Some things are sooooo difficult to get hold of!

If there’s one thing this years lent challenge has taught me it’s that some things are really difficult to buy when you can’t use supermarkets. Prime example? Teabags. There are a couple of local delicatessens that sell the nice teapigs teabags – but I would see them as being more of a treat than something that can be drunk on a regular basis (in case you were wondering, I drink a lot of tea).  I’ve resorted to buying a batch from the internet where there are a number of different websites selling Clipper tea and such.  You can even buy it on Amazon!

The other particularly tricky item is cooking oil. Again, there are numerous specialists around selling premium extra virgin olive oil, even extra virgin organic rapeseed oil (where did that come from?!), but if you’re looking for a good all round vegetable oil or olive oil, its really difficult to come by. I am though reliably informed there is a good shop in Cheltenham that can provide, but at this point in time I don’t drive and I’m not going to get the train over to Cheltenham for a bottle of oil!

Perhaps the most annoying is pasta. Unless you have a good Italian deli or similar neat by, reasonably priced, good quality dried pasta is really difficult to come by.  I recently went to Cornwall for the weekend and came across a Rick Stein deli.  Brilliant!...I thought. Rick will provide. But alas…he didn’t. Pasta was available…but at £5.20 for 500g…? No thanks.  I decided the best thing to do was to get hold of some ‘tipo’ 00 flour and make my own. And I must say…it’s really good. It takes more time to make, and it more effort – but the end product is kind of worth it. A pasta machine isn’t essential but makes things so much easier. In fact, it’s inspired me to make my own ravioli next week. But I would say it’s been really rather annoying as there are times, particularly at the end of a working day, when quick and easy is required…and when it comes to pasta…FAIL!

A vegetarian dish to convert the carnivore

I’m finding that having a vegetable box means I’m eating a lot for vegetarian meals.  This one came about from looking at what I had left and in the cupboard and I have to say it has a very good chance of becoming a regular on my dinner list! Crusty white bread to mop up the delicious sauce is obligatory.

Spicy Tomato and Vegetable Pasta

Serves 2

2 tbsp olive oil

6 x handfuls penne pasta

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 small courgette, cut in 4 lengthways and then cut into half cm pieces

2 handfuls purple sprouting broccoli

1 400g tin cherry tomatoes (or chopped tomatoes work almost as well)

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes

Large pinch of sugar

1 tbsp crème fraiche

Freshly ground black pepper

Salt

Grated parmesan cheese, to serve

1. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan to a medium/low heat, add the chopped onion and garlic and sauté until translucent. Add the courgette and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add the tinned tomatoes, oregano, chilli and sugar.  Season to taste. Stir to combine, bring to the boil, put the lid on and reduce the heat to low. Slowly simmer for half and hour (the intention being to create a jammy sumptuous sauce).

2. When the sauce has been cooking for half an hour, cook the penne according to packet instructions.

3. When the pasta has 5 minutes left to cook, add the purple sprouting broccoli to the sauce. Cover and continue cooking.

4. Just before serving, add the crème fraiche to the sauce and stir through. Combine the sauce with the cooked pasta.

5. Spoon on to hot plates and grate over the parmesan cheese.

The ultimate conundrum…

So, I’ve given up chain food stores for lent.  Two weeks in and I have to say it’s going rather well!  The first dilemma was where to buy beer?!  I hadn’t really factored this in when I cam e up with the idea.

Luckily for me, a new micro-brewery has recently opened in Gloucester. The Gloucester Brewery began brewing in the autumn of last year and so far has three rather nice beers to offer; Gloucester Gold, Mariner and Dockside Dark (are you getting the theme here?). And I have to say – very good job indeed.

The brewery is located in Gloucester Docks, next door to Coots café. At the moment you kind of had to hunt them out but I’m assured the planning application for signage has been submitted. At the moment they are only open at weekends but I have to say it is well worth a visit to pick up a few bottles of the special stuff.

Even more exciting, the brewery is in the process of creating a special summer beer. They’re asking for members of the public to think of a name…winner takes a firkin of ale! (just to confirm, that’s a whole 72 pints!). Any suggestions can be emailed via their website and must be submitted by 15^th March. Chin chin!

And so lent begins!

So we are good to go. Lent has started and that means I’m giving up chain food stored for lent. One of the things I’ve done in response is to set myself up for a weekly vegetable box delivery scheme. Had two boxes so far and I think it’s great! Not that expensive (£8 a week), gets delivered straight to my door, it’s seasonal…and the thing I like the most – it forces me to think outside the box and cook things I might not otherwise think of.

This week, it appears I have a surplus of parsnips. Time to get create. So I had a think about what I could do with it, other than roasting it or making a spicy soup.  I started having a look through the recipe books and I noticed a copy of the ‘River Cottage Veg Patch’ book. Now if anyone can help me make the most of surplus veg…its Hugh.

To my delight there is a lovely recipe for potato dauphinoise…and it advocates the use of other route vegetables as appropriate! So I gave it a go…potato and parsnip dauphinoise…or potsnip for short. And I have to say, it was really good. Next time I’m going to try a bit of peppery Swede, or maybe some Celeriac. I do think though it’s important to make sure you have at least half potato – otherwise it might start to get a little bit sickly.

So here you go people – definitely one to try out. I served it with a big slab of pork belly (its winter and I need to get my fat reserves up) and some green vegetables.

Potsnip dauphinoise

Serves 6 as a side dish

25g unsalted butter, softened

300g waxy potatoes

300g parsnip

300ml double cream

2 – 3 large garlic cloves

Plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Handful grated cheddar cheese (optional)

Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas Mark 3. Rub a gratin dish liberally with the butter.

Peel the potatoes and parsnips and slice them thickly. In a large bowl, mix together the cream and garlic and season well with salt and pepper. Toss the potatoes and the parsnips in the mixture and layer them in the gratin dish, then pour over the remaining cream (if you want to be precise, you can mix of the potato and parsnips and separate bowls and lay alternate layers of each).

Cover the dish with foil and place in the own and bake for between an hour and a half. After an hour, remove the foil so that the top can become crispy and golden. Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top, if using, to make it extra sumptuous. The dauphinoise is ready when the top is bubbling and golden, and the potatoes are soft and yielding when pearced with a knife. Leave to stand for a few minutes before serving.

Here lamby lamby lamby…

You’ll have guessed by now that I love entertaining.  It gives me an excuse to have a go at cooking something I haven’t made before and (as long as everything works out for the best!) I love seeing the smile of their faces when they’re eating.

A few weeks ago my colleague, his wife and babby girl came over for Sunday lunch.  Time to make a bit of an effort I thought – but what to make?  Hints had been dropped the preceding week for lamb. But legs of lamb are so expensive!

I started having a search through my cookbooks and remembered I had River Cottage‘Everyday’ – if anyone can help make a feast out of cheaper cuts of meat, it had to be Hugh!

Within a few minutes I found exactly what I was looking for. Slow-roast shoulder of lamb with merguez spices.  Incredibly simple and the shoulder of lamb cost me just over £18 from my local butcher (around half that of a leg).  A further flick through the book and I found the perfect accompaniments; French beans with tomatoes and flatbreads.  A little yogurt and mint dressing completed the ensemble.

Something to try without a shadow-of-a-doubt.  Word of warning though – it takes around 6 hours to cook so make sure you allow plenty of time!  Well worth the wait mind…

Ingredients

Serves 6 – 10, depending on the size of the joint and how hungry you all are!

1 shoulder of lamb, mutton or hogget on the bone

For the spice paste

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

½ cinnamon stick, broken up

1 tsp black peppercorns

Pinch cayenne pepper or chilli powder

2 tsp sweet smoked paprika

2 garlic cloves, finely shopped

Leaves from 2 large rosemary sprigs, finely chopped

2 tsp sea salt

2 tbsp olive oil

1. Toast the cumin, coriander, fennel seeds, cinnamon and peppercorns in a dry frying pan over a medium heat for a minute or so. Crush to a coarse powder using a pestle and mortar, then combine with the cayenne pepper or chilli powder, paprika, garlic, rosemary, salt and olive oil.

2. Lightly score the skin of the meat with a sharp knife, making shallow slashes a few millimetres deep and 1 – 2cm apart. Rub half the spice paste all over the lamb shoulder, underneath as well as on top and especially into the cuts. Put into a large roasting tin and place in an over preheated to 220C, Gas Mark 7. Roast for 30o minutes.

3. Remove from the oven and rub the remaining spice paste over the meat using the back of a wooden spoon. Pour a glass of water into the tin (not over the meat), cover with foil and return to the oven. Reduce the heat to 120C/Gas Mark ½ and cook for 6 hours, or until the meat is very tender and falling off the bone. You can add another glass of water halfway through, to keep the pan juices ticking along.

4. Transfer the lamb to a warm serving plate. Skim the excess fat off the juices in the tin. Tear the meat into thick shreds and serve with the juices spooned over. I served mine of homemade flatbreads and French beans with tomatoes, both from the same book.

Disaster!

My cooker's broken! Bought a new one but it's going to take a week and a half to arrive. Boooooo.

Tonight's dinner consisted of sausages cooked on one of those health grills and chips from the chippy. Ironic, don't you think?

Any suggestions on what I can make over the next week with a health grill, microwave and toaster would be very much appreciated!  Might have to get creative myself - if anything decent comes out of it I'll post it on here...

Dinner party-tastic!

I like entertaining. It gives me chance to cook for loads of people and I relish the challenge.  But what I don’t want is to cook something so complex that I can’t enjoy the main point of the evening; to have a laugh with my mates.

So just before Christmas, I invited some of my old school friends round and set out working out what I would cook.  There were ten of us so I wanted to do something that could be prepared for a lot of people in one go.  So what better I thought, than a curry!

I’d recently treated myself a new book by Madhur Jaffrey, called ‘Curry Easy’. And here’s the plus – it’s brilliant. You know how some curry recipes require something insane like 20 or 30 ingredients and you have to make a special trip to the shops to get half of them?  Well this book doesn’t do that.  It does exactly what it says on the tin, and I haven’t had a bad curry yet. Curry Easy is one of those books you just need.

I’m not going to give you the recipes for everything I made, but there is one dish in particular that I think everyone should try. Even those that claim to dislike curry will thoroughly enjoy this.And it beats anything from a takeaway. So here goes…

Chicken and Spinach Curry

Serves 6 (I doubled it for the dinner party and it worked perfectly)

6 chicken legs, separated into drumsticks and thighs, or any other chicken parts you like (about 1.9kg in total)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 medium onions, peeled and coarsely chopped

5cm/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

6 medium cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 tbsp sweet red paprika

½ tsp cayenne pepper

5 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil

2 x 5cm/2 inch cinnamon sticks

8 cardamom pods

285g spinach, chopped (defrosted and drained if frozen)

- Spread the chicken out in a single layer and sprinkle 1 tsp salt and lots of black pepper on all sides.

- Put the onion, ginger, garlic, paprika and cayenne pepper into a food processor and, using a fast start-and-stop method, chop all of the ingredients as fine as possible, stopping short of making a puree.

- Put the oil into a wide, heavy pan and set over a medium-high heat.  When hot, put in the cinnamon and cardamom. Let them sizzle for a few seconds. Now put in as much of the chicken as will fit easily in a single layer and brown on all sides. Transfer to a bowl, leaving the whole spices behind. Brown all of the chicken in this way and keep in the bowl.

- Put the onion mixture into the pan, reducing the heat to medium. Stir and fry for 4 – 5 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add the spinach and ½ tsp salt. Stir and fry for another 4 – 5 minutes.

- Add the chicken, ¼ tsp salt and 120ml/4 fl oz water. Bring to the boil. Cover, lower the heat and gently simmer for 25 minutes, gently turning the chicken pieces a few times. Excess fat may be removed before serving.