MPM: 12th August 2019

For the first time in a long time, last week we cooked, and ate, all seven meals as planned. It felt good to be in control to be honest.  All to often, if we deviate, it is because we have "accidentally" gone to the pub after work and ended up ordering a takeaway or eating toast in lieu of an actual meal OR it is because we have been infected with a generous dose of ennui and ended up not eating a proper meal at all but grazing.  To make a plan, stick to a plan and actually enjoy eating all meals on said plan was really nice.

Oh, and Beth - chickpea mash?  The recipe is here.  A pleasant twist on the classic bangers and mash although I found that the chickpeas did need a judicious whack of seasoning and lemon juice to perk them up and the inclusion of a scattering of caramelised onion was a welcome note.

Onto this week, and the plan is to be in every night again and eat as follows:

Monday: carrot, tomato and feta soup (the other half of the batch we started last week.)

Tuesday: a freezer dive - chilli con carne with rice and a decent dollop of cooling sour cream.

Wednesday: pasta with nduja pesto and roasted cherry tomatoes.  Now, this pesto is part of the Sacla range which tend to be pretty good for a weekday meal.  But I'm not clear on how nduja pesto is different from just plain old nduja.  I guess I am soon to find out!

Thursday: a red wine and mushroom risotto, from The Silver Spoon.

Friday: and diving once more into the recipe book library, tonight we will be cooking Gung Bao chicken from Fuschia Dunlop's fantastic "Every Grain of Rice".  If you are a fan of Chinese food then I would highly recommend this tome.

Saturday: lamb seekh kebabs - sides tbc.

Sunday: Pollock (or whatever white fish looks good at the fishmongers) with chickpeas and chorizo, courtesy of Mr Tom Kerridge.

Have a good week one and all!

MPM: 20th August 2018

I meant to do this first thing this morning and then got distracted by, ugh, work.  And I meant to introduce the post by spending a good five minutes moaning about how TIRED I am but, actually, I might save that for tomorrow and just concentrate on meal planning today. 

This week, we have my parents coming for dinner on Saturday, which if D has his way will mean a multi-course, thousand point extravaganza.  I am wondering if everyone would settle for a couple of takeaway pizzas and a few hands of cards.  Other than that, the week is a quiet one which is fine by me.

Monday: Spiced tomato and lentil soup

Tuesday:  Thai spiced turkey patties with rice noodle salad

Wednesday: Crispy lemon sole with brown shrimp butter and cucumber salad

Thursday:  Pork with mushrooms in creamy tarragon sauce, mash

Friday:  Chilli con carne

Sunday:  Trout with horseradish

Recipe corner: cumin spiced rice salad with lime and herbs

I will never tire of my coronation rice salad but this is a great alternative that requires very few ingredients and certainly things that I always tend to have knocking around. It’s possible that you might not have any fresh limes in your fruit bowl (as gin and tonic aficionados this is not a problem we experience) - lemon would probably work too.

Don’t skimp on the fat in the initial cooking stage - this will lightly coat the grains in lieu of any other dressing. I sprinkled some pickled red chillies over the portion that I took for lunch (see below. Also note my pretty, pink lunchbox. Could I be more of a cliche girlie girl?) These were an excellent addition.

Ingredients

30g butter
Tbsp vegetable oil
Red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
150g basmati rice
300ml vegetable stock

Zest and juice of 1 lime
Large handful of soft green herbs (mint, parsley, coriander...)

Serves 2-4 as a side dish

Melt the butter and oil together over a medium to low heat. Once melted, add the onion with a decent pinch of salt, cover, and turn the heat right down. Cook until very soft, about 5-7 minutes.

Add the garlic and dried spices and cook for a further 2-3 minutes until fragrant.

Stir through the rice so well coated in fat and spice, then pour over the stock. Bring the pan to a gentle simmer then cover again, put the heat on its lowest setting and cook for 5 minutes. Then, turn the heat off altogether and leave covered for a further 5 mins, at which point the rice should be cooked through.

While the rice cooks, chop together the herbs.

To finish the salad, stir through the herbs, lime zest and juice. Serve at room temperature.

Recent eats - the at home edition.

The days fly by so quickly that, on the few occasions when I have sat down to write this post, I have ended up spending a good five minutes staring at a blank screen while attempting to remember what on Earth I have actually cooked recently. I mean, I do cook - most days. And it usually tastes pretty good. But I have an appalling memory, especially when it comes to blogging. I’ve resorted to going back through my photos as a reminder which means that this post ends up being a summary of the dishes that I have photographed recently rather than particular favourites, but there. I suppose that if I was moved to photograph it, I probably liked it.

Actually, I’m going to start by talking about something fantastically delicious for which I do not have a picture. I mean, I do have a picture but it is so spectacularly bad, even for me, that I’m not prepared to use it. And that is D’s Merguez burgers. When he made his last batch of Merguez sausages he reserved some of the meat to make into patties. We fried these and then loaded them into a brioche bun with houmous, slices of roasted red pepper and a minted yoghurt and feta whip. What a combo. What a burger. Why am I writing this post while hungry?

For something a bit more refined, I commend to your attention Nathan Outlaw’s pan fried fish with spring vegetable nage. Such a versatile dish. Such an understated pleasure to eat. I’m having a bit of a moment with hake recently, so that is what we chose to serve here and just behold that wonderful, salty, crispy skin - a perfect foil to the silken creaminess of the nage underneath.

And another lovely seafood dish: the always wonderful Diana Henry’s crab, tomato and saffron tart. I used the recipe in her latest book, but this online version looks much the same. Now I, personally, often find crab a bit cloying, but the layer of almost jammy tomatoes cuts through that richness and provides a welcome contrast. Unfortunately, my pastry skills remain poor and I struggled with the shortness of the dough here; I ended up smushing it into the tin like Play-Doh rather than rolling it out. Still good though, and it did us two suppers and one packed lunch accompanied by a variety of salady bits and pieces.

Finally, not so much a dish but another very welcome addition to the fridge: I’ve been strewing these pickled chillies over a lot of things recently and they’re a lovely way to add tiny pops of both acidity and chilli heat to all sorts of dishes. Along with my continuing sriracha obsession, and the fact that I manage to find a way to incorporate D’s green chilli and coriander salsa into practically everything I eat, I’m becoming quite the chilli fiend!

Slow cooker recipe corner: (Very) chilli con carne

 

 

 

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D has worked long and hard to convince me of the merits of the chilli.  Me, I've never been sold.  If I'm going to eat a plate of tomatoey mince meat then spag bol will win every single time.  And, yes, I am quite aware that a proper ragu from the Bologna region of Italy is a million miles away from tomatoey mince meat, but I have never claimed to cook anything authentically.

 

Anyway, chilli.  I think he may finally have shown me the point.  The dish he produced the other night, an amalgam between Heston's recipe, Felicity Cloake's and "some other recipe that I saw on a blog", was rich and complex and quite a thing of beauty.  It eschews the usual tomatoes for a whole host of other unusual sounding ingredients which adds up to something that is significantly more than the sum of its parts.

 

You will, of course, notice that it uses a LOT of chilli.  And not just that but a lot of different types of chilli. This necessitated a rather expensive trip to Waitrose.  The payback was the incredible depth and complexity of flavour - each brought a different note with it.  But it was not the cheapest meal that we have ever cooked.  And of course I should say something about the heat level.  I have quite a timid palate when it comes to heat and found this to be on the edge of what I can comfortably manage.  A dollop of crème fraiche (you could also use yoghurt or sour cream) tempered the heat beautifully - D, who is far hardier of taste bud, judged it to be spot on just as it was. You could de-seed the dried chillies to reduce the heat.

Slow cooking is perfect for this sort of dish - it allows the spices time to develop and makes the meat meltingly tender.  But, of course, it could be cooked on the hob if you preferred.

 

Ingredients

 

200g beef braising steak, cubed

400g beef mince

 

2 onions, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, crushed

250ml freshly brewed coffee

2 x Knorr beef stock pots (or other beef stock concentrate)

25ml bourbon

125ml red wine

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp muscovado sugar

20g dark chocolate (we used a dark chocolate with chilli that we happened to have in)

2 large carrots, grated

Handful of mushrooms, finely chopped

 

2 dried chipotle chillies, finely chopped

2 dried habanero chillies, finely chopped

2 dried ancho chillies, finely chopped

2 dried cascabel chillies, finely chopped

2 fresh green jalapeno chillies, de-seeded and finely chopped

2 fresh red chillies, de-seeded and finely chopped

1 jar of honeydew piquante peppers, drained and chopped

 

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp dried oregano

1 tbsp hot chilli powder

2 star anise

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

 

200g kidney beans

200g black eyed beans

 

Serves 6, 9 pro points per portion

 

Dry fry the mince until well browned and transfer to the slow cooker.  Brown the steak in the mince juices and likewise add to the slow cooker.  De-glaze the pan with the red wine and pour over the meat.

 

Add all the other ingredients, stir, and season well.

 

Cook on low for 6 hours.  Serve with rice, or nachos, or tortillas and a large glass of water :-)