Shepherd's or Cottage Pie

Another easy weekday recipe noted here for my daughter's benefit. This is my take on the traditional potato-topped mince dish.

The name reflects the choice of meat: Shepherd's Pie when made with minced lamb or mutton, and Cottage Pie when made with minced beef.

A vegetarian version using cooked beans/lentils or reconstituted TVP instead of the meat, and vegetarian gravy granules, also works.

I usually make one huge pie, and we eat half immediately, and the other half reheated then next day.

Pan-fried White Fish

I've mostly gotten over the 'orrible cold I had for the first half of this week, but things still taste slightly weird to me. I'm still finding that I don't fancy the usual foods. I am still drinking gallons of hot mint tea all day to keep my throat moist, even if I am no longer coughing and drowning in snot between cups.

I can't face my usual salad for lunch, and have been craving natural yoghurt for breakfast.

Naturally, this all wreaks havoc with trying to decide what to make for tea, and I've resorted to comfort food and easy stuff that can be thrown in the oven and forgotten about for the last few days. Stuff like Cheesy Potatoes (boil some potatoes, melt some cheese over them - it's raclette without the machine) hardly rate as a recipe.

Today was another can't decide want something easy quick type of evening, and having used up all the packets of sausages in the freezer, it fell to the frozen white fish fillets to provide.

I sort-of wanted fish and chips, but didn't have breadcrumbs to bread the frozen fish, so I ended up with pan-fried fish to accompany potato wedges baked in the oven.

With only 10 minutes left until the potato wedges were baked, I pan-fried the still frozen white fish fillets in melted butter. Seasoned lightly with salt and pepper, and sprinkled over some bottled lemon juice. Popped the lid on the pan and let them cook through over a low heat.

After dishing up the fillets, I then boiled down the lemony-buttery-fishy juices until they thickened into a syrupy consistency, and spooned this sauce over the fish.

This was quick, easy, and delicious. And now noted here so that I remember to consider it next time I am tired and looking for something simple to do with frozen fish.

Mince Pies

It's December, and mince pie baking season is in full swing.

When baking mince pies, I use a particular pastry recipe that I copied from my mother's cooking notebook, and that she had copied from my grandmother's notebook.

It makes the lightest melt-in-the-mouth mince pies you could ask for, but it is a bit tricky to work with...

Sort-of Japanese style Soup Thing

Today, despite the weather, I fancied a light soup for dinner.
Possibly because I have a bit of a snuffly cold.

So I made this sort-of Japanese style soup out of a tub of homemade chicken stock from the freezer, various vegetables, leftovers and some random things I bought in Hoo Hing that have been sitting in the cupboard.

I say soup, but it ended up more as a big bowl full of lightly cooked vegetables and noodles with some soup underneath. It was light and delicious and just right.

My daughter especially enjoyed this soup, and wants it recorded here for posterity, so that she can make something similar herself one day.

Improving Shop-Bought Mincemeat

When baking mince pies in bulk - for an event or bake sale - even if you normally make your own mincemeat from scratch, there comes a point where you need more mincemeat, and need to buy some in.

Commercially made mincemeat can however be somewhat disappointing. Too often the producers go overboard on cheap spice-flavoured syrup or apple sauce and skimp on the more expensive dried fruit.

When faced with using a tub of commercial mincemeat that has been made overly-cheaply in this way, this is how I give it a bit more body.

Bolognese Sauce in the Pressure Cooker

A weekday night mainstay. Pasta with Bolognese sauce.

Cooked in the pressure cooker, it is easy to quickly put together a big batch of the sauce, which can then be portioned out into tubs and frozen.

Minced beef is the traditional meat used, but minced pork also makes a good sauce.

Sweet and Sour Mussels

So I decided to try something different for tea tonight, and bought some pre-cooked pre-shelled mussel meat.

I adapted a recipe for Sweet and Sour White Fish from my copy of Wei Chuan Chinese Seafood to cook them.

This is a bit involved, so cook the rice in a rice cooker, or use pre-cooked rice to accompany it rather than try to juggle cooking rice in a pan as well.



First mix the following in a bowl and let marinate in the fridge whilst you prepare the other ingredients.

• 250g cooked shelled mussels
• 1 tbsp sherry
• 1/2 tsp salt

Measure rice and water into the rice cooker and switch on to cook.

Next, mix the following in another bowl to form the batter, and set on one side to rest.

• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cornflour
• 1/4 cup water

Now, mix the following in a mug to form the sauce mixture.

• 5 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar
• 5 tbsp water
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 5 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tbsp cornflour

Prepare the vegetables.

• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 green pepper
• a few broccoli florets

Peel and coarsely chop onion.
Peel and slice carrot.
De-seed pepper and cut into pieces.
Blanch broccoli florets in boiling water and drain.
 
Drain the marinated mussels and mix into the batter.
Heat a deep fat fryer and deep fry the battered mussels until golden, then drain on absorbent paper.

Now to assemble the final dish.

Heat a couple of tbsp of oil in a wok and stir-fry the vegetables for a few minutes until lightly cooked.
Stir the mug of sauce mix and then pour it over the vegetables in the wok.
Continue to stir-fry it all as the sauce mixture boils and thickens.
Add the fried mussels and toss to coat evenly in the sauce.

Serve immediately with boiled rice.


My daughter said that the mussels weren't completely horrible but she didn't like them. Hohum.

Pumpkin Pie

It's just gone Hallowe'en, and I had bought two pumpkins - one to make into a lantern and one to bake pumpkin pie with.

The lantern went down a storm with the local kids, but I didn't have time to make pumpkin pie from the other one until today.

My cooking pumpkin was quite large, and I ended up getting two pies' worth of filling from it.

Kedgeree

The classic English fried rice dish. This works well with pretty much any kind of smoked fish - kippers, yellow fish (smoked haddock), smoked mackerel, or even smoked salmon.

It is as good cold the next day as it is served warm from the pan, so I usually make a big batch and pack half as the main part of a bento style lunch

Spicy Red Tomato, Pepper and Squash Chutney

The last of the tomato and pepper plants in the greenhouse are fading now that the days are getting shorter. So we've picked what was left, ripe or no.

Time for another batch of chutney.

I've been looking at recipes for indian tomato pickles, and so whilst this recipe is based on the Red Tomato Chutney from Home Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables, I have completely changed the spices used, and substituted peppers and squash for some of the tomatoes.

Tomato, Garlic and Herb Bread

To go with the soup made from yesterday's stock, some savoury herbed bread.

Several years ago I bought my parents a bread machine for Xmas, and it was my Dad who took up the making of bread. The idea of adding fresh garlic to the dough is his.

Chicken Stock in the Pressure Cooker

After the Sunday roast chicken has been eaten, and the last of the meat has been pulled from the bones and lies boxed in the fridge, there is still one last meal to be squeezed from the carcass. It is time to make stock for soup.

Into the pressure cooker goes all that remains: skin, bones and cartilage. Add a quartered onion and a sliced carrot. A couple of stalks and seedy parts from green peppers. Four peppercorns, a good pinch of celery seed, a bay leaf or two.

Now pour in a couple of litres of water - enough to cover it all. Bring to the boil. Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Let it hiss to itself over a low flame for an hour or so to leach the gelatinous proteins and minerals from the bones, to melt away the cartilaginous joint capsules into the water, to extract all the flavour possible from the last of the chicken.

When the hour is up, turn off the heat and let it stand and cool. When the pressure has released, strain through a sieve into a large bowl. Discard the solid remains, and put your stock into the fridge to chill. By the morning it will have jelled, ready to be made into soup.

Roast Potatoes

By special request of my daughter, so she can look up how to cook roast potatoes when she's older.
Here is my method for super-crunchy roast potatoes.

Skirlie

It's a Sunday evening, and so there is a chicken roasting in the oven.

Now, to many people, roast chicken demands sage and onion stuffing. But not me. My Aberdonian ancestry means that roast chicken demands skirlie.

Plum and Almond Tart

This gorgeous tart of lightly-cooked fruit embedded in a gooey almond sponge looks and tastes impressive, but is actually pretty quick and easy.

It's good when served warm from the oven as a dessert with cream or icecream, or when served cold to accompany a mug of coffee or tea.

Instead of plums, try apricots or ripe dessert pears instead.

Empty Jar Generating Lemon Loaf Cake

If you have been making much in the way of homemade jam or pickles, you may well have hit the point where you have things you could jam or pickle, but a shortage of jars.

Once you have already hit on all your neighbours, co-workers, friends and family for their empty jars, then there are places that will happily sell you empty jamjars and lids - prices vary from over a quid each (!) down to about 37p if you are prepared to buy by the hundred.

Alternatively, you can wander into any branch of Tesco/Sainsburys/Asda and pick up jam jars with lids for a mere 22p or so each. The catch is that they come filled with a free helping of cheap lemon curd, which you will need to empty out first.

Just scooping it out and throwing it away just seems like ... an unnecessary waste. So some way of using up lots of lemon curd is needed.

Lemon Curd wine would seem a little ill-advised due to the egg content (though at least one person seems to have tried to do that).

And then I found this recipe for a Lemon Loaf Cake on a forum post.

Using up lemon curd at the rate of 1 jarful per loaf, this quick to mix loaf cake is perfect for when you need a few more empty jars in a hurry. The cake freezes well, perfect for later use as trifle sponge, or just to have a cake in the freezer for emergencies.

• 100g softened butter
• 75g sugar
• 175g Plain Flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 jar of cheap lemon curd

Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line with a strip of greaseproof paper.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Measure all ingredients into a large bowl and whisk together with an electric whisk until it forms a light and fluffy cake batter.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, smooth out the top, and bake for 40-45 minutes until the loaf is golden on top and a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for a minute before turning out onto a wire rack and peeling off the paper. Let cool completely before slicing.

Update:

I have also tried making this as a lemon and ginger cake, adding 2 tsp ginger and 1tsp cinnamon to the mixture.

Update 2:

Replacing the jar of lemon curd with a jar of value marmalade, and replacing a couple of tbsp of flour with cocoa powder makes a decent chocolate orange loaf.

Update 3:

Though not quite in the original spirit of emptying a jar of cheap jam... I found Korean Honey Ginger Tea in the local Chinese Supermarket - it consists of finely grated candied root ginger in a sugar/honey syrup flavoured with cinnamon and yet more ginger. Substituting 450g for the jar of lemon curd yields a deliciously moist and fierily gingery cake!

Green Tomato Chutney

Last year I made what turned out to be an excellent Green Tomato Chutney, from a recipe I found in the DK Encyclopedia of Herbs, Spces and Flavourings, of all places. I made a few modifications to the recipe as I went along, in order to increase the spiciness, and to work around running out of some ingredients.

Of course, now I need to remember what I changed in order to recreate it this year - which is one reason for writing this blog - so I remember to record my experiments!


I think this is what I did last year - we'll find out once it's cooked!

Fish Pie

Fish pie is one of those traditional things that is unfortunately a bit of a faff for a normal week-night evening. Too many pans, and too many stages for if you're tired and rushed. Save it for a more leisurely night.

I generally make fish pie from frozen white fish, but some strange individuals have been known to adulterate it with smoked haddock, or salmon.

Bramble and Apple Jam

It's time for the last autumn jam of the year.

We've been gathering brambles round the lake by work and freezing them down until there's enough for jam.

This year we've also picked some of the cooking apples from an old Bramley tree in the hedgerow, so all the fruit for this jam was free.

Ham Risotto in the Rice Cooker

I make a lot of Asian-inspired rice cooker dishes, but tonight I fancied a more European flavour to my rice.

Rice cookers can be subverted into cooking a risotto. The trick lies in how a rice cooker works. A basic rice cooker heats the carefully measured water and rice mixture until the water evaporates, at which point the temperature rises above 100C and the rice cooker switches off.

To cook a risotto, you need to add more water than the rice needs to cook through, and manually switch off the rice cooker when the rice has finished cooking.

Best of all - with the rice cooker risotto method, there is no need to stand over the pan constantly stirring and adding liquid!

Mincemeat

I have an aversion to citrus - specifically orange peel. So I have never really eaten things that have candied peel in - which includes many traditional Xmas cakes.

However, one Xmas when I was growing up, Sainsburys decided to stock citrus (peel)-free mince pies. They tasted great - but they didn't stock them again, ever.

So, if I want to have mince pies for Xmas that I can eat, then I need to make my own mincemeat. Which means that I need to get round to making it in September to give time for the flavour to mature.

Fortunately, mincemeat is so easy that it really barely counts as cooking!

Bento Fillers - Tea Eggs, Miso Peppers and Chicken Karaage

We went to J-Con today, my daughter in cosplay wearing an outfit I made over the last couple of weeks out of an old school shirt and an old sheet.

Seeing as it is a Japanese-themed convention, I packed bento lunches. Homemade sushi - inari zushi and cucumber rolls. Vegetable gyoza bought frozen from Hoo Hing. Tea Eggs. Chicken Karaage. Miso Peppers.

Here are the recipes for the last three, all of which are pretty easy bento fillers that will keep in the fridge for a couple of days after making.

Paprika Turkey in the Pressure Cooker

A weekday pressure-cooked stew of diced turkey thigh and potatoes in a rich tomato, paprika and soured cream sauce. All it needs is some green vegetables to accompany it.

Flour Tortillas in the Flatbread Maker

Today we are having reheated Chilli con Carne from the freezer.

Rather than just throwing some rice on to accompany it, I am going to make some fresh Mexican flour tortillas. This gives a good excuse to play with my Flatbread (Tortilla/Chapathi/Roti) Maker.

Invented as a cross between a Mexican tortilla press and an electric frying pan, this sort of kitchen gadget was initially sold in America, and not really ever made for export to Europe due to a percieved lack of demand for making Mexican food in the home.

However, at some point some bright spark realised that Mexican flour tortillas and Indian chapathis are very nearly the same thing, and so tortilla makers started being made in India for sale locally as Chapathi or Roti Makers. From there they finally made their way across for sale in Europe.

Mine is a Butterfly brand from India, imported and sold through Amazon.

Butternut Squash and Fava Bean soup, with a Morrocan twist

It's Friday, which means that it's time to invent something to use up whatever odds and ends there may be in the kitchen.

There's a butternut squash lurking from last week's veg box, and a tub of homemade stock in the freezer that needs using up, so it looks like we have a soup.

Now vegetable soup generally means some lentils or split peas to thicken and add protein. So an excuse to try the British-grown split Fava beans from Hodmedods that arrived in a Flavrbox. And then there's the tin of Ras el Hanout, that arrived that way too, ready to give a mild spiciness to it all...

Time to get out the pressure cooker.

Afelia, in the Pressure Cooker

Today's after-work throw-it-all-in-a-pan special is Afelia.

A Greek Cypriot dish in which chunks of pork and new potatoes are braised in a rich red wine and coriander gravy.

In the pressure cooker, it is ready in under half an hour.

Cucumber Lime Cheesecake

The Cucumber Lime Jam with Vanilla that I made a couple of weeks ago tasted like it would go well with cheesecake.

So I adapted a recipe for an uncooked marmalade cheesecake from my copy of the Marks&Spencer Cheesecakes book to incorporate the jam.

Some Gluten-Free Pastas for Laura

My friend Laura has asked me to keep an eye out for gluten-free recipes for her.

So, here are a couple of gluten-free pasta recipes from The Pasta Machine Cookbook.

Homemade Fresh Pasta with the Pastamatic

Meet my Pastamatic. A lucky find on Ebay a few years ago, it has a strong motor capable of kneading pasta dough, and an extruder to form the dough into noodles.


Tonight, I am reheating a tub of pasta sauce I made a while ago and froze down. Since I thus don't have much to do to prepare the sauce, I have the time to make the pasta instead.

Fish Provencal

Another quick evening meal from frozen white fish fillets.

This time we're aiming for the flavours of Provence - tomatoes, olives, courgettes, aubergines, peppers, garlic and herbs.

Garlic, Lemon and Rosemary Chicken

I catered for a family get-together this weekend. This marinade on roast chicken drumsticks worked well on the buffet. The rosemary was a last-minute flash of inspiration.

Two Kinds of Melting Method Biscuits

Two quick melting method biscuit recipes. These were mainstays in any tin of homemade biscuits when I was growing up.

Spicy Carrot and Coriander Salad

I invented this particular salad a few years ago, inspired by the flavours in the vegetable recipes in my copy of the old edition of North African Cookery.

It has proved very popular. The strong flavours are a great accompaniment to barbecues and grilled chicken.

Slow-cooked Ham

A cheap gammon or ham joint cooks nicely in the slow cooker, and cooking one in this way is a good way to prepare cold meat in bulk for a large buffet.

Lobio Tkemali / "Russian" Red Bean Salad

Way back in the day, a regular feature of my Mum's salad buffets was something called "Russian Red Bean Salad", which involved red kidney beans in a sweet dressing made with damson jam.

Whilst looking through my copy of The Georgian Feast however, I came across a recipe for a Georgian bean salad with a plum sauce dressing, "Lobio Tkemali". The dressing is apparently typical of Georgian cuisine. It would seem that Mum's "Russian" salad is actually Georgian!

Slow-cooked Turkey Drumsticks

Here they are. A pair of shrinkwrapped turkey drumsticks. Yet another cheap cut for which the supermarkets insist on giving inappropriate roasting instructions on the label.

Guess what - this is another slow-cooking joint! This time you will need a large oval slow-cooker.

When choosing which model of oval slow cooker to buy, I went to my local huge Tesco's and took a shrinkwrapped turkey drumstick from the meat section over to the homewares section and tried it for size in the bowls of the models they had on display. Turns out some of the models of oval slow cooker on sale are too small for turkey drumsticks.

Samak bil Tahini

And now for a quick evening meal, using white fish fillets from the freezer.

Samak bil Tahini is a Lebanese dish of white fish baked with onions and a garlicky tahini sauce.

Chocolate Cucumber Cake

In today's exciting episode of "Argh! Not MORE Cucumbers!" we resort to baking them into cakes.

Courgette / zucchini cakes are widely-known-to-exist, and there are a few Cucumber cake recipes out there to be found. The similarity of ingredient proportions suggests that you can directly substitute cucumber for courgette / zucchini in a recipe and it should work.

Time to find a suitable recipe to try.

Rice Cooker Casserole

I have had a rice cooker for many years now - in fact I am on my second one. In that time, a "Rice Cooker Casserole" has become my standby thing to do when tired, or busy, or just when I have smallish quantities of leftover scraps of cooked meat and vegetables in need of using up.

It's all very simple. Measure the dry rice and cooking liquids into the cooker pan in the normal ratio, then pile sliced/diced or frozen veggies, and / or diced leftover meat / ham or frozen cooked prawns and the like on top of the rice. Add some herbs / spices / seasonings, put on the lid and switch on. And forget about it for a bit.

Slow-cooked Beef

Doesn't look very appetising, does it? One of those cheap, value beef roasts, the kind with reformed extruded fat on top. They are far cheaper than a decent piece of beef, but if you've ever tried roasting one, it turns out tough and flavourless. That's because it isn't a roasting cut of beef!

This is a slow-cooking cut of beef. After 8 hours in an electric slow-cooker with a few condiments, it will be soft, moist and flavourful. Trust me on this.

Pimms Jam

During my earlier Cucumber Lime Jam with Vanilla experiment, it occurred to me that an alcohol-favoured cucumber jam might work.

When it comes to cucumbers and alcohol, the first thing that comes to mind is the classic Pimms cocktail, in which Pimms No.1 Cup is combined with lemonade, cucumber, strawberries, oranges and garnished with fresh mint.

And so this is a jam made from that combination of fruits, and a generous slug of Pimms. With a little help from my other half for the orange wrangling.

Porridge Oat Pancakes

With all the homemade jam piling up in the cupboard, its time for a sunday morning batch of pancakes. I don't mean the paper-thin crepe style of pancakes though. To me, pancakes are what the English call Scotch Pancakes, or Drop Scones.

These are very filling, packed as they are with slow carbs and fibre. They also freeze well, so its worth making a big batch on a slow Sunday morning and bagging some up for quick weekday breakfasts.

Cherry Plum Jam

There is a hedgerow along a cycle path beside a light industrial estate near here that is full of Cherry Plum trees. It's getting on for the right time of year for fruit, so we wandered past there last night on the way home - and found that the fruit was ripe and ready. After a quick trip home for buckets and a stepladder, we picked several kg.

This morning's first job was washing and picking over the fruit, which left us with 6.5kg for jam-making.

Pressure Cooker Chilli con Carne

In the interests of completeness, here is my basic chilli recipe that I've been cooking on a regular basis for a very long time now. The presssure cooker shortens what would be a long slow simmer to a few minutes, making this doable for a work day evening meal without keeping everyone starving til after 8pm!

Baked Chicken Wings and Potatoes

Oh look, another throw-it-all-in-the-oven after work meal! I do cook stuff other than bakes on week day nights sometimes, honest!

The packet of chicken wings had been bought with a view to making something else that never happened and was lurking in the freezer needing using up, so I decided to turn them into an easy evening meal. This would also work with chicken thighs or drumsticks.

Sausage, Potato and Vegetable Bake

Another weekday evening, another throw-it-all-in-the-oven-and-forget-about-it meal. Homegrown green beans needed eating, and the potatoes had just been dug.

Carrot and Coriander Omelette

A quick, healthy, vegetable and herb-laden lunchtime omelette in a vaguely Persian style. Serve hot or cold, cut into wedges, with ketchup and salad.

Cucumber Lime Jam with Vanilla

Despite eating lots of Cucumber Raita, we still have a huge pile of cucumbers that need eating. This calls for desperate measures, namely googling to see if Cucumber Jam is a thing. And apparently it is indeed a thing.


The search turned up a couple of interesting recipes: this Vanilla Cucumber conserve recipe and this Cucumber Jam one.

Based on these starting points, I decided to try making a Cucumber Lime Jam with Vanilla.

Achaari Murg

To eat with the raita, an easy chicken curry.

Cucumber Raita

So we're back from holiday and of course the vegetable plants have been busy whilst we were away.

*Ten* large cucumbers in need of eating.

So here's one way to use them up...

Thai-style White Fish Curry

This is another quick-and-easy after work kind of thing. It takes about as long as the accompanying batch of rice takes to cook in the rice cooker, so I generally get that set up first.

Thai curry pastes are available in the ethnic aisles of large supermarkets, or from chinese supermarkets. I used Mae Ploy Red Curry paste today.

Coconut Milk Powder is also available from the same places - and is *perfect* for if you only want to add a small amount of coconut milk to recipes on an occasional basis as it lasts for ages in the cupboard whereas tinned coconut milk tends to go rancid after opening in the fridge, or end up languishing forgotten in the depths of the freezer if I turn the rest of the tin into icecubes.

Cabbage and Sausage Bake

The weather here has been annoyingly hot overnight recently, leading to me not sleeping properly and thus being too tired to feel like cooking anything involving much effort after work.

Hence, Cabbage and Sausage Bake. Its a simple shove-everything-in-one-dish-in-the-oven-and-forget-about-it-for-a-bit type of thing, leaving time for a nap before dinner.