Although these look magnificent, they were a little underwhelming. Probably more down to mood than anything else, it had been a bad day. So I wouldn’t really say I’ve found a Donna Hay recipe I don’t like – I’d say I should have had comfort food on this particular evening.
Preparing:
Quarter some tomatoes (or use good cherry ones and halve them – see my nore below)
Shred some basil leaves
Shave some parmesan cheese
Break up some goats cheese
Get some shop bought shortcrust pastry to room temp
Trying to go back to older cook books is always hard. It’s easy to use the newest ones, or just the most recent Good Food mag but I try to throw in a couple at least. This is from a collection of ‘Simple..’ books I have, in this instance – Aldo Zilli.
Preparing:
Finely chop an onion
Slice up some sun dried tomatoes
Prepare some vegetable stock
Grate some parmesan
Chop up some goats cheese, saving a ’round’ per person
Get a bay leaf, rocket, risotto rice, butter, white wine (a glass), oil & seasoning ready
Making:
Melt a little butter and oil in a pan and add the onion and bay leaf, cooking until the onion is soft.
Add the rice and stir throughly making sure you coat all the grains well.
Add the wine and cook until it’s evaporated. Add a ladle of stock and let the rice absorb it. Repeat this until you have almost used all your stock and the rice is almost cooked.
Heat the grill and grill the goats cheese rounds for a couple of minutes.
Stir in the chopped goats cheese along with the tomatoes and rocket. Cook for another few minutes, adding the remaining stock if required.
Add a little butter and the parmesan and season to taste.
As much as it was Friday and I felt like I couldn’t be bothered to make this, I got on with it. After all, it’s been a bad week food-wise.
Preparing:
Get some shop bought shortcrust to room temperature
Preheat the oven to 180ºc (fan)
Thinly slice some leeks
Roughly chop some hazelnuts
Pick some thyme leaves
Slice half a log of goats cheese and chop the other half
Get flour, eggs, butter, nutmeg, oil & seasoning ready
Making:
Flour your kitchen top then roll out the pastry into a rectangle. Line a baking tray with parchment and lay out the pastry. Score around the edges about one cm in. Prick the base then cover with more parchment and top with baking beans. Bake for 15 minutes with the parchment and beans then five minutes more without.
Heat a little oil and some butter in a pan and add the leeks and most of the thyme leaves. Cook until softened. Transfer to a bowl and let cool slightly.
Add a grating of nutmeg, some seasoning, about 3 eggs and the chopped goats cheese. Gently pour this onto the cooked pastry then add the sliced cheese, the hazelnuts and the remaining thyme leaves.
Cook for about 20-25 minutes. This is nicer cooled a little.
On Saturday we decided to have our dinner at Cactus Jacks in Doncaster. This has been in Donny for years, and it’s years since I have been for some unknown reason. The starters were great, my soft chilli tacos were delicious and I won’t leave it so long next time!
We made a roast chicken Sunday lunch. It was a good’un.
As I mentioned before, I messed up with the camera, the result was that some of my photographs ended up completely blurred with no way of saving them. These meatballs are the last photo I got before I realised my mistake which came from changing the settings back incorrectly after taking some photos of Walter.
I’ve added some details of a few of the meals we had that were worth a mention. Here’s the Sesame Turkey Meatballs from the Smitten Kitchen cook book my sister bought me for Christmas.
Preparing:
Whizz up some fresh breadcrumbs
Finely chop some garlic cloves
Toast some sesame seeds
Preheat the oven to 180ºc (fan)
Get minced turkey, an egg, ground cumin, ground coriander, chilli flakes, cayenne pepper, oil & seasoning ready
Making:
Mix all of the ingredients together and form into balls. Chill for about 20 minutes.
Heat some oil in a pan and brown the meatballs.
Transfer to a baking tray and cook for 15 to 20 minutes in the oven.
I served ours with baked, smashed sweet potatoes and a dollop of sour cream and cranberry sauce.
We had a visit from the in-laws on Saturday so enjoyed an afternoon with three crazy dogs.
On the 20th I made a Lemon and goats cheese pasta which I have made before and can be found here. I’ve used the original photo to tempt you.
On the 21st I made Bacon & Sausage Baked Mushrooms:
Like breakfast in a mushroom minus the eggs. An egg would have gone nice on top of this to be honest but I didn’t have a spare.
Get the largest mushrooms you can.
Preparing:
Take the stalks off some large mushrooms (I did 4)
Finely chop the stalks
Remove the casings from some sausages, pulling into small pieces (I had 6).
Chop a large tomato
Grate some cheddar
Pick some thyme leaves
Preheat the oven to 180ºc (fan)
Get oil, butter, bacon lardons and seasoning ready
Making:
Grease a baking tray and place the mushrooms top side down. Add a little butter to each mushroom and sprinkle with the thyme leaves and the chopped stalks. Season.
Divide the sausage meat between the mushrooms then add the bacon lardons and the mushrooms. Season again then cook for about 15 minutes. Take out and add the cheese, cooking for another 5 minutes.
The original recipe can be found on the Delicious Magazine website.
This West Indian Chicken with Sauce Chien was very good on the 22nd April:
So chicken with dog sauce then? It appears to come from the idiom ‘avoir du chien’ which in French is the equivalent of saying someone is a fox – as in – Derek’s GF is a fox (no – I would NEVER use that term either!).
I was very organised and remembered to marinate it last night.
Pop the ginger, shallots, garlic, zest and juice of the limes, parsley, half of the chilli and spring onions in a processor. Add the rice wine vinegar and a pinch of sugar and blend well. Add a little boiling water and some seasoning, give it another whizz up.
Rub the spices and the remaining chilli over the chicken then cover with half of the sauce.
When they have had their marinating time, heat the oven to 180ºc (fan) then cook the chicken for about an hour or until cooked through.
On Thursday night we had hot dogs. Mustard, ketchup, cheese, leftover dog sauce and variations thereof, along with lovely sweet sticky onions made using the largest onion I have EVER seen.
We had this Thai Style Mince on the 24th which is another firm favourite that has been sidelined since I started the blog. Again, my original photo.
I did a large pie version of some Trinidadian Aloo Pies (or spicy meat and tatty pie) from a great book called Dirty Food which was very tasty and fed us for a couple of days.
We had Chicken, Corn & Slaw on the 26th April:
We went on a lovely walk today. The forecast had been for it to be pretty grotty after a lovely week but the weather was gorgeous. I hope this is a sign of the summer. Sunshine makes everything better doesn’t it? I think it caught everyone by surprise as there was no smell of barbecue in the air.
And what could make it better? A dish that screams of summer days. The girl on the chicken stall misheard me and gave me two kilo of chicken wings instead of one. I didn’t bother correcting her as they were only £3.80 and Mr S would polish them off, no problem.
Preparing:
Prep some chicken wings
Preheat the oven to 180ºc (fan)
Finely slice a red onion
Finely slice some white cabbage
Grate a couple of carrots
Zest & juice a lemon
Get corn on the cobs, natural yoghurt, clear honey, soy sauce, peanut butter, sesame seeds, paprika, butter, oil & seasoning ready.
Making:
Pop the wings on a baking tray. Season then drizzle with oil and cook for about 15 minutes,
Mix honey, soy sauce, peanut butter, sesame seeds and a little salt. If it’s a little too thick, add a bit of water.
Put the onion, cabbage and carrot in a bowl and mix in the yoghurt, lemon zest and juice and some seasoning.
Take the chicken out of the oven and pour the peanut butter sauce over. Cook for another 15-20 minutes until cooked though.
Cook the corn in a pan of boiling water until done. I bought a boil in the bag pack that took eight minutes.
Serve the wings with a good serving of the slaw and the corn with a little (or a lot) butter and a sprinkle of paprika.
On Monday night we had the remainder of the pie from Saturday with some beans and the leftover slaw.
The last thing I didn’t get a photo of was Middle Eastern Eggs with Merguez & Pistachios:
Heat the oil in a pan and cook the sausages until almost done. Remove from the pan.
Add a little more oil if required and cook the onion until softened. Stir some harissa through then add the tomatoes and a splash of water. Pop a pinch of sugar in and season well.
Cook until the tomatoes have cooked down into a nice thick sauce and add back the sausages along with a little more water if needed.
Create little wells in the pan and crack in the eggs. Cook until the yolks are set (or however you like your eggs).
Add a dollop of yoghurt and a sprinkle of paprika to serve. We had some lovely crusty bread with ours.
The original BBC Good Food recipe can be found here.
On Wednesday we had a favourite staple of ours – the quesadilla – with serrano ham, cheese, spring onion and jalapeños.
Thursday we stopped off at the shop for burgers as we forgot to get anything out of the freezer and on Friday I just couldn’t be bothered so we had shop bought pie and oven chips.
As I said, normal service will kind of be resumed, ‘tomorrow’.
Like pasta, I love my risottos baked, they just take on another dimension. This Bill Granger recipe was no exception. I mean – leek and goats cheese? A match made in heaven.
Preparing:
Preheat the oven to 190ºc (fan)
Chop an onion
Finely slice a couple of leeks
Bash a couple of garlic cloves
Prepare some vegetable stock
Finely chop some rosemary leaves
Get arborio rice, butter, oil, goats cheese & seasoning ready
Making:
Heat an oven proof dish and add olive oil and butter.
Add the onion, leeks and garlic along with a pinch of salt and cook gently, stirring often, until softened.
Add the rosemary and the rice and stir until the rice is well coated.
Pour in the stock, bring to the boil then add the cheese.
Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes.
On Wednesday we ended up with a two meals for £7.95 of burger & chips for Mr S and scampi & chips for me. Cheap and cheerful.
I said in a previous post that it’s not always easy to get my hands on sunblush tomatoes. To be honest, for the price of a bag of small tomatoes, in this case plum, it really is worth doing these ‘moonblush’ ones (see Nigella Slater).
To make moonblush tomatoes:
Whack the oven on high. Halve some tomatoes. Place close together on a baking tray and sprinkle with sea salt and caster sugar. Pop a few thyme sprigs on there. Stick them in the oven and immediately turn the oven off. Leave overnight then pop in an airtight container.
Luckily I remembered to do this on Tuesday for this delicious and vibrant salad tonight.
Preparing:
Lightly toast some pine nuts
Cook some green beans, drain & refresh
Slice a small baguette on an angle
Cut some firm goats cheese into pieces
Get dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, olive oil, green pesto, rocket, moonblush tomatoes & seasoning ready
Making:
Mix together dijon mustard and white wine vinegar, slowly add oil whisking continuously. Add a couple of tablespoons of green pesto and season well.
Lightly toast the croûtes on each side then top with the goats cheese and toast again.
Arrange the rocket on a plate and drizzle with the dressing. Add the green beans, tomatoes and pine nuts and drizzle again.
Add the croûtes to the plate and drizzle with a little more of the dressing.
I never knew until recently the green beans are also known as bobby beans, there you go.
The original Delicious Magazine recipe can be found here.
I didn’t have any input on this meal either, not great when you’re trying to blog about all the cooking you do, although it is very nice.
Cook some pasta.
Heat some oil in a pan and fry chopped red and yellow pepper until softened. Add some sun-dried tomato purée and stir well. Add a little pasta water and stir to create a little sauce.
Drain the pasta and add the peppers and sauce.
Scatter roughly chopped semi-dried tomatoes and slices of goats cheese, season and serve with a little parsley.
Using PASTA, RED & YELLOW PEPPER, SUN-DRIED TOMATO PASTE, SEMI-DRIED TOMATOES, GOATS CHEESE and PARSLEY…
This doesn’t look like much but it was very nice although I am beginning to worry that Mr S is going to disappear into nothingness with all of his walking and then gym visits then eating meals like this.
Drizzle thinly sliced (lengthways) courgettes in oil.
Cook in a frying (or griddle) pan until tender.
Toasts some ciabattas and rub with the cut side of a garlic clove.
Spread soft goats cheese on the ciabatta then top with the courgettes and drizzle with a dressing of lemon, olive oil and seasoning.
I should 
This was dinner... 