Make the most of your gifts!

March 23rd - Home alone and the cooking for the past few days has been scrambled egg x1, bagel and cream cheese x1, soup x1....but in the fridge sits a gift.....from the 'Purveyor of High Quality Meats'......aka my brother-in-law of D. Comrie & Sons.........some black pudding!  I never used to like black pudding but was given some Stornoway black pudding as a Christmas present from my boss at work and I became a convert. In fact I have even been known to buy some black pudding from.....the opposition, although I ended up confessing to the deadly crime!  Has anyone noticed that there are not a lot of recipes out there for black pudding and the only thing in my cookbooks was black pudding in pastry, which sounds great but not when you are trying to lose a few pounds.  I saw a recipe online for Black Pudding Stuffed Mushrooms and thought that might be a nice combo so I gently fried some spring onions, button mushrooms and mushroom stalks before adding a few breadcrumbs and the black pudding.  It looked a bit dry at this point so I added in a couple of teaspoons of cream cheese and some fresh thyme and piled this on top of a large mushroom.  I stuck the lot in the oven.  It started to look a bit burnt on the top so I grated on some nutty gruyere and heres the result......

I'll definitely try this again.  And the moral of this tale...always make the most of your gifts...culinary or otherwise!

Good Things Small Parcels

March 17th - Home alone - again - with the pressure on to stick to my resolution because I've not tried a new recipe for a week (been away).  I am in 'body is my temple mode' (well, since yesterday, having avoided cake, sweets (bar a few smarties!), wine and bagels thus far.....and I even went for a swim) so I was in the mood for something light and healthy.  I had lots of lurking vegetables in the fridge and had bought myself some fish before looking in the recipe books for an idea.  The picture for Fillet of Sole en Papillote with carrot, ginger and leek looked perfect and the list of ingredients was not too long.  I had no leeks or white wine but did not let that put me off.  I quickly 'sweated' the carrot (julienne-ish), ginger and broccoli and added some pak choi.....great I thought, but then I had to turn to page 149 for the teriyaki marinade.  Ingredient disaster.... so I took huge artistic liberties with the recipe and combined soy sauce, sesame oil, a bit of honey, red chilli and some hoi sin sauce instead.  I couldn't wait till the veg cooled so put everything in the parcel and stuck it in the oven.  It was ready in 12 minutes.

My mum is a big fan of cooking in parcels so this one's for you mum!

A hot bath.....simply weird!

March 10th -  I'd been trawling my recipes for dip recipes to use at school when I came across this one. I'd also fancied something light but flavoursome so decided that a Winter Crunch Salad with a mind-blowing sauce might be worth a go. Jamie Oliver writes that it's proper name is bagna cauda which means 'hot bath' in Italian. To make the sauce you have to put six garlic cloves and 300ml of milk in a pan with 10 anchovy fillets then bring to the boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes.  Then you whizz it all up with a hand blender and blend in 180ml of extra virgin olive oil and 2-3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar.  Apparently if you want this thick like mayonnaise you keep blending but Jamie likes it like thin soup.....I never got passed the soup stage and couldn't see that any amount of blending would turn it into anything that remotely resembled mayonnaise!

Think I'll stick to hot baths with Lush bubble baths myself....

Mmmm muffins

March 8th - You have probably already gathered I like a bit of cake from time to time....and the odd pudding.  So muffins fit the bill perfectly for a quick and easy pudding.  I like muffin recipes.  Not too fussy, using cup measures, weighing all the dry ingredients together and then combining with all the 'wet' ingredients with minimal mixing.  And the kids really enjoyed them. My mum brought me the books back from New Zealand, where apparently muffins are really popular, and I have used the books a lot over the years.  Or rather I have used two recipes out of the books over the years, namely chocolate chip and banana muffins and chocolate muffins with chocolate chips (I think there is a recurring theme here) - so much so that the pages are covered with a combination of dried on ingredients, especially chocolate.  But today I tried a new recipe - Rich Raspberry Muffins.  The 'dry' ingredients were listed - 2 cups of self-raising flour, 1/2 a cup of sugar, 1tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of grounds cloves; the 'wet' ingredients were 100g of butter, 1 egg, 1 cup of milk, 1 tsp of instant coffee, the rind of a lemon and 1/2 a cup of raspberry jam.  I thought I could just fling them together in my usual way so only discovered at the end that I should have spooned the jam into the middle of the raw muffins but I had already mixed it in with the egg and butter mixture.  Undeterred, I flung in a few fresh raspberries and here's the result.....

By the time I'd enjoyed my glass of wine and temporary transportation to the Mediterranean thanks to the tuna with salsa I was not too fussy about the result....

A taste of summer

March 8th - My other half returned from the mainland bearing gifts.......fresh tuna steaks.  But what to do with them?  First port of call - a Rick Stein cookbook......couldn't believe that he didn't have any recipes for tuna.....in fact tuna recipes were very thin on the ground but don't worry I won't use that as an excuse to but any more cookbooks!  Jamie Oliver offered a recipe for Tomato Coriander Salsa with Grilled Tuna, which looked fairly straightforward and gave me an excuse to use my griddle pan.  The salsa combined 6 spring onions with 1-2 fresh chillies (I did not wimp out on this occasion), a bunch of fresh coriander, a bunch of fresh mint, 1kg of ripe tomatoes, salt and pepper, and the juice of 1 lime and half a lemon.  The result truly was a taste of summer and I was immediately transported to some Mediterranean poolside sitting enjoying a lovely fish dish with a glass of something alcoholic.

Pot Noodle

March 5th - Home alone, late home and starving. Here is a great invention from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - DIY 'Pot' Noodles. Some thin straight to wok noodles went in first followed by some of the finely shredded vegetables that I had in the fridge - spring onions, mange tout, spinach, bean sprouts, mushrooms (though the book recipe has thinly sliced carrot, sugar snap peas, sling greens or pak choi).  Then you mix in the flavourings - 1 teaspoon of vegetable stock powder, a pinch of soft brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger, 1/2 grated garlic clove and 1/4 finely chopped fresh chilli.  Then all you do is cover the lot in boiling water and leave for 8-10 minutes before adding 2 teaspoons of soy sauce and the juice of half a lime.  I didn't quite get the seasoning right because I'm a bit slap dash and chuck things in so I ended up adding extra soy sauce, a tad of sesame oil for a bit of a nutty flavour and some shredded leftover chicken.

OK - I know that I usually do no more than toast a bagel or scramble some eggs when I'm home alone but I will definitely try some variations on this theme.  Students take note! Though I have to confess that I'd already scoffed all the bagels the night before.

Perfectly Prompt Pink Pudding

February 25th - I'm sure you know those days ..... when you just need pudding!  The biscuit tin was empty, the Nutella jar empty and I only had yogurt and some blueberries in the fridge.  That to me is a bit more of a breakfast than a pudding so I decided to have a browse.  Jamie Oliver came up trumps with Berry Ice Cream. This was so easy - fling some frozen berries (1 pack),  3-4 tablespoons of runny honey and a 500g tub of natural yogurt into the processor and whizz. Add fresh blueberries to serve.  I didn't bother too much about quantities, it tasted good.....and it really was that pink!

Cold to hot

February 22nd - I hate wasting food...and I had a pack of pineapples sitting in the fridge....but could not face them cold when it was snowing outside.  I had a vague idea that I had seen a recipe for grilled pineapple somewhere - that's the thing about a recipe resolution; you do reacquaint yourself with your recipe books again! And there is was - Pineapple with muscovado sugar and allspice in River Cottage Light & Easy.  Well it wasn't grilled or even hot, I only have demerara, and I didn't really fancy allspice so I sprinkled my pineapple pieces with sugar and a little cinnamon, grilled and then topped with full fat natural yogurt and shavings of dark chocolate. Lush - sorry Hugh, I really think you've missed a trick!

Here I go again......!

February 21st - Still on holiday with time to browse book shops.  I find myself drawn to cookbooks like a chocaholic to a jar of Nutella.  Perhaps it's because I'm always hungry when I go shopping - I certainly don't last long before I need a coffee...preferably with cake!  But my eye was drawn to Deliciously Ella by Ella Woodward.  I liked the kitchen shelves in the picture....the recipes looked healthy and indeed delicious. But I restrained myself.....and went for a coffee and cake.

Here's Ella's recipe for Coconut Thai Curry with Chickpeas - Put 2 tins of coconut milk, 2 tins of tomatoes, some grated ginger, 1-2 teaspoons of chilli flakes into a saucepan and heat until boiling.  Add a chopped butternut squash and 2 chopped medium aubergines to the pan.  Cook for about 30 minutes in the oven (200, 180 fan) and then add a handful of finely chopped coriander, a tin of drained chickpeas and 3 teaspoons of brown miso paste. I don't know how Ella is so slim...I halved this recipe and it was still enough to feed a family of 6!

You might well be asking why I have cooked this recipe when I resisted the temptation to buy the book in the bookshop.  The same book was half price in Tesco....and I can never resist a bargain!

D.I.Y

Half term, more time to cook, on the mainland......... where the shops are full of ingredients that are either hard-to-get or non-existant at home!  I quite fancied something spicy but simple and I love Thai curries.  I have used a really nice recipe for yellow fish curry in a Bill Granger cookbook and making the curry paste was pretty easy (but for the hard-to-get and non-existants!) because apart from a little roasting of spices everything just got flung into the food processor and bobs your uncle (and he is!).
So pulled up a Thai red curry paste recipe on my phone - 1-2 red chillies, 4 gloves of garlic, thumb sized piece of ginger, 2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup, 1 teaspoon of ground cumin, 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander, 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1-2 tablespoons of chilli powder, 3 tablespoons of coconut milk and 2 tablespoons of lime juice.  Even here I could not get the shrimp paste and I reduced the amount of tomato sauce and used a red pepper instead...everything was zapped in the processor then fried off a little before adding the chicken and coconut milk. The result was lovely, although I think I wimped out a bit on the chilli powder.
So go on, if I can do it so can you, do it yourself.