Still Here!......plugging my book!

Yes I am still here, lurking in the underworld of blogging......and as that fiend Moriarty would ask.... 'did you miss me? (I am a closet Sherlock Holmes fan....and yes...long before Mr. delicious Cumberbatch came on the scene!....I still prefer Basil Rathbone as Mr. Holmes)

I will admit that I have been somewhat neglectful of my blog of late and I promise to do better! but there are a myriad of things that fill my time and blogging is only one of them. Unfortunately it is required of me to do things that help put food on the table and pay bills so understandably, until this writing life can really pay its way, one has to get ones priorities right!

I do enjoy blogging about food but I enjoy writing on other things too. With one novel out there in the ether....yes....did you not know about it? It's called 'Rising Star' and it's available on Amazon for Kindle....hint hint!... It may not be Shakespeare, but it brought a lot of joy in the writing of it...... it's my third child......soon to be followed by a fourth!

It is the story of a woman, Tara DeBurgh, who has achieved a lot in her short life.....she has climbed to the dizzying heights of culinary stardom, is a mother, and will soon be a wife to the man of her dreams, but in one terrible day everything she holds dearest is lost and she finds herself abandoned and alone....the star has fallen.
Kalim Morgan is a rising star of Hollywood, an international celebrity with the world at his feet and the beautiful Faith Pendleton by his side.
When Tara's very different world collides with Kalims her troubled past returns to haunt her. Has she been right all along and love really is.....just a fairy tale?

It's a nice romantic tale.....does it have a happy ending?...well you'll have to read it and see!

I will get back soon to some exciting cooking I promise.....recipe for the perfect chicken sandwich and a spelt loaf currently in the offing......check back soon!

Perfect Pithiviers....or.....The Easiest Apple Pie!

So you've taken advantage of that marvelous supermarket bargain and bought a load of apples for half the price of what they usually cost or there was that B.O.G.O.F bargain where you bought one bag and got another one free....sounds great at the time especially if the family love apples!

A few days pass and although the family may have have eaten quite a few sometimes they go for days and not fancy anything from the fruit bowl, so there you are with a dearth of apples that nobody seems to be eating and the skin is beginning to wrinkle on them.
You may even be in the lucky position to have some apples trees of your own and have stored your harvest conscientiously over the winter but at this time of year the previous harvests apples are getting 'old' so if you can't make apple jelly or don't want to prepare them for the freezer then why not make pie!
'But I don't want to go to the whole bother of making a big batch of pastry' I hear you say...all that rolling out of dough and lining of pie tins, unless you are a well seasoned cook, can seem like a chore, but here is an excellent way to make pie that is just as tasty and suitable for the freezer if you don't want to bake them straight away.

Carrots Boring?....Never!......Honey & Orange Glazed Carrots

For some reason carrots have always been treated as second class citizens in the world of vegetables which I think is very unfair because this humble vegetable, although attributed to the poorer or peasant classes because it is and always has been the cheapest of vegetables, was a mainstay during the lean years of the second world war.
It could be that in the post war years carrots were viewed as a vegetable to be eaten out of necessity during harsh times and not one to be enjoyed simply for its flavor! In turn my own parents generation, i.e. those children brought up during the war years, probably equated the carrot with misery rather than pleasure and so relegated it to the background in favor of newer, more exotic vegetables. But still today carrots are seen as useful items in cooking rather than something that could hold pride of place on the dinner table as a dish in its own right.

I am a lover of carrots and the variations of how you can prepare, cook and serve them are numerous. From vegetable filled casseroles, to tasty soups, a 3 vegetable mash of carrots, parsnips & swede, to being grated and enjoyed in salads or even in sweet muffins and spicy cakes...or a family favourite which is grated carrot in orange jelly, wonderfully refreshing along with a summer salad! But as I said before, in their own right they can be cooked and served as a side dish to accompany pretty much any sort of meal from fish to poultry to meat. They are particularly delicious with the old Sunday roast and this dish of carrots with a honey and orange glaze really shows off the unique flavor of this vegetable.

2 for 1 - A Tasty Veggie Stew & A Veggie Cobbler with Cheesy Soda Scone Crust

I am the self professed queen of batch cooking and tend to be smugly proud when I amaze my friends by stretching cheaply bought ingredients to make multiple items and these two dishes are good examples of making a big batch of one thing which in turn evolves into other things.

When I go shopping I always have a contingency fund with me so if I do see something that is on offer that I know I can make something from or freeze, then I have that little extra to purchase it, but do make sure that you do something with it as soon as you can, don't leave it lying around to go off, it's not much of a bargain then is it! So I usually make this vegetable stew when the majority of ingredients i.e. the vegetables, are on offer, and they regularly are.....I love those 49p bargains!

Clemenza's Creations.....The 'Godfather' of all meatballs!

If you were to take a look in my shopping trolley you would find pretty much the same groceries week in, week out. I can hear you thinking.....is it not boring buying the same foods all the time? well it could be but I do have a reason behind this. Just like many other single parents and families out there, I am not in a position where I can enjoy an extensive or limitless budget when it comes to food shopping. I need to strictly budget myself weekly, and under such circumstances after a while you tend to learn who has the best quality products at a price to suit you and you tend to stick to that....this works well for me and my family so if it's not broke don't fix it I always say. As for buying the same things each week being boring? well no, it's not what you buy...it's what you do with it! So each week in my trolley you will find, among other things, minced pork, onions, garlic, cabbage, peppers and fresh chillies. I could make probably ten different dishes using these ingredients with the addition of the odd store cupboard staple, so not as boring as you might believe!

Another family favorite dish, using the above ingredients, are these huge meatballs inspired by Clemenza the Mafia character in one of my favorite movies 'The Godfather', who makes a 'deadly' meatball sauce! Meatballs are synonymous with Italians and Sicilians although the dish of meatballs and spaghetti didn't actually originate in Italy itself, it came into being when Italian / Sicilian's began immigrating to the USA in the late 1880's. Minced meat and canned tomatoes were cheap staples for these immigrants and as spaghetti was the only Italian food item available in the shops at that time, they began to eat the two together, and so spaghetti and meatballs as a dish was born.

These meatballs are tasty and moist. The vegetables and porridge give a soft texture and help retain moisture, and the smoked paprika blends well with the heat of chillies.

The Beauty of Bread - Mediterranean style!

Baking out of the ordinary breads to compliment other foods is not a difficult task, all you need is a reliable basic dough recipe.... and a bit of imagination. You can add whichever flavorings you like, from herbs and vegetables, to meats and spices,  to cheese.......some examples are pancetta and onion....but do fry the pancetta and sweat off the onions and let them cool before adding then to your raw dough! you can also try saffron & sun dried tomato, olive & rosemary, sage & apple, cheese and chive.......oh the combinations are limitless, so try some experimentation for yourself!

For this example I prepared a single batch of the basic dough from which I made two different types of bread...... I love the flavors of the Mediterranean so I made Black Tapenade Spiral rolls and a Tomato & Basil Swirl loaf.

Tapenade is a puree of olives, usually black, with garlic, olive oil, anchovies & garlic, for the tomato & basil I used a sun-dried tomato & basil pesto.....for convenience both can be bought from a good deli or from most supermarkets. I do like proper deli ones though as they tend to have fresher flavors compared to the products that come in jars....if you are adventurous in the kitchen you can make your own!

For the basic dough you will need...........

500 g strong white bread flour
2 x 7 g sachets of dried yeast
1 level teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons castor sugar
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
approx 250 - 300 mls hand hot water

2 - 3 tablespoons black tapenade
1 - 2 tablespoons tomato & basil pesto

How to......

spread with a thin layer of tapenade 

• sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, add the yeast and sugar, mix around
• add the olive oil and begin to mix on a slow speed
• add the water a little at a time until the dough begins to come together
• mix on medium speed until the dough is smooth and comes away cleanly from the sides of the bowl
• turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for two minutes
• roll into a round ball and cover with your mixing bowl, leave to rise for 20 minutes

with tomato & basil pesto 

• knock the dough back by kneading it until smooth again then divide into two balls
• roll the first ball in a rectangular shape and spread with a thin layer of the tapenade
• roll up the dough into a sausage shape
• slice the dough at an angle and place the spiral slices on a baking sheet
• roll out the second ball in a round flat shape, spread on the tomato pesto
• fold the dough over onto itself twice to achieve a loaf shape, place on a baking sheet and score the top with a sharp knife

L - tapenade spirals R - tomato & basil swirl loaf

• allow the breads to rise again for another 30 minutes
• bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 oC for approx 20 minutes or until nicely browned......the tapenade spirals will be ready before the tomato loaf so bake them on separate trays

Serve these with soups, salads or with main course dishes, the tomato bread is also delicious toasted and served with goats cheese or even pate spread on top, try melting some cheddar on top and serving with soup for a light lunch...... the tapenade bread is perfect for dipping in or mopping up the gravy of a rich, wine soaked stew.......bon appetit!

Topsy-Turvy Toastie!

When I was a wee slip of a girl, on a Sunday night if we weren't having pancakes for tea, then we would be eating toasties. A toasted sandwich must be one of the easiest meals to make and even if you aren't able to boil water, you can usually make a toastie.

Toasties are one of those simple things, like a pizza, that can be anything you want it to be, with their combinations of fillings only limited by our imaginations. You don't have to possess one of those fancy grill machines either, a toasty can be cooked on a flat griddle, in a frying pan....a la Elvis! or simply fling it into a hot oven.

But who decreed that a toastie had to be a filling between two slices of bread? well no-one as far as I know, so an alternative way of enjoying the 'toastie' is to deconstruct it..... and deconstructing things seems to be all the rage in today's culinary scene!.......in other words, we take all those delicious elements usually required for our dish and rearrange them in a style to suit ourselves.

This dish involves having the crisp toast, using 'biscotte 'style bread, as the base, our meat filling in the centre and a melting, saucy little top!

'Cheaper than Chips' Ham Hock - and what to do with it!

The ham 'hock' or 'knuckle' is literally the ankle of the pig. Although there may be a lot of bone in this cut, you can get lucky and find one with quite a lot of meat on the bone!
Ham hocks are readily available and extremely popular around here, but you may have to ask your butcher. They come in both smoked and salt cured varieties. I don't think you will ever find one that is not cured in some form or other.
Although you will always have to buy your hock with the bone in, you couldn't ask for anything more reasonable in cost, the joint I bought above cost the grand sum of £1.49! and with enough meat to feed 4 people.....amazing!
But the ham hock has other uses than just it's delicious meat. It will always come with the skin attached which you can use to make that scrumptious delicacy 'crackling', and once your hock is cooked you will have a fabulous stock that makes a great base for a tasty sauce or a soup such as green pea & ham, or bacon, butternut squash & lentil.

Banana Bran Muffins

You know the story, you buy a bunch of bananas that still have a touch of green to their yellow jackets and you think they will last you through the week and will ripen delightfully in your fruit bowl, you get them home and two days later they mysteriously begin to turn black from the outside in but there is no sign of ripeness in the still firm flesh....it's frustrating because they are not very appetising to look at and when you open them there are mushy black spots dotted all over the otherwise hard flesh..... it's such a waste to dispose of them and if you wait for them to 'ripen' they will be beyond black!, so what to do? When life sends you yucky bananas then it's time to make MUFFINS!