Lamb and Lentil Ragu

A delicious stew of lamb, lentils, and root vegetables cooked with tomatoes, red wine and herbs.

This goes well over pasta or polenta, and cooks fast enough in the pressure cooker to be doable on a week-night evening after work. 

If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can just dump all the ingredients in a slow cooker and let it cook for 8 hours.

Since this recipe makes enough for about 4-6 servings, I generally serve one third on the day, and divide the rest between tubs to freeze and eat later.

Persian-style Gluten Free Shortbread

So there's a bag of besan lurking in the cupboard that was bought for some long-forgotten experiment ages ago, and now needs using up.
Coincidentally, I had just rediscovered my copy of The Legendary Cuisine Of Persia, that had gotten buried in a pile of stuff.
So I was glad to spot the recipe for Nan-e Nokhodchi whilst leafing through - a simple shortbread made with besan, and flavoured with ground green cardamom.
I scaled the recipe up a bit from the rather small batch size in the book.

Peanut Butter Cookies

It's a damp drizzly day, and I found a half jar of nut butter in the cupboard that needed using up. So time to brighten things up with some sweet-salty Peanut Butter Cookies.

These are based on the recipe from The Kitchn, but mixed up a bit to match what was in the cupboard.

The Cofresh Sweet Chilli Caramel Peanuts are a recent find in the supermarket Ethnic Foods aisle. Very moreish, with just the right level of chilli hit to offset the caramel sweetness.

Hot Milk Cake with Pandan Kaya filling

So we went to Hoo Hing recently and as usual Random Things To Try somehow found their way into the trolley.

This time the things included a jar of Pandan Kaya, which turned out to be a thick custard-like spread made from eggs and coconut milk, flavoured with pandan leaf. My immediate thought on trying it was that it would make an excellent filling for a cake. Preferably a light plain sponge cake that would show off the filling's flavour without overpowering it.

This American Hot Milk Cake from Farmers Weekly sounded perfect, just needing a couple of tweaks.

I don't bother to keep self-raising flour AND plain flour, and of course when I looked in the cupboard there wasn't quite enough plain white flour left so it ended up being about 2/3 plain white flour and 1/3 chapathi flour.

West African-inspired Stew

Just a quick note before I forget what I cooked tonight cause it came out really tasty. I was reading through some West African recipes for inspiration, and ended up making this stew.
Makes enough for 6 portions.

• 2 tbsp Unrefined Red Palm Oil
• 2 small onions, peeled and chopped
• 500g stewing steak, diced
• 3 cloves garlic - crushed and chopped
• Diced root vegetables - carrots, swede
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 cup dry black eyed beans
• 2 and a half tins of water
• 1 small tin tomato puree
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Melt the palm oil in the base of a pressure cooker. Add the onions and beef and let the meat brown, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and let it fry for a moment too.
Sprinkle the herbs and spices into the pan, and stir in along with the diced vegetables, crumbled stock cube, dry beans and tinned tomatoes.
Use the tomato tin to measure in another 2 or so tins of water - enough to cover the beans.
Close the lid and bring the pressure cooker to high presure for 30 minutes.
Let cool down til the pressure is released.
Stir the tomato puree into the sauce to thicken it, and season to taste.

I served half the recipe tonight with steamed broccoli and potato wedges.
The other half of it is in the fridge for tomorrow night.



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