Lasagne

If we’ve got mince we always make lasagne…I know there are a lot of other foods you can make but lasagne is just so good it seems like such a shame not to make it.

I make a quick meat sauce with an onion, a clove of garlic, 500g minced beef, 2 tins of chopped tomatoes seasoned with salt, pepper and plenty of dried crushed chillies.

Then in the lasagne dish I start with a layer of sauce at the bottom to stop it sticking, then a layer of pasta, meat sauce, white sauce and repeat again twice (3 layers in total) – plenty of white sauce is what makes it yummy! I use ready-made sauce, I have made my own in the past but it wasn’t really any better than Dolmio’s, and opening a jar is a lot easier.

Duck with watercress salad

I loved this dinner! Even though I ate the fat on the duck it felt like I was being healthy because of the salad.

I cooked the duck skin side down on a low heat for 5mins to render the fat, which I poured out of the pan, then turned up the heat until the skin crisped up and turned the breasts over to cook the other side.

The salad is a mix of watercress with 1tbs olive oil, 1tbs white wine vinegar, and a handful each of fresh mint leaves, flaked almonds and pomegranate.

New Year’s Eve Tapas

We had some friends at our flat to see the new year in last Saturday, I wasn’t sure what to make as we didn’t want to make anything too heavy so I opted for tapas as a socialable food to share and so that people could eat as much, or as little, as they wanted.

Here are some of the dishes I made:

PIRI PIRI CHICKEN

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe – fry some skin on chicken skin side down until it’s crispy, then turn it over and cover in piri piri sauce, cover and leave to cook. To make the piri piri sauce simply liquidise 1 red onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 chillis, 2 tbs smoked paprika, zest of 2 lemons, juice of 1 lemon, 4 tbs white wine vinegar, 2 tbs Worcestershire sauce and a handful of fresh basil. I used 2 red chillis (although the recipe says birds eye chillis) but next time I make it I think I’ll used more, while it was really tasty, it wasn’t spicy enough for me.

STUFFED PEPPERS

Baby peppers stuffed with spinach, tomatoes and my new favourite cheese Applewood – which has a smoky paprika flavour.

Cooked in the oven until soft (around 40 mins)

LEMON CHICKEN

In our household we put loads of chilli into everything, but I realise it’s not everyone’s cup of tea so I cooked some chicken until white, then added some 250ml chicken stock and lots of lemon juice and zest of 1 lemon, covered and left to cook slowly. This is a recipe I just threw together so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but was pleasantly surprised by how tender the chicken was and although the sauce smelled quite strongly of the stock in the pan, the chicken tasted pleasantly lemony.

SPICY GRILLED PRAWNS

Another Jamie recipe – put uncooked prawns in an overnproof dish and add a knob of butter, a good glug of olive oil, a few sprigs fresh thyme, 1 tsp cayenne pepper, a pinch of ground cinnamon, 4 cloves of crushed garlic, 1/2 a chopped red chilli and half a lemon (squeeze the juice over and leave in the pan). Just put under the grill until the prawns are pink.

We’ve been making this ever since we saw Jamie make it on his 30-minute meals a year ago, the prawns are really lovely and spicy and the sauce is great for dipping in bread.

Other dishes we made which I don’t have pictures of included

CHORIZO cooked on a low heat in a frying pan with sliced onions and peppers and a a glass of white wine to simmer in.

SARDINES grilled with garlic, chilli, lemon and parsley.

CUCUMBER SALAD made with a chopped cucumber, balsamic vinegar, spring onions, red chilli, fresh mint, lemon juice and a dash of olive oil.

TOMATO SALAD with garlic, fresh basil and olive oil.

LAMB KEBABS marinated in harissa and grilled.

RICE cooked with saffron, cumin and lemon juice.

ROAST POTATOES roasted with some thyme and garlic cloves.

KANNOLI

Finally, for desert I brought some ready-made Kannoli shells over with me from Malta and filled them with rikotta sweetened with caster sugar and chocolate chips.

Most importantly for New Year’s Eve, plenty of bubbly to wash it all down.

Happy New Year everyone 🙂

Christmas lunch in Malta

We’re in Malta for Christmas this year so I haven’t done much cooking but have done lots of eating. For Christmas day 22 of us were at my Aunty Moira’s house with the above beautiful view of Valletta out of the living room window.

What followed was a 5 course meal consisting of:

Stracciatella Soup – a broth with parmesan cheese, bread, eggs and plenty of parsley. The cheese makes the soup creamy and the parsley gives it a fresh taste – it went down a treat.

Imqarrun fil-forn – a tradition taken from the Italians, we like having pasta as a starter and imqarrun is a classic Maltese dish, I love it! This is macaroni baked in the oven with a meat sauce (bolognese style) and an egg mixed in to bind. The best bit are the top layer of macaroni which get crunchy while baking.

The main event – for our main course we had a choice of salmon, turkey and stuffing or pork. I went for the salmon, with some Mediterranean vegetables and beans.

OK, it was Christmas so I had a bit of turkey and stuffing after I’d eaten this plate.

I forgot to take a picture of the cheese board and our first desert which was tiramisu (whoops) which was closely followed by coffee and pastini from Cafe Cordina.

This Mille Foglie which included layers of sweet ricotta, chocolate, sponge and pastry was delicious.

And so we paused from eating until a few hours later, after a few games of tombola..

Chocolate and coconut truffles

These are the chocolate and coconut truffles I made yesterday using a recipe from BBC good food as my basic recipe.

I melted 200g of dark chocolate with 100ml double cream and a little vanilla essence, then left in the fridge for 2hrs.
Later on, I rolled my mix into balls and coated with some desiccated coconut.

These are really rich tasting- the dark chocolate is complimented by the sweet coconut. When I make these again I’d like try a little peppermint in the mix to give them a fresher taste.

Christmas baking

I had the day off today and was waiting for a parcel be delivered so what better use of my time than to do some baking? I was planning to make all sorts of Christmas treats, but its all a bit more time consuming than I thought, so I only ended up making mince pies and walnut bread.

For the mince pies I made a sweet shortcrust pastry with 250g of plain flour, half the amount of butter, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 5 tablespoons of cold water to bind.

I rolled it out, cut out the bases and half-filled them with mincemeat. Wet the edges before putting the lids on to help them stick and put a hole in the top.

Baked for approx 15 mins, et voila:

On to the bread…I hadn’t made bread before and I don’t know if it’s the recipe I used but it takes quite a long time! I got the recipe from the Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook, which I can’t find a link to, so I’ll type it up below (I used half the quantities)

Mix 750g strong wheatmeal flour with 15g salt in a large bowl, (this is the time to add the walnuts, if you want to) add 15g butter and rub into mixture. Add 575ml warm water and 15g dried yeast.

Mix with a wooden spoon until it leaves the sides of the bowl clean. Then knead on a work surface for 10mins, bashing it about a bit. Shape into a ball, put back in the bowl, cover with loosely with cling film and put in a warm place until it doubles in size.

Once its risen knock it back, knead it a little more, shape the dough and allow it to rest for 10mins. Grease and warm a baking tin, put the bread in and bake at 230deg for 30-40mins.

That’s the simplified recipe, mine took ages to rise, probably I hadn’t kneaded it enough so I ended up adding more yeast and re-kneading. The oringinal recipe tells you to cover with cling film again and wait for it to rise to the top of the bread tin before putting it into the oven, but I’d lost patience by that time and its fine (pretty good, even if I do say so myself).

Spiced arancello recipe

This is on my ‘want to make’ list from BBC Good Food – Spiced arancello recipe.

I might start on it tomorrow so it’s ready for Christmas.

Chicken with creamy liver sauce

This sauce makes a tasty meal out of (boring) chicken breast. I cook the chicken in the oven, which takes around 20minutes in a dish covered in foul to keep it from drying out.

In the meantime, I boiled the potatoes for the mash and fried a chopped shallot and garlic clove for the sauce. I then added 2 rashers of chopped bacon (or lardons if you’ve got them) and the livers with lots of black pepper.

Once the livers are cooked, add around 300ml of cream (whatever you’ve got, creme fraiche would probably work too), season with salt and pepper and add a teaspoon of English mustard. The mustard makes all the difference, you don’t taste it too much but it definitely turns what is quite a bland sauce to a really tasty one – this is a tip picked up from Jamie Oliver.

Once you’ve added the cream it’s ready to serve.

Goats cheese tart

I had something like this at the Rose pub in Vauxhall and tried recreating it at home.

I put caramelised onions on ready-made, ready-rolled puff pastry, some sliced tomatoes and goats cheese on top and put into the oven until brown.

While its cooking I make a balsamic vinegar reduction by heating the vinegar with some sugar until it thickens, to drizzle on top once the tart is out of the oven with some green leaves on top.

Chocolate brownies

Here’s a picture of the chocolate brownies I made the other day using Jamie Oliver’s recipe. It’s the easiest brownie recipe I’ve ever used (substituted with whatever chocolate we had in the cupboard) – the recipe can be found here