MPM: 4th March 2019

In a vain attempt to recapture my blogging mojo I thought that I would do a meal planning post.  Meal planning has still continued chez nous over the last few months - some weeks have been more successful than others.  Some weeks I have been half woman, half Giant Hula Hoop.  What kind of monster invented the Giant Hula Hoop, by the way?  I'm obsessed with the bloody things and I've managed to make D obsessed with them as well.

Anyway.  Meal planning.  We have no plans this week - we're off on holiday at the end of March and are making vague attempts to be slightly frugal until then - so hopefully nothing should throw us off track.  Apart from Giant Hula Hoops.

Monday: soup.  A hangover from our 5:2 days, we've got into the habit of having a pot of soup on a Monday night.  It's quick, easy and a light start to the week.  I should really make my own but the whole point of soup night is the lack of cooking. 

Tuesday: Pancake Day!  We like our pancakes piled up in a stack, like the American style ones, and then served with crispy bacon, chilli flakes and lots of maple syrup.  Although lemon juice and sugar is always good too...

Wednesday: a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's "Simple" - fettucine with spiced cherry tomato sauce.

Thursday: mushroom risotto.  Keeps getting bumped, but I'm determined that it will get made this week.  If we've got any bacon leftover from Tuesday, I might bung some in for a bit of extra excitement.

Friday: smoked haddock rarebit with mashed potato.  I saw a contestant make this in the first round of Masterchef the other week and was immediately determined that I was going to do it too. 

Saturday: homemade pizza.  We haven't done this for ages, so it's about time.  D is planning to go entirely off piste, muttering about Merguez sausages, hummus, feta and pomegranate.  So I will keep mine super simple.  Maybe just a scant scattering of capers and chopped anchovies.

Sunday:  something with roast lamb.  Elaborateness levels to be determined by levels of energy and enthusiasm come Sunday.

Have a happy week all!

MPM: 13th April 2015

After being a little OTT with our spend for Easter Sunday, D and I decided to reign it in for a couple of weeks.  Which has meant taking a critical look at the contents of the freezer and the cupboards and using those as the basis for meal planning.  We've actually ended up with some really yummy dishes - (I would definitely rock the Masterchef invention test) and, across two weeks, our total food shopping bill has probably come in at around £50 in total.

This week, I've got book group on Tuesday, so D will be freezer diving (there's a portion of coq a la biere in there that I reckon has his name all over it) and on Wednesday we're heading out for another one of our Cheap Nights Out, as we continue to explore the best and lowest priced that Leeds has to offer.  Elsewhere we will mostly be eating:

Sausages, mash and onion gravy
Burmese chicken soup
Chilli con carne with rice and herbed yoghurt
Spaghetti with 'Nduja

More meal planning fun over at Mrs M's.

Fusion or Confusion?

I’m just going to come out and say it. I love Masterchef.

I mean, I’m not known for my discerning taste in television – just ask poor D who has just spent the whole weekend trying to get away from an Australia’s Next Top Model marathon. And when it comes to food programmes I’ll watch pretty much anything and will often have the Good Food channel on just as background noise (absorbing recipes and techniques by osmosis perhaps).

But Masterchef – that is must see TV. Seriously. I draw the line at the Junior version – precocious children scare me. But standard, Professional and Celebrity – fantastic! It’s comedy gold! If they have such a thing as the gurning world championships, John Torode and Greg Wallace should enter, they’d be absolutely sure to win. The expressions that those two have come up with while wandering between the contestants – who would have thought that the human face was capable of such contortions? And, almost as amusing, some of the food combinations that the entrants come up with, particularly in the early stage invention test. I think my favourite from this current series was Christine Hamilton’s Thai mussels with…blue cheese.

Anyway, during the last series of Masterchef Proper (i.e. the contestants are not “famous” or professional chefs) John Torode coined the phrase that I’ve used as my title to express his uncertainty at a particularly odd amalgamation; someone attempting to marry, for example, sweet and sour sauce with bangers and mash. Now, whenever we see an unlikely combination of ingredients in a recipe or on a menu, we chorus (in a cod Australian accent, of course) “Is it fusion? Or confusion?” Yes, I know…but it makes us laugh.

I was a little bit surprised then, to see in the latest issue of Good Food magazine John Torode has supplied a recipe for a spicy butternut squash…curry, for want of a better word, to be served with spaghetti. He called it fusion – so you can guess what is coming. I cooked it for supper one night last week, with the intention of writing a very amusing blog piece about how it was confused rather than, um, fused. Trouble is, it actually tasted pretty nice - I thought the pasta worked well with the heat of the sauce. So, no amusing confusion jokes for me. It wasn't perfect by any means - both of us found the addition of lime pickle made it a little sour, so that needs to be balanced out, and I’ve got a few ideas that will pimp it up a little bit – I’m convinced that the addition of some fat prawns would work well with the squash – and then I’m going to post it here so you too can bellow quotes by rubber featured Australian chefs at your food. Or not.