Monday March 24, 2008

Delia for Dummies

Throw away all your fancy cookery books. This is the only one you will need now. Delia is the first TV chef to admit that despite the fact the nation spends money on cookery books and time watching shows with TV chefs making fancy food - most of us pull something out the freezer...

Wednesday January 24, 2007

Spaghetti Carbonara

One of my favourite spaghetti dishes is this. There are many versions but this simple one is good I think. We fry two decent sized onions - you can never have enough - in a little olive oil. Cook on a low heat for ages until they are really soft. Add four or more slices of bacon, - smoked is best which have been cut up into small cubes. Meanwhile cook enough pasta for two people until just ready to eat. Take two fresh eggs and a small pot of cream and mix together with a fork. Once the pasta is cooked drain it, add to the onion/bacon mix and stir in. Pour in the cream/egg mixture and heat through until the egg is cooked. Season. Serve into warm pasta bowls. Excellent!

Monday January 08, 2007

Dine with Wine!

If you live in the UK there is a scheme run by the Times Newspaper that allows you to take someone out for a two course meal half a glass of wine each for between ten and fifteen pounds. A local pub to us is doing the meal deal at a tenner which is not bad I reckon. More details here

Wednesday January 03, 2007

A New Year dessert

I always think it is a good thing to involve children in the kitchen. Knowing one of our New Years visitors has a passion for desserts meant I was sure I could tempt him to help us make desert on New Years Eve. We made a meringue base the night before using simple recipe. Four egg whites which were wipped up with six ounces of caster sugar which was added to the mixture after it was wipped into soft peaks. This was spooned onto a greaseproof lined metal dish and cooked in the oven for one hour the oven then being turned off and the base left in overnight to dry off. Just before we wanted the dessert we put it together. Sliced bananas were scattered over the base, onto which were put alternate scoops of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. A warmed up toffee sauce was then poured over the dessert and then grated chocolate sprinkled on top of that. All I can say is I am pleased we did a nice walk before dinner so at least we all felt we deserved such a rich dessert - which was very nice. Nice dessert SR.

Wednesday December 20, 2006

Beef Stifado

This is a Greek version of a generic Mediterranean dish. It is a nice hearty dish.

Preheat your oven to 150C

In a little oil brown cubed two pounds of beef in a flameproof pot with a lid. Then add 8oz onions and two garlic cloves finely chopped and crushed. After these have cooked down a bit add one tin of tomatoes. At this point add the rest of the ingrendients: two tablespoons of tomato puree, the juice of one lemon, one tablespoon of Oregano, a pinch of thyme, one teaspoon of sugar and salt and pepper. Pour water in to just cover the beef. Put in the oven and cook until the beef is really tender - two to three hours. Stir every hour or so. While this is cooking the kitchen will have some nice cooking smells.

Tuesday December 05, 2006

Pumpkin Soup

So I made some pumpkin soup using our sole pumpkin we got off the allotment. The recipe is easy. You cook in butter a medium onion chopped finely. Add two pounds of pumpkin flesh - take the seeds and skin off first. Then add one medium potato cubed and a couple of carrots chopped. Add two pints of vegetable stock and season. Add 1/4 pint of milk. Simmer for half an hour and blitz. It has to be said the soup was nice but without the addition of the carrot I suspect it might have been a bit bland. Unlike the Artichokes this had no undesirable after shocks to my insides.

Thursday November 30, 2006

So where does the Blue bottle go?

I had a puzzling problem when visiting the glass recycle site at a local supermarket yesterday. It caters for Green, Clear and Brown glass - each colour has its own container. I had bought with me an empty bottle of Marks and Spencers Kaituna Blue Sauvignon Blanc from the North Island of New Zealand which came in a Blue bottle. So which container to put it in? I decided the Green was the closest and hope it does not mess things up down the line....

Wednesday November 29, 2006

Citron tarte

While my wife was in London for the day I made the above tarte. She said that it was the lightest tastiest Lemon Tart she had ever had. It is from a recipe from Gordon Ramsey's "Sunday lunch and other recipes from the F-word" book. The base was a Sweet flan pastry mix and the filling a mixture of two eggs, four egg yolks 180g, caster sugar, 200ml double cream and juice of two lemons. I found a couple of problems with the recipe both which nearly ended in disaster - the first being the pastry which just kept falling to bits when I tried to get it into the cake tin. I ended up making a pastry base that looked like a patchwork quilt afterwards. The second panic was the cooking time. I think the filling was meant to be a lot stiffer than it turned out it was almost like water when I poured it into the tin. It took almost one and a half hours to set. But the final verdict as it all got eaten was that it tasted very nice - so it was worth the effort.

Tuesday October 10, 2006

A nice tomato soup

Now we have a glut of Twyford Tomatoes which are red and not green we can make a nice soup instead of the terrible one we did with green tomato windfalls. This is my wife's recipe but similar ones exist I am sure. The key to her's is the addition of bacon - it is a classic taste combination I think. If you don't eat meat it is easy to leave it out.

1.5 lb tomatoes
One potato
One onion
Clove of garlic 
A few rashers of bacon 
Pepper
Pint and a half of stock

You can change the quantities to suit taste and how thick you like your soup. You can cook the vegetables in a little butter or oil then add the tomatoes and stock and cook until soft. Finally blitz the lot and reheat when you want to eat it. Very tasty.

Friday September 22, 2006

An old fashioned broth

If perhaps you want a light dinner because you are feeling a bit guilty having pigged out earlier in the week then this is the answer for you. It is simple to make - can be made beforehand and I imagine you could alter the ingredients to suit what you have in your fridge/cupboard. We have being using my leeks that I had to dig up this spring and freeze in ths dish.

The quantities here are for two people. Two chicken breasts, two leeks sliced, two carrots peeled and sliced. One and a half pints of chicken stock ( you can use an Oxo cube. Herbs, like thyme, parsley etc and finally three handfulls of any pasta you like.

First of all add the leeks, carrots chicken and stock to a pan and bring to the boil. Add the herbs to the boiling liquid and salt and pepper to your liking and simmer for thirty minutes. Remove the chicken and once cool cut into small pieces. Add back to the pan. At this stage you can leave it until you want to eat it. The final stage is to bring it back to the boil, add the pasta and cook until it is how you like your pasta cooked. Let it cool down and serve with fresh bread. You can add a little parsley to garnish it if you like.

Thursday September 07, 2006

A Truly terrible soup

A week or so ago one of the vines on our tomato plants broke off from the main stem orphaning a lot of tomatoes. I put them in a bowl on the window sill and a few started going red. So what to do with the rest? Green tomato Chutney came to mind but I found several recipes for Green tomato soup. Most had this sort of ingredients in them:

Two pounds of green tomatoes
Two teaspoons curry powder
Three cloves of garlic
Potato
Mint
Sugar
Cream
Stock

So I cooked it up and the soup came out as above after being blitzed. But it tasted terrible. Any ideas what went wrong? However anything that uses unripe ingredients was bound to fail in my opinion..

Wednesday August 16, 2006

Coq au Vin with cider?

This version using cider instead of red wine is lighter and not so rich as the original. We use chicken breasts, fry them in a little oil to give them some colour, put into a flameproof pot. One breast per person. De-rind 1/2 pound of bacon and cut into small cubes brown in the pan and add to the chicken. Peel sixteen button onions, brown them and add to the pot. Crush two cloves of garlic a sprig of thyme and add to the pot also. Season with salt and pepper and add two bayleaves. No add your cider use one and a quarter pints and simmer for an hour or until the chicken is tender. During the last fifteen minutes add half a pound of dark gilled mushrooms. After the hour is up remove everything leaving the sauce in the pot. Keep these warm somewhere. Throw away the bayleaves and sprig of thyme also. Bring the sauce to the boil and reduce by a third. Make a butter and flour paste ( one tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of plain flour) Add this to the sauce and whisk well until the sauce has thickened. Then add the removed ingredients back to the sauce and serve with a baked potato or pasta. A nice twist to a classic French meal.

Friday August 04, 2006

Pimp that snack

An item on Gordon Ramsey's F-word program this week. Giles Coren a food critic made an gigantic Jaffa cake about a metre in diameter. It was so large he had to take it to his local Pizza place to have it cooked. He then made a orange jellly based layer and on top of that several bars of chocolate completed the monster jaffa cake. This site shows a few more of the monster creations. I imagine in the US these would be considered a regular sized snack...

Thursday August 03, 2006

Product of the week - A Pressure cooker

This is a really old model but still works a treat. Pressure cookers were used a lot to save time years ago but nowadays seem less popular. This one is only used to cook beetroot. It does average sized beets in ten minutes. The only problem is you can't lift a lid and see if they are ready you have to depressurize the cooker and then open it up. Once you get a bit of experience of using one you soon know how long to cook things for.

Monday July 17, 2006

The French GP

After two races in North America the F1 circus returns to Europe to the French Magny Cours circuit. Two changes for the rest of the 2006 season Montoya has left Team Mac now and the final qualifying session has been reduced to fifteen minutes from twenty.

During qualifying Sauber ran their ugly vertical wings on the front of their cars. Honda were having another torrid time and Button ended up in P18, Rubens got dumped on the second session in P14. In the last session Alonso was following Schumi on the track and overtook him. They both then pitted at the same time for new tyres for their flying laps. Schumi was fastest and Alonso had to pit for new tyres to try again. He failed to do so and with Massa on P2 Ferrari have locked out the front row. Renault will want one of their fast starts on race day. At the end Toyota looked good and both cars delivered good lap times. Kimi was nearly out run by Pedro but got ahead of him at the end. Fisi was a dissapointing seventh. Mercedes have in this qualifying been the first team to break the 20K barrier ( evs).

1.  5  M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari           B   1'15"493  210.345 Km/h  
2.  6  MASSA        Ferrari           B   1'15"510  210.298 Km/h  
3.  1  ALONSO       Renault           M   1'15"785  209.535 Km/h  
4.  8  TRULLI       Toyota            B   1'16"036  208.843 Km/h  
5.  7  R.SCHUMACHER Toyota            B   1'16"091  208.692 Km/h  
6.  3  RAIKKONEN    McLaren Mercedes  M   1'16"281  208.172 Km/h  
7.  2  FISICHELLA   Renault           M   1'16"345  207.998 Km/h  
8.  4  DE LA ROSA   McLaren Mercedes  M   1'16"632  207.219 Km/h  

At the start the front runners hold their places despite Alonso's best efforts. Webber gets up to P8 and DC drops to P11. Sato also drops out of the race soon after it starts. 63 to go and Alonso is getting closer to Massa but not enough to make a move. Schumi is four seconds ahead of his teammate who is clearly slowing Alonso up by slowing his own pace. Rubens has a train of cars behind him goes wide and lets Speed past him.

56 to go and Schumi is posting fastest laps; Monteiro has a big off and bounces down into the gravel. De Rosa is having plenty of goes at Webber but cannot make any of them stick. JV gets past Rubens. 54 to go Massa pits and rejoins in clear air with new tyres on. Alonso is looking very ragged on track. 53 to go Alonso pits as does Kimi early for him. Schumi pits with 52 to go as does Fisi. 51 to go Rubens pulls out of the race and Trulli pits. De Rosa has got past Webber in the pit stops.

49 to go Button stops as does Rosberg, Ralph also stops and has a bad stop - trouble with a tyre change. Schumi is now back in P1 ahead of his teammate and Alonso. 44 to go Kimi gets past Trulli in what looks like a quick snooze moment for the Italian. 37 to go Schumi eight seconds ahead of Massa and Alonso is five seconds behind him. 34 to go Alonso is held up badly in traffic and looses more time to those in front of him. Heidfeld is overtaken by De Rosa. 32 to go Schumi pits again and comes out just behind Alonso he now is a pit stop ahead of his rival. He wisely keeps clear of the Renault

Webber's rear tyre delaminates and has him off the track but he recovers to the pits for a change. 30 to go Trulli pulls out of the race. Webber has another tyre change but a long stop to try and understand what is going on. 29 to go Alonso and not well reported has a longer fill than expected. 25 to go Webber rejoins the race and Rosberg comes in for similar treatment. 21 to go Kimi is catching Alonso by 1/2 second a lap.

18 th go Kimi less than four seconds behind Alonso and the three stoppers now pit but Alonso does not need to. When all the stops are complete Pat Symonds has got his driver into P2 minimising the damage to his championship lead. 8 to go Webber is retired, and soon after that Button does so from P11. In the end Schumi wins and is the first driver to win a race eight times in total. Another record for him.

 1.  5  M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari           B   1h32'07"803  200.968 Km/h  
 2.  1  ALONSO       Renault           M   +  0'10"131  200.600 Km/h  
 3.  6  MASSA        Ferrari           B   +  0'22"546  200.151 Km/h  
 4.  7  R.SCHUMACHER Toyota            B   +  0'27"212  199.983 Km/h  
 5.  3  RAIKKONEN    McLaren Mercedes  M   +  0'33"006  199.775 Km/h  
 6.  2  FISICHELLA   Renault           M   +  0'45"265  199.335 Km/h  
 7.  4  DE LA ROSA   McLaren Mercedes  M   +  0'49"407  199.187 Km/h  
 8. 16  HEIDFELD     BMW Sauber        M      1 lap(s)  

Next race Hockenheim seventeen points seperates Schumi from Alonso