat the remaining oil in the pan and cook the onion and red pepper until the onion is transparent, then decant that into the casserole dish. 

4.  Place the mince and carrots into the frying pan and fry on a high heat until the mince is browned and beginning to caramelise.  Tip the pan and drain off the larger part of the oil, leaving some behind.

5.  With a slotted spoon, decant the mince and carrots into the casserole dish.

6.  Add the flour and tomato puree to the pan, soaking up the remainder of the lamb fat.  Cook for 2 mins or so, or until you see the flour start to turn golden.

7.  Add the stock, little by little, stirring or whisking as you go until you have a lump-free sauce.  Bring to the boil, season to taste and add the Worcestershire Sauce and the Tabasco.

8.  Decant into the casserole dish and give everything a good stir.  If you are adding mushrooms, now is the time to mix them, quartered, into the casserole.  Cover, then place into the oven and bake for 1 hour.  If you are using asparagus, cut them into one inch pieces and stir them in with 30 minutes to go.

Serve with lovely buttery mashed potato.  Comfort food at its absolute best! 

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