Lamb burgers with giant chips and a cucumber, mint and onion relish

I've been making my own burgers for years now and rarely eat a burger from a takeaway as they are so easy to make!  If you're a student you can make them in advance, freeze them and cook them after a night out and save a lot of cash this way:-) As an alternative to the ubiquitous beef burger, I occasionally make lamb burgers for a change.  Here is my recipe.

Ingredients

For the Burger:
500g lamb mince (if you have a food processor, make your own by blitzing 500g cubed lamb)
Some leftover mint sauce drained to remove the liquid
1 medium onion chopped finely

For the giant chips:
2 large potatoes - I use red King Edwards by choice
Olive oil for baking
Salt

For the cucumber relish:
A dash of olive oil
1 medium onion chopped very finely
1 three inch piece of cucumber diced as finely as possible
A pinch of sugar
A tablespoon of leftover mint sauce including the mint and vinegar

Method

Cucumber relish
First make the cucumber relish.  Heat a frying pan and add a small dash of olive oil, the add the chopped onion and sauté over a medium to low heat until the onion is softened but not coloured.  Now add the mint sauce and a small pinch of sugar and reduce almost to dryness.  At this point the mix should be sweetish but you should still be able to taste the vinegar from the mint sauce.  Put the cooked onion and mint aside and leave to cool.  Once it's cooled fully mix in the cucumber and serve this with the burger and chips as an alternative to tomato ketchup.

Giant chips
Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Peel the potatoes, rinse and then cut them into either four or six lengthways - you should aim to serve three or four chips per person!  Boil them for 5 minutes in salted water then drain and leave them to stand without covering.  Add them back to the dry saucepan an cook them over a dry heat for 1 minute to drive off as much moisture as possible.  Drizzle them with olive oil and put them in the oven on a pre-heated baking tray.  Roast for 30-45 minutes turning once until golden and gorgeous!  You can make these ahead and turn the oven off before serving to keep them warm in the oven.

Lamb burgers
As lamb is very fatty it's best to use as lean a lamb mix as you can get - supermarket extra lean is good, but it's even better to mince your own if you can.  Use as little oil as possible to fry the onion off until softened.  Now add the onion to the minced lamb in a large bowl along with the drained mint and a generous helping of salt and mix together well.  Shape them into burgers and grill under a high heat until cooked to your liking.

Serve the burger with the relish, chips and a burger bun if you like and add veg or salad of your choice.

Puréed spinach

I have been inspired by Master chef to do this one, they are always puréeing vegetables!  Must admit I'm not entirely taken in by this craze and I just can't understand why "foam" has lasted for so long as to my mind it's the easiest way to make sure the food comes to the table cold, but hey, I'm not a five star cook so what do I know?  Anyway, back on track, I've always been ambivalent about spinach, it's a great idea and full of iron and good things but I find it tastes too bitter, so I'm experimenting with spinach puree.  It's still got some work to do but this seems to work pretty well...

Ingredients
300g spinach
1 dessertspoon of double cream
1 teaspoon butter
A pinch of salt
A pinch of allspice

Method
Rinse the spinach well to get rid of any grit then put it into a heatproof bowl.  Boil a kettle and pour the boiling water over the spinach making sure you put the leaves under the water with a spoon of fork.

After a few seconds drain the spinach and squeeze out the water with the back of a spoon, then add it to a liquidizer bowl.  Add the slat, allspice, butter and cream.

Whizz it up until it's as smooth as it will go then transfer to a heatproof serving dish.  Taste and adjust for seasoning.

Just before serving, put it in the microwave and blast it for 30 seconds on high to get the heat into it then serve immediately.

When in Switzerland...

Well, not really, but as Rowena went to Geneva last weekend, Naomi and Suzanne both wanted a cheese fondue so I had to cook one.  We rarely eat fondue as it's so fatty, but every once in a while it really can't be beaten!

Rowena commented that the fondue she had in Geneva seemed less "winey" and more creamy than she remembered mine being, so this might be a series of recipes as I develop the creaminess.  Going on historic data the next one will be in about four years time!

Ingredients
1 garlic clove
375ml dry white wine
A dash of Lemon juice
190g Conté cheese
170g Swiss Emmental cheese
170g Swiss Gruyere cheese
100g Abondance cheese
4 teaspoons cornflour
A dash of brandy
2 Batons bread

Method
Peel and crush the garlic clove, then wipe around a cast iron pan.  Ideally use a fondue pan for this.  Add the wine and lemon juice and bring to the boil for 3-4 minutes to drive off some of the alcohol.

While the wine boils, grate all the cheeses roughly and add them to the pan making sure you stir the mixture constantly.  Keep the heat under the wine but make sure the mixture doesn't boil or the cheese will burn on the bottom of the pan.

Once the cheese is thoroughly melted, mix the cornflour with either a dessert spoon of Kirsch or Cognac, even water is fine, then add this to the cheese and wine mixture making sure you stir constantly or you'll get lumps.

Now cut the batons into bite size chunks ready to serve.  While doing this leave the cheese and wine to simmer on the lowest possible heat, ideally you should just keep it warm with no bubbles, and make sure you stir every couple of minutes to stop a skin forming.

If you've feeling romantic, serve in front of a log fire in  a room full of candlelight and dip the bread into the cheese and wine on a chilly wintry evening.

Do let me know what your best fondue recipe is...

My favourite way of cooking cabbage

When I was young I hated cabbage, I didn't like the taste or the texture.  I must say I'm still not a big fan of cabbage which is a shame as lots of other folk seem to love it.  Odd really that I don't like cabbage but I do like sprouts!  Anyway, as others in the family like the stuff I've developed my own way of cooking it that seems to please all of us, they still get their cabbage and I can eat it as I've disguised the flavour :-)  For those in the same state of quandary here's my way of cooking cabbage.

Ingredients
1 cabbage - I prefer savoy but any sort will do
1 tablespoon of olive oil
2 rashers of smoked back bacon
6 cooked and peeled chestnuts

Method
Put a frying pan on the heat, chop the bacon into small squares and add it to the pan.  While the bacon is crisping chop the chestnuts as finely as you can then add them to the bacon and fry until everything is well coated.  Meanwhile peel the leaves from the cabbage and cut out the central stalks.  Once you've done this us a sharp knife and slice the leaves into 3-4mm strips.   Wash the cabbage and then add it to the pan, stir to make sure the cabbage is coated in the oil, bacon and chestnuts and cook for no more than a couple of minutes so the cabbage retains it's crispness.  Serve and savour :-)

Beef stew with winter vegetables

It's cold, damp, dark and miserable here today, so I wanted to cook something to warm the old cockles!  Inspired by an idea from Jamie Oliver I put some butternut squash and a few few other things into a beef stew to make a change to the tried and trusted stew recipe a little.  Here my recipe.

Ingredients
Small knob of butter
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1kg stewing beef
Tablespoon of seasoned plain flour
2 onions
2 sticks of celery
3 cloves garlic
A handful of sage leaves
3 carrots
2 parsnips
Half a butternut squash
4 medium potatoes
Half a bottle of red wine
500ml beef stock
Bottle of artichoke antipasti
Rind of 1 lemon
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C.  Choose a good, large cast iron casserole dish and heat the oil and butter in it, meanwhile peel and chop the onion, garlic and celery and coat the beef with the seasoned flour.  Once the butter starts to foam add the onion, garlic, celery, sage leaves and beef and sauté for 4-5 minutes until the beef is browned.

While the beef is cooking, peel and chop the parsnip, carrot, squash and potatoes and then add them to the dish with the wine and stock.  Bring to the boil, cover and cook in the oven for 3 hours.  Once the beef is tender, add the artichoke and warm them through, 20-30 minutes should be enough.

Serve in bowls and sprinkle with the lemon rind and finely chopped rosemary immediately before serving.  You can have the stew on it's own or with some crusty bread, even mash if you like, whichever you prefer.  The remaining half bottle of red wine really should accompany it but you can always keep it until the next time if you wish!

Bon appétit!

Tomato and gammon sauce for pasta

I ventured into my classic Italian cookery book by Marcella Hazan for this one.  I'm used to using onion, carrot and celery for risotto where it's sautéed in olive oil, but not had it cooked slowly in tomato pulp then added the olive oil added afterwards.  Worked really well however, but take the cooking times with a large pinch of salt!  30 mins plus 15 mins to reduce the sauce down?  Make that 30 mins plue 90 mins reduction time and you'll not be far off!

I finished it off with some of the gammon we had at the weekend and a bit of fresh rosemary.  It takes a while to do, but it's better with fresh tomatoes in my opinion, and you don't need to use Italian tomatoes but you can make it with tinned too.

Ingredients
1.2 kg fresh tomatoes or 3x 400g tinned, chopped tomatoes
2 sticks celery
1 large carrot
2 small onions
2 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons Extra virgin olive oil
A small sprig of rosemary, leaves removed form stalk
120 g gammon chopped finely

Method
Prepare the tomatoes if using fresh.  You can either drop them in boiling water for 2 minutes, peel and remove the core and then chop them up but I find it easier to use a vegetable mill. It's pretty cheap to get a stainless steel one of these and they do a great job of getting the pulp out of the tomatoes while leaving the skins and cores behind.

To use the mill, wash and halve the tomatoes and put them in a large saucepan, cover them and heat over a medium flame for 15 minutes then ad to the mill using the largest disc.  Once you have extracted the juice and pulp, add this all back to your saucepan and heat it over a moderate flame.

While the tomatoes are heating, peel the carrot, celery, onion, rosemary leaves and garlic and chop them very finely - I use the food processor for this, it makes the job so much easier.  Once they're ready, add them to the tomato pulp, add a teaspoon of salt  and cook them uncovered at just a little over a simmer for 30 mins.

Add the extra virgin olive oil and adjust the seasoning and reduce to get a lovely rich sauce, another 60-90 mins.  Once the sauce is cooked, add the gammon and serve with whatever pasta you fancy and some freshly grated parmesan.

We loved it, hope you do too!

Carrot and Coriander soup

Home made soup in our house is very popular for cold winter evenings when you need to get in and out again in a hurry.  We've always loved soup and we often make our own as it's easy to do and if you make loads you can freeze what's left over for a super quick meal.  Served with slices of fresh bread or toast with a little melted butter, soup is one my favourite mid week meals.

Ingredients
1 small onion
1 stick of celery
1 parsnip
1½kg carrots
2 cloves of garlic
1½ tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon of coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1500ml vegetable stock
a large handful of fresh coriander
Lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste

Method
Set the oven to 220°C.  While the oven's warming, line a roasting tin with tinfoil (it makes washing up a heck of a lot easier!)  Lightly crush and peel the garlic and add these to the tray, peel and quarter the onion, peel the celery, carrots and parsnip, cut them into large chunks and chuck them into the roasting tray with the garlic.  Add a little salt to taste and add the olive oil, just enough to coat the veg.  Put them on the top shelf of the oven and roast for 30 minutes, turning the veg mix once.

While the veg is roasting, prepare the spices and herbs.  Take the coriander and cumin seeds and add them to a large pan, one that's big enough to comfortably take the veg and stock.  Dry fry the spices until they release the aroma and the coriander seeds start crackling, then take them off the hear and grind the spices.  I use a pestle and mortar for this, if you don't have one of these you can rub the seeds between two dessert spoons to crush them. Put them back into the pan.

Once the veg have roasted, tip them all into the pan with the spices and add the stock.  Cover and simmer for 15 minutes until the veg are all cooked through.  Turn off the heat and leave the pan to cool a little, then whizz with a hand blender until the soups is nce and smooth.  Add lemon juice, finely chopped coriander and salt to taste and serve with bread.

Ian's Risotto di Pavia

While we were in Pavia visiting Rowena we went to a number of wonderful restaurants where I had a couple of risottos, one with Milanese sausage, the other chestnut.    Both were delicious and I was surprised that sausage Milanese was very like English sausage.  When we got home I wondered if a combination of the two could work well.  We ate the first attempt this evening and it was a hit; my "risotto di Pavia" recipe was born!

Here's the recipe for four, adjust the ingredients to suit the numbers:

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
50g unsalted butter
2 celery sticks
1 medium carrot
1 medium to large onion
3 cloves garlic
12 vacuum packed chestnuts
1 medium parsnip
100g cooked, smoked gammon (optional)
200g Arborio risotto rice
1 Pack of good quality english sausage
25ml dry white wine
600ml beef stock
Freshly grated parmesan
A handful of ripped fresh basil leaves

Method
If using fresh chestnuts, split the outer skin and bake them in a hot oven until cooked, then peel and remove the skins.

Heat the oil and butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat.  Finely chop the carrot, celery and onion and sauté them in the oil.  Crush and finely chop the garlic and add to the mixture. Cook until everything is softened but not coloured.

Meanwhile, while sautéing the vegetables, peel the parsnip and cut into chunks, then add them and the chestnuts (and gammon if using) to a food processor and chop very finely - about 60 seconds in the processor should do it.  Now add them to the rest of the mixture.

Add the Arborio rice and mix well to coat the rice with the oil and vegetable mix.  Add the wine and cook over a low to medium heat until the wine has been fully absorbed.  Next add the stock a ladle full at a time and cook until each has been absorbed.  Add stock until the rice is fully cooked - classic Italian risotto should be served slightly "al dente" but we prefer fully cooked rice so it's personal taste!  Now adjust the seasoning to taste.

Serve in large bowls and scatter with fresh, torn basil leaves and a small bowl of freshly grated Parmesan.  We loved it, let me know what you think...

A quick update

This week there's not a lot to add I'm afraid.  I made a pumpkin risotto, unfortunately it was mediocre so needs more work.  Learnings from it, don't use pumpkin, Butternut squash is a much better idea.  Watch this space.

I also made a chicken pie from leftover roast chicken.  Again, I thought it was mediocre, but holds promise.  I don't think leek belongs in chicken pie and I also don't think red pepper has a place in chicken pie.  However, I do think beetroot could be a winner - watch this space!

Finally, did some cod quinelles in a coconut curry sauce from Atul Kochhars fish recipe book, yet another excellent dish, I am really enjoying his recipes; we must make a trip to to Benares restaurant!

Home made pizza recipe

Many years ago we went to stay in Umbria and the people we stayed with had a wood burning pizza oven that they allowed the guests to use once a week.  All of the restaurants in that part of Italy had a wood burner and the pizzas there are the best I've every tasted.  Since then I've not been able to get a wood burning pizza oven at home (yet, I'm still working on that project!) but I have perfected a pizza recipe that is the closest I've managed to get to the Umbrian pizzas.  Ideally you'll need a few pizza stones or metal pizza pans (generally available and not expensive).  Here's my recipe, let me know how you get on or if you have alternatives that work.

Ingredients

For the pizza base:
400g plain white flour - use type OO if you can get it, otherwise strong white bread flour works
1 tablespoon of olive oil
A good pinch of salt
A good pinch of sugar
250ml lukewarm water plus extra when needed
Sachet of quick acting yeast

For the tomato sauce:
1x400g can Italian tomatoes - can be chopped or whole
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon dried oregano

For the toppings:
Your own choice of ingredients.  We particularly like:
Black Olives
Salami
Parma Ham
Artichoke - the bottled antipasti type
Sun dried tomatoes
Plenty of fresh basil
Plenty of Mozarella - use packs of grated mozzarella, mozarella balls make the pizzas soggy!

Method

First make the dough for the base.  I use my bread maker to do this using the dough setting, but it works equally well if done by hand.  If you're doing it by hand, tip the flour into a large bowl, add the salt, sugar and yeast and mix together well.  Make a well in the middle of the flour then add the olive oil and rub the oil into the flour to mix it evenly.  Next add the water gradually and mix it into the flour to make a dough.  250ml won't be enough so add more gradually until the dough is smooth and elastic and easy to handle.  You can tell when the mix is right as the dough should be pliable but not stick to your hands.  If you overdo the water and it's too sticky, add a little extra flour to bring it back.  Now for my favourite bit!  Knead the dough on a flat surface pushing your fists into the dough and folding it into itself until it's a lovely, smooth, elastic dough.  Put it back into your bowl, cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place to rise.

Meanwhile, put the pizza stones or pan into the oven then turn your oven to it highest setting, at least 220C, preferably higher!  Wood burners typically reach between 350-400C so your domestic oven won't be hot enough but we can work around this.  Do this at least 1 hour before cooking to allow the oven to heat up to maximum.  Use the heat from the oven to raise the dough on the top of the oven but make sure it doesn't get too hot or you can kill off the yeast.

While the oven's heating and the dough is rising, make the tomato base.  Finely chop the onion and garlic cloves, then heat a little olive oil in a pan.  Add the onion and oregano to the pan and sauté over a medium to low heat until the onion is transparent.  Add the garlic and sauté until the garlic is cooked but not coloured.  Now add the tinned tomatoes and use a hand blender to blend it to a smooth purée.  Reduce the mixture until you have a consistency that's a little thinner than a tomato purée.  Leave to cool.

Now prepare your toppings; slice any vegetables you want into the thinnest slices you can, shred the basil leaves and drain and slice the Mozarella into the thinnest slices you can manage.

Next, get rolling!  First, prepare your surface.  You'll need a clean, good sized, flat surface to work on.  I use one of the kitchen work surfaces for this and it's ideal.  You'll also need olive oil and a rolling pin that's at least 30cm wide.  Oil the surface and the rolling pin to make sure the dough doesn't stick, then add one of the dough portions and roll it out into a circle that's around 10cm wider than your pizza stone or pan - once you take it off the surface it will shrink.  Take the hot stone/pan from the oven and transfer your pizza base onto the stone/pan.  Leave it out of the oven while you prepare the next bases.  Repeat the above until you have all four bases prepared.

Pre-cook the pizza bases in the oven for 4 minutes, being careful to make sure they don't start browning.  Also be careful to rotate the bases as our oven is hotter at the top and back even though it's a fan oven.

Take the bases out of the oven and spread the tomato base sauce on each of them.  Now add the toppings of your choice.  For an authentic Italian pizza, the toppings should be sparing, but it's up to you.  Once you've added your toppings, scatter the basil evenly across each pizza, then top them all with sliced Mozarella.

Bake in the oven for 10-15 mins until the tops and sides are nicely browned, making sure you swap over the pizzas and turn them at least once to get them to cook evenly.

Serving
Serve them with a salad of your choice and watch them disappear at a great rate.   If you're lucky, you might have some left over for tomorrow's breakfast - a favourite with the girls.  Enjoy!

By special request, here's my Limoncello recipe

I've been making Limoncello for a good few years now after I was given a complimentary glass in an restaurant in a small town in Umbria.  The owner served it to us straight out of the freezer and the bottle had ice on the sides so heaven only know what the strength was (beware if you're driving, especially in Italy!!!), however it was delicious so when I found a recipe for it I had to try it.  This is my version, there are no extra herbs, just the gorgeous lemon flavour.  I hope you enjoy it if you try some yourself.

Ingredients:

1 wide preserving bottle such as a Kilner jar, it must be able to hold 1.5 litres of liquid!
6 unwaxed lemons
1 bottle of  Vodka - the real deal uses pure alcohol but I can't get that.
225g caster sugar
500ml bottled water

Method

Wash the lemons and dry them.  Next remove all the rind from the lemons making sure you don't get any of the pith as it makes it taste medicinal.  I use one of these tools for this as it produces lovely thin slices of rind so lots of lemon flavour is steeped into the vodka.

Once you've got all the rind off you'll have a pretty good plateful of lemon rind and six bald lemons :)  I juice the lemons and keep the juice in the 'fridge as I use it for bread to keep it fresher longer, but you could also slice the lemons and keep them in an airtight container in the fridge for the G&T's or even candy them if you want to add to the Limoncello.  So, to return to the recipe, you'll have a plateful of lemon ruind something like this:

 Now you need to prepare the Kilner jar.  I do this by boiling a full kettle of water and adding it to the jar, making sure the hot water touches all parts to sterilize the bottle - be careful you don't scald yourself though as the water is very hot and tends to build up a slight head of steam!  Alternatively you can put the jar into a hot oven for 20 mins to sterilize it, but make sure you leave it to cool thoroughly and take the rubber seal off too or you'll ruin your oven :)  Once the Kilner jar is sterilized and cooled, add the lemon rind and pour in the vodka:

Leave this for 21 days in a cool, dark place (I add a reminder to my phone otherwise I forget!).  Next, put the sugar in a saucepan with the water, bring it to the boil and dissolve all the sugar.  Leave it to cool and when cold add it to the Vodka and lemon rind, strain the mixture into sterilized bottles (I reuse a couple of wine bottles washed and sterilized as above) and leave for a further 7 days in a cold, dark place.

Once the 7 days is up, server cold or even frozen as an aperitif or an after dinner drink.  You could also try adding a shot of Limoncello to a glass of Prosecco at Christmas for a nice Christmas aperitif.

Good Food and Good Friends, what more can you ask for?

Well, what a busy weekend, lots to do and lots to cook too.  Friday and Saturday I cooked some Chinese food, we're making the most of it while our eldest daughter is away as Chinese is one of the few foods she doesn't like very much, but the rest of us love it.  Both recipes came from Fuchsia Dunlop's book, "Every Grain of Rice..." which I can highly recommend, all the recipes so far have been easy to cook and absolutely lovely.  Here's a picture of Chicken with Chestnuts, Pak Choi with Chilli and some fried rice.

On Sunday we had a lovely day with friends.  The weather was really bad with pouring rain so what better to do on a Sunday Lunch time but have some Lancashire Hotpot with the traditional accompaniment of pickled onions and pickled red cabbage.  That hit the spot nicely and Suzanne cooked a wicked rhubarb and custard crumble pie for dessert, that was the highlight of the mean I think :-D

Today was a bit of a rush so it had to be something quick and easy, so I tried cooking Madrid style pork steaks - very yummy they were too, the pork was marinaded in lots of crushed garlic, paprika, thyme and oregano held together with a little olive oil, then flash fried in a griddle pan on each side.  Served with wilted spinach and mashed potatoes it all went down very well.

Tonight I couldn't be bothered to make Chicken Kiev....

So I did something easier!

This is my easy Chicken Kiev - the girls loved it and commented that if I didn't put it on here we'd never have it again as I'd forget it - they're absolutely right!

Ingredients

3 good sized potatoes
Olive oil for baking
3 small chicken breasts cut into bite size portions
5 cloves of garlic - yes, really, 5, trust me!
1 beaten egg
Approx 50g Parmesan, grated as finely as you can
A dessert spoon of plain flour
Salt and Pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 220 C.  Peel the potatoes and cut them width ways into 1 cm slices.  Boil these for 5 minutes in salted water then drain.  Add salt and pepper to taste and coat the slices in olive oil.  Next, put them in a shallow baking tray lined with foil (the washer-up will love you for this!) with just enough oil to stop them sticking, then bake in the oven on the top shelf for 40 minutes until nicely browned.

While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the chicken.  You'll need 3 shallow dishes for this part, one for the garlic, one for the beaten egg and one for the cheese/flour mix.  Crush the garlic into the first dish, beat the egg in the second then mix the grated Parmesan and flour in the third.  Slice the chicken into 1cm strips removing the fat and tendons as you go then add the chicken to the garlic and mix thoroughly with your hands.  Next, add the garlic coated chicken to the beaten egg to coat it, then transfer to the Parmesan/flour mix and make sure you coat it as well as possible.

15 minutes before the potatoes are done, heat a little oil in a ridged pan over a medium heat and add the chicken pieces.  Lightly brown them on each side, about 3-4 minutes per piece, but go more by colour than time.  Once they're browned, take them off the heat and add them to a second foil lined baking sheet and put them on the middle shelf of the oven.

While you're waiting for the potatoes and chicken to finish off, cook the veg - we had frozen peas.  Finally plate them up and feel smug with a nice glass of wine!  Start to finish took me 45 minutes.

It's Wednesday so let's have some quick and easy pasta

Had to be a quick one tonight as it was a work day, so I decided to make a Chorizo and Red Pepper sauce with Conchiglione.  Turned out really well and a big hit with the family, so thought I should get the recipe down before I forgot how to do it!  Here it is, this serves three people:

Ingredients

2 Red Peppers sliced into thin strips and halved
1 Red onion thickly sliced
Olive oil
75g thinly sliced Chorizo cut into small squares - I used three quarters of a packet normally put in sandwiches
4 cloves Garlic, crushed and chopped
12 sage leaves chopped across their width
A tablespoon of red vinegar
3 large tomatoes, chopped finely
200g Conchiglione

Method

Preheat the oven to 220 C.   Line a deep sided metal baking tray with foil and add the Red Onion and Red Pepper.  Drizzle them with olive oil and a little salt, then once the oven is hot place them on the top shelf and bake until slightly charred, approximately 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a small amount of olive oil in a frying pan, add the Chorizo and cook over a medium head for a few minutes.  Now add the chopped garlic and sage and cook until the garlic starts to brown.  Now add the tomatoes and the vinegar and cook until the tomatoes have broken down, most of the liquid has dissolved and the sharpness of the vinegar has gone.  Keep it just warm while the onion and peppers finish cooking.

Once the onion and peppers are just starting to brown, boil a pan of water and cook the Conchiglione - dried takes about 10 minutes, but follow the instructions on your packet.

Finally, add the onions and peppers to the Chorizo and tomato sauce, drain the pasta and then combine them together.  Serve hot and enjoy. - we did!

Tuesday is Fish day in the Ball household.

We have a market in Ware only on a Tuesday for some reason only known to the Council.  Now I din't work on a Tuesday I can go and see John the fishmonger and get some fresh fish.  Today there was aome lovely skate wings in so that's on the menu.  I also fancied a curry, so skate curry it is.

I cooked an Chana Masala, one of my favourite vegetable curries to go with it and instead of rice I cooked an Aloo Bogar.  We hadn't had this for years and it's made a welcome return to the table.

For the skate, I made a Masala spice mixture up for the skate from Atul Kochhar's recipe book, a lovely mix of ingredients that adds flavour without killing the flavour of the fish.  To finish it all off I made some Peshwari Nan breads.  it was a big success.

What to cook on a Monday?

I'm not at work today, but I've still been busy so I wanted something easy to prepare.  I had some nice pork loin from the local butcher, so what to do with that?  I know, pork with apples and cider always goes down well.

I browned the pork off in the pan and then cooked some chopped onion and garlic in the meat juices.  We've got plenty of apples in the garden so I grabbed half a dozen and peeled and sliced them up and added them to the pan with the onion and garlic.  Finally I chucked the whole lot in a casserole with a bottle of cider, a few crushed Juniper berries and some chopped sage leaves for extra flavour.  45 minutes later served it up with some nice mash and wilted spinach, hit the spot nicely, yum :-)

It's a horrible wet and windy Sunday, what better than a roast to cheer us up.

The weather forecast was not wrong, it's grey, windy and there's a lot of rain out there,  Just the sort of day too stay indoors and have a nice roast, so it's roast chicken today with home made sage and onion stuffing, roast potatoes, parsnips, sausage balls and some greens to go with it.

Made the winter vegetable soup today from the left overs of last night's meal and it's turned out very well indeed, better than I imagined.  I just sweated off an onion, threw in a couple of garlic cloves and added stock and whizzed it up, sorted.  I'll freeze it when it's cooled off and we can have it whenever we feel like it.  Home made soup is so easy to do, cheap and tastes much better than anything you can buy, I'm surprised more people don't make it.  No doubt there'll now be lots of you telling me you do make it!

Now back to roasting that chicken.  Bon appetit.

Today is the weekly shopping day!  As the cold, wet weather is back, this weekend is going to be spent indoors and what better way to spend time indoors than to cook :)

First off, I made some bread for the week ahead.  Home made bread, yum.  Delicious when first baked, but it tends to go stale very quickly, so how to stop that happening?  Adding a teaspoon of lemon juice to the dough helps here.  The lemon juice helps, but it still goes stale quickly, hmmm.  The answer is to freeze it.  Bread freezes really well but it's really hard to slice, buying an electric carving knife really helps here, it cuts really fresh bread into slices, then throw it in the freezer, then use only what you need straight from the freezer.  Problem solved!