365 days:Pork and noodle stir fry

Stir fried pork and noodles is a nice idea, but I think I OD'd on the noodles.  On the other hand, an excellent filling dish for the hard up, except that it only uses pork fillet.  It should have used cabbage rather than bean sprouts, but the usual fussypants factors applied.

400g pork fillet cut into strips, fry in 1 tbsp sesame oil and 1 tbsp hoisin sauce until brown (I added the hoisin after this stage).  Add an inch of ginger root, grated and 2 crushed garlic cloves and lots of chopped spring onions.  If adding shreddd cabbage add it now.  Otherwise add a mug of water and some stock, and a tbsp of sherry and two tbsps of light soy sauce.  Cook for a bit until tender, then add a packet of beansprouts.  It will be soupy - but when you add the vast pile of cooked noodles this will be remedied as the noodles will absorb the sauce.

This was OK - the recipe said 175g noodles, but I flung in the whole packet.  I think it would be better with more vegetables (cabbage and bean sprouts and perhaps mushrooms)  I will make it again with fewer noodles.

365 days Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Oh dear - I have very little to report.  I went to the supermarket, fully intending to buy all the wholesome stuff I hate -and forgot.  Apart from smoked salmon.

Friday was unbearably hot, and cluttered up with events, visitors, breakdown of the hot water system, and so on... so finding time to cook one of the healthy recommended meals didn't happen.  So we went out and I ate all sorts of things - lots of chinese food which is full of unecessary sugar, and hidden fats.  On the other hand, the portions were fairly small, so we didn't completely pig out.

Saturday was also unbearably hot - so we went to the beach.  It was lovely.  At 5ish we drifted into a bar, and having not had lunch, decided to eat there.  We called the boys and told them to cook themselves stuffed pasta.  I had a nice plated of fish and salad.  It was delicious.  I awoke at 6 this morning ravenously hungry.

So, in effect I have not been cooking.   I am cooking tonight.  Recipes to follow.

365 days: Steady as she goes: pasta with broccoli

Spent the whole day writing, so decided would do pasta.  This was good - I was able to recylcle the stew from last night - with a bit of extra fresh tomato and shredding the beef, and mashing the carrot and shallot it came out rather like a good bolognese sauce.   In deference to my veggie diet, I ate a pile of broccoli, mixed with mashed anchovy and chili mixed in with the pasta.

This is a version of the more elegant orecchie con broccoli - a favourite Sicilian dish, which is now fairly well known.   It involves frying chopped garlic in olive oil, adding chili flakes, several anchovies, chopped. When the anchovies are melted, mix this with nicely cooked broccoli, pour on to the freshly cooked orecchie (conchiglie are a good substitute).   You do not normally put cheese on this dish, unless you are doing this recipe from supermarket magazine, in which case you probably also have to include capers, basil and pink peppercorns...but don't!

365 Days: Tuesday Risotto

I adore risotto - and I felt rather excited when I saw my new diet allows as much rice as you want.  Only one plateful I expect, I don't think they realise how much I love rice.   I don't think I've written about rice before, largely because for much of my life I'm theoretically on a sort of low-carb regime - not very regimented usually.  So I don't eat it often.

Having eaten a vast bowl of fruit salad for breakfast, I had a couple of greengages at one o'clock, so it was not surprising we were hungry during our trip to see the glass in Canterbury cathedral.  We then had a late lunch, and by this time there was no possibility of cooking the ox cheeks I bought yesterday.  So the answer to supper had to be pasta or risotto.

This looks a bit like my risotto - I just can't get into
the habit of photographing my food.

What I would love is dishes like pumpkin, spinach or mushroom, or gorgonzola risotto, or even risotto with raddicchio which I've had in Italy.  However, I am catering for Fussypants Central here - so I am restricted in what I can cook.  I made a version risi e bisi which is usually a rather soupy venetian risotto - mine is nothing like it really.

Chop a small onion or a couple of shallots and soften them in 30g butter, stir in about 300g arborio rice, chop up some ham into strips or squares and add that.  Make up a litre of hot stock (on this occasion I used a Knorr stock pot, because my own stock was frozen) and when the rice is suitably coated with butter add a little at a time, stirring it on a low heat until the liquid is absorbed, add a little more stock.  This is a nice slow process and cannot be ignored - if you fancy just standing and staring for 20 minutes, make a risotto.   With the second addition of stock pour in "a cup" of frozen peas, or more.   Continue stirring and adding stock, when the grains are at the consistency that you want to eat them, turn off the heat, add another lump of butter, and 15g or so of grated parmesan.  Cover the saucepan and leave it to stand for 5 minutes, then eat.   With more parmesan if necessary.   I also added some chopped parsley to this..      

365 days: Ox cheek

They keep going on and on about it, but it's never for sale anywhere, and when one tries to find a recipe for it they are all pretty much the same.  I found some reduced in Waitrose yesterday and today I cooked this - my version of the stew, feeds 4 terribly well.  As pictures of the cheeks might offend vegetarian sensibilities, I draw your attention to cut No. 18 on the handy chart below.  I'd also like to mention No.16 - what we call shoulder, and I think the French call collier - another excellent, shin like cut. Most of the other cuts are a mystery to me.

Use a casserole for this.  Chop up two ox cheeks into large cubes, fry in one tablespoonful of olive oil until browned, add a bayleaf and 3 crushed garlic cloves during cooking.   Remove meat, put 2 small chopped onions, 6-8 whole small carrots, 6 large shallots and a thinly sliced stick of celery in the pan, add 3 twigs of thyme.  Stir about in the residual oil, add more if you are not dieting and you feel the need.  Salt the vegetables and turn them until they begin to change a little.  Return the meat to the pan,  if you wish you could sprinkle it all with a tbsp of flour, I didn't.  Add half a small tin (a generous tbsp or two) of tomato puree, a tin of chopped tomatoes, a small (125cl) glass of wine, and enough stock to cover the meat and veg and add pepper.  Bring to boil and cover.  Put into low over, Gas 2 for 5 hours.  The meat will seem impossibly tough at this stage.  By suppertime the house will be fragrant, and the meat will be extremely tender.   Eat with, for example, pommes etuvees and broccoli or other green veg.

I can't tell you how good this was, although being on a diet may be bringing on hallucinations. I drank a very nice glass of Grignan les Adhemar with it.  Delicious.   See my Quotidiana blog for further details of this curious history of the re-branding.

365 days: The diet

It's one of those diets where you can eat almost anything you like except junk food - so quite like my normal diet - with minute quantities of oil, butter and cheese... so it will be disappointing.  But I will make an effort.

I did not start today - simply turned up and got weighed.  I had not planned nice diety meal and I was starving - so we had fish and chips - for the last time in a while I expect!

Diet recipes to follow no doubt!

365 days: Irish Apple Bread etc.

I have posted the recipe for this before.  It's a sort of cake, can be very moist and almost rubbery if you over do the apples, and quite cakey and fragrant if the apples are sparser.  It is dead easy and I thoroughly recommend it, especially if, like me, you have a rather over-productive apple tree in the garden.

Our apple tree is weird - the apples are early with tough, tanniny skin, crisp flesh which becomes very fragrant and almost perfumed when ripe.   However, many of the apples fall before they are ripe, others are subject to the depredations of the local parakeets, and most of them have worms.  They are therefore only edible when peeled, and may be cooked in all sorts of ways.  I usually make a vast pile of stewed apple and freeze it for instantish crumbles around the year.

The apples do make good apple bread - a pound or so will yield less, but the distinctive perfume comes through.  The original version from my grandmother doesn't have luxurious ingredients like almonds in.  Here's the recipe again.

8oz/200g  self raising flour
4oz/100g  granulated sugar
4oz/100g  butter (chopped into small pieces) or margarine
1lb/400g  cooking apples, peeled and sliced
1 egg
pinch of salt, 1 tsp baking powder,
milk to mix
blanched almond, optional,
brown sugar and flakes of butter for toping

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, add chopped butter, then mix in the apple slices with the egg and enough milk to make a smoother mixture.   Put into suitable tin, lined with baking parchment, sprinkle brown sugar on top, with flakes of butter and flakes of almond if liked (this is not in the original - this is a luxury version!).  Put in oven gas 5/190 degrees for about 30-40 minutes until brown and firm.  Allow to cool slightly, peel off parchment and cool on a rack to stop it being too damp.
.  

365 days: 24 hours later

Well, after 24 hours of only eating 2 oatcakes with cheese, I decided I felt a lot better, so I cooked.  I'd found this doable recipe - and that means one that (a) isn't predominantly carbohydrate based and (b) does not involve non-obtainable ingredients  and most importantly (c) will appeal to the household.  Actually Finn doesn't like chicken on the bone...or chicken skin - but never mind.

"Greek chicken" a la Sainsbury's (with my modifications)

Slice 3-4 red peppers and cut 2 red onions into 1/8ths.  Put a thin layer of olive oil in a baking tin which will be big enough for 8 chicken thighs.  (You could use 4 chicken legs instead, cooking might be a bit longer).  Turn oven onto Gas 6.  Crush 2 cloves of garlic and mix into the oil, add a tbsp chopped basil (Greek for authenticity - but not essential).  Get the veg in and mix around to make sure they've all got some of the oil mixture on them.  Then put the chicken thighs on top with salt and plenty of pepper.  Drizzle with about a tsp of honey...put into oven for 50 mins.   Then add a packet or less of halved cherry tomatoes, a lemon sliced in 8, and a handful or two of kalamata (or other) olives.  Cook for a further 10 minutes.

At some point in the process make the following sauce: 170ml greek yoghurt mixed with a few stalks of mint leaves and another tbsp of chopped basil, add juice of half a lemon, and 1 tsp honey, then add 1 tbsp good olive oil.  Serve the chicken with about 75g crumbled fetta on top of pitta bread with the yoghurt sauce over it.  I did rice and a green salad alongside it and forgot about the pittas.   I thought this was utterly delicious, but perhaps the fact that I hadn't eaten for 24 hours was a factor.  Anyway - this recipe's a keeper - and I at the leftover bits cold for lunch and it was still good.

365 Days: A pause

I think the exaltation of dripping in the last post must have done it.  For the last few days I have felt progressively weaker, I've been very unfit, and now I am aching in the places I used to play (as Leonard Cohen would say - although that may be a topographical rather than an anatomical reference).   When one's health goes into such a flat spin, one has to take drastic action.  I feel totally weird, and have no appetite for food - which doesn't of course stop me eating, just makes me feel less enthusiastic about cooking.

My plan is to fast for about 2 weeks - I will drink water, I will consume about 500 cals.  

Since you probably don't want to know what I am eating (roast veg, veg soups, fruit, water, coffee) I won't be writing a daily recipe.   However, I expect to be back on Sunday 30th August, when I shall be cooking pork cooked in milk for the Vale Square party.  So, that's something to look forward to!

365 Days: Dripping

Ok, so today we had brisket again - and it was very good - I put a chopped onion in the casserole and this improved the gravy - and I made a pan full of yorkshire pudding.  We all like the way we have Yorkshire pudding here - like a thick, soft savoury pancake, a rectangular slab of gravy-sponge... however, I suppose, given that the commercial yorkshire pudding one is sometimes served in pubs, has a texture quite like polystyrene, suggests that the Platonic Yorkshire pudding is not what we have.

I think this is partly because we are too impatient to wait until it gets crisp - although it usually has crisp edges - I cannot really believe it takes 30 mins to cook as some recipes suggest - when I was a child we used to use a bun tin and cook individual ones - this was a faff since it required putting a few drops of fat from the roast in each hole and then pouring in the batter.  These cooked in about 10 minutes.   Nowadays the chance of getting that much fat from a joint is absurd.  

When I was a child, there were usually two or three pudding bowls filled with dripping in one of the cupboards (not the fridge).  One for beef, one for lamb, one for pork.   The dripping was used for frying (sometimes) or slathering onto the next roast, with a handful of salt, et voila!  The British roast was ready.  The jelly was scopped out and eaten on bread together with salt, and some of the dripping.  Nowadays, when I save the meat juices I am lucky to get a ramekin full - and the layer of fat on the top is usually about a quarter of the contents, the rest being nice, winey, herby jelly.   In my mother and grandmother's pudding basins, the jelly could be a tiny smear at the bottom, that you were lucky to find.  Pork seemed to be particularly lacking in jelly - but provided a very nice, white dripping, almost lard I suppose.



Where has all this fat gone?  Of course we are all terrified of animal fat - even though it has largely been proved that (a) it isn't that bad for you (b) your cholesterol levels tend to be hereditary and/or laid down in early life.  Mine are nice and low.  So, yes, you can breed skinnier, leaner animals and that's clearly a factor (lamb now normally has more fat than pork).

Recently, during the Great Frugality, I tried to use some of my scant resources of dripping to fry meat.  Remarkably I found it added a depth of flavour that other cooking mediums lacked.  We have all been vaguely given the impression that olive oil is the correct default frying medium, although I tend to use rapeseed oil, unless I want an olive/Mediterranean dish.    This is why I rather wish I had more ample dripping.  It has a lot more depth and perhaps a subliminal comforting flavour of memories.

In this paean to dripping (or should that be an encomium?) I am reminded of the rather mean-spirited vegetarian who once said to me "the thing about meat is, you have to add so many things to it to make it taste good..."     She'd clearly forgotten what meat tasted like.  All you have to do with meat is add a bit of salt - other seasonings are available.  I should have replied "Oh yes, unlike quorn and tofu - which are delicious eaten on their own.!"

365 days: The full English

In the last few days I have hardly cooked, we have had so many AirBnB people that I've been too knackered, I went out on Friday - leaving the others with defrosted meatballs and some left over peperonata which they combined and ate with pasta.   On Saturday we had fish and chips, and tonight, overwhelmed with hayfever, I ordered a Chinese.

However, I did cook a full English breakfast this morning, and there is one "recipe" I could offer from that.

Our visitors ordered and paid for a full English, and this is what they each got:  2 chipolata sausages, bacon, blackpudding, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, fried egg, baked beans and corncakes.   The unfamiliar object, the corncake, is a family staple since my childhood.  When my children were small it was something that you could usually feed them, and gave them some indigestible vegetable input.

Take a tin of sweet corn, add an egg and beat it in, add salt and pepper and then 2 tbsps of self-raising flour. Mix well, if very thick add a few drops of milk, but don't let it get too sloppy, it needs to be firmer than "dropping consistency".   Then drop spoonfuls of the mix into hot oil, shallow, not deep, turn once.   Very good with tomato sauce (important foodie note there).

365 days: Meat balls

A month in and I still haven't presented the meatball recipe.   We eat the bloody things all the time, because it's boy chow - dog whistle food almost.  I have tried various recipes and contents vary according to available ingredients.  I usually mix beef and lamb, or beef and pork and I make a large batch and freeze half of them for subsequent meals.

So about 400g beef mince, and 400g pork mince (this is the size pack the supermarkets sell); take 2-3 cloves of garlic, an onion, some parsley, all roughly chopped, put them into a blender and chop to a mush, add half the meat, whizz again, put into a bowl.  Take rest of meat, give it a quick blitz and add to the rest, add some breadcrumbs if you have any - not too many, say a cupfull maximum, lots of fresh ground pepper and salt, then some spices, I like cumin - about 1 heaped teaspoon. If you want them to taste Spanish add a spoon of smoked paprika or a bit of allspice, or ground coriander, or fresh coriander leaves if you have some that need using.  Use your hands to mix this all together and ensure the spices are worked in.  Roll the mix into balls, slightly flatten and put into a pan of hot oil.  They do not break up if shallow fried.  Turn them once and take them out.    Put a little oil in a saucepan and fry a couple of whole cloves of garlic, then add a carton of passata, add the meatballs, cook gently for about 20-30 mins with a lid on.  If you have some basil add before serving.   Or not? Serve either with steamed basmati rice or pasta, spaghetti is traditional in the US.  Or use in other things - e.g. on top of pizzas, or in lasagnes, or wherever meatballs are required.   They are nice cold too.

These are the meatballs they will be eating tomorrow when I'm out.

365 days: A fridge supper

No thought about cooking today - so had to hunt the fridge.  Shockingly, despite an Ocado delivery today, we had virtually nothing useful, i.e edible and appealing to all 3 of us (the cooked salmon wasn't used).

However, there were two saucissses de montbeliard (other smoked cooking sausages are available) aging cherry tomatoes that needed to be used, half a red pepper, parsley - so in the absence of any risotto rice I  made a sort of cheat's paella/risotto.

Fry two medium sliced onions in olive oil, or olive oil and butter, add a finely sliced red pepper and a crushed garlic clove and let them soften.   Measure a mug of basmati rice, sprinkle a few strands of saffron on it, add 1 1/2 to 2 cups of boiling water and bring back to the boil, add salt, put on lid and lower the flame, cook for 10 mins.  Then back at the frying pan, add cooking sausages in chunks (old lumps of chorizo could be used), then halve the cherry tomatoes, add them (a sliver or two of celery wouldn't be bad either), and then let them cook a little; frozen peas should be added round now and keep cooking and gently stirring.  Add salt and pepper - and a little smoked paprika if you have it.  When all the veg are soft and edible, put a couple of glugs of sherry in the pan and stir in.  If you have parsley, chop some and add that, then mix in the cooked rice, stir gently to get everything amalgamated and serve.

This was jolly delicious and tasted positively Spanish... 

365 Days: Strawberry Meringue roulade

Today's treat was strawberry meringue roulade, which I made for a friend's birthday - it goes quite well with champagne.

This is a Mary Berry recipe - I am not a great fan of the baking maven - but this is a very nice simple recipe which I did mess about with, by adding elderflowr cordial and reducing the amount of penitential yoghurt!.

First make a meringue with 5 egg whites, whip them until stiff, then add 10oz of caster sugar gradually, she says a teaspoon at a time, but we haven't got all day have we?, and a (heaped) tablespoon seemed fine.  Anyway, keep beating it in until it's nice and glossy.  Then put in a baking paper lined swiss roll tin - I think there's a pretty standard size - flatten with a palette knife and sprinkle with about 2oz of flaked almonds.   Put into a medium/hot oven Gas 6 for 8 minutes then reduce the temperature to Gas 3 and cook for a further 15 mins.   I went over the 8 mins, so had to open the oven for a bit to reduce the temperature quickly.

Remove the rectangular meringue from the oven and turn out onto a flat surface covered with baking paper.  Leave to cool.  Meanwhile slice up 250g/8oz strawberries and pour a tablespoon or two of elderflower cordial over it.  (or orange liqueur or kirsch or amaretto - this is my part of the recipe, MB doesn't do anything as daring as that!).   Then whip up about 200ml double cream until fairly stiff, and add a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt, add more elderflower cordial if liked.    Spread the cream over the underside (the non-almond side) of the meringue, then line the strawberries along it in two or three lines, and roll the meringue carefully along the long side.  It will probably crack up a bit - which is why that puritan of perfectionism MB says scatter caster sugar on it... but I didn't bother - my one didn't look much like the one in the picture - it was a darker brown.  Actually I think mine looked a bit more appetising and had a lot more flaked almonds on it - but was less perfectly tubular.

365 Days: Monday, Tuesday

Ah, it's a food blur really - on Monday we had 2 doctors' appointments, a washing machine delivery and a friend to tea.   So I didn't cook supper.  I did make brownies though - and managed to burn them.  They were still quite nice.   I wanted to make coffee and walnut brownies, but Finn would not let me use walnuts as he doesn't like them.

This is a sturdy old brownie recipe that I have been using forever, it's perfectly acceptable, I tweaked it a bit.

Cream 3 oz butter or soft marge, with 9oz sugar (caster or soft brown) add 3 eggs, a tsp of vanilla essence or (tweak: a tsp coffee powder dissolved in hot water), at 6 oz of melted dark chocolate, then about 3-4 oz of chopped nuts and glaces cherries - any combination you like.    Add a little milk if this mixture seems too solid.  Put mixture into a paper lined baking tray.and put in medium/low oven Gas 4/3 for about 25-30 mins - but watch it - depends how thin the layer is.

I do not have pictures of the slightly charred offering sadly.

On Tuesday I went out to a delicious lunch at a wonderful newish Turkish restaurant in Canterbury called Alla Turca (I can hear the Mozart as I write that).   As a result I wasn't in a mood for cooking in the evening, but we had some mushrooms that needed to be used up.    I made 2 sauces - started with two onions and a lot of chopped bacon - or the French poitrine fume - then divided into two pans, added oregana, garlic, slivers of chorizo and a tin of tomatoes,. in the other pan, lots of sliced mushrooms, salt and pepper and half a teaspoon of fennel seeds.  When the mushrooms were cooked, I added some cooked peas (and put the other half in the tomato sauce).  Then add a bit of double cream to the mushrooms - this is an ideal recipe for using up any slightly dodgy cream that may be on the turn in the fridge.  Neither of these sauces take long - so both will be ready more or less simultaneously when you've cooked the pasta.

365 days: Sunday - coconut cake

I am writing this entry in advance, because I am pretty sure we will not be eating anything much on Sunday.  In fact I can almost feel a takeaway coming on, probably fish and chips.   BUT I am trying to adhere to a recipe per day so....

Coconut cake
This is basically a rather grand Victoria sponge.  It can be made by the one bowl method.

Soak 2 oz (60g) desiccated coconut in a little milk; put 150g self raising flour, 125 g soft marge or softened butter, 125g of caster sugar, 2 eggs, a teasp of baking powder and a little vanilla essence and finally the coconut in a bowl together and mix well.  Grease 2 x 7 in (17cm) cake tins and divide the mixture between them. Cook for 15-20 mins in a medium oven - Gas 4/180 degrees.    Cool on a cake rack and sprinkle with kirsch/fine old arak/any old fruity liqueur you want to use up.   Spread with either strawberry or raspberry jam - or if you think it's all going to be eaten, fresh strawberries lightly macerated in lemon juice and sugar or orange juice and sugar or whatever you like, or fresh raspberries or fresh mango pulp.  Whisk about 300ml (or a little less 250?) double or whipping cream, flavour with a few drops vanilla and a spoon of caster or icing sugar.  Spread part over the middle of the cake, put cakes together and use the rest of the cream for the top.   Coconut flakes, quickly toasted in a pan and allowed to cool, make a good topping, as does desiccated coconut similarly treated.

This is a very nice cake.  It is usually fairly moist, but can be a bit hefty sometimes.  The baking powder seems to help, as does moistening the coconut.

A handy guide to coconut dimensions - flakes on the left

365 days: Saturday: pulled pork. Again

I have a feeling I've written about pulled pork before.   Yes, I have, because we ate it about 15 days ago.  On that occasion I wished to feed my eldest son with it, but he unexpectedly went away the day before I cooked it.  So I did again today for his benefit.   On this occasion is was better, although it needed more ginger beer I think.  However, I kept the skin on (against the recipe's advice) but made sure I got the oven temperatures right.

On this occasion I knew I would not be wanting to cook - so, shock horror, we had ready made coleslaw, plus a green salad with a nice dressing I made, plus a request for "potatoes the way Dad does them."
So far my husband's cooking has not featured much in this blog.  There is a reason for this.  However, he is good at heating stuff up and doing French toast, spag carbonara, and fried potatoes.   This involves parboiling the potatoes, then frying them when they are cooked to a state of firmness just before they could be mashed.  They are shallow fried.  I do not greatly care for this method of doing spuds, but it's all right.  Much depends on the potato variety used I think, dull potatoes are not good for this dish.

To follow we had coconut cake which is a family speciality, made in honour of the eldest son's trip to the US.  I would like to say the meal was a raging success - but a certain atmosphere reigned, due to his anxiety about the trip, and the way that this manifests itself in anger towards others.

365 Days: Zucchini fritti - Friday

I had a nice lunch prepared for a friend who couldn't make it - salmon with cashew nuts (this is a simple recipe a bit like the Monty Python favourite "rat a l'orange" - "that's basically rat with a dirty great orange stuck in its mouth"... this was a couple of slabs of marinated salmon, fried and scattered with dirty great lumps of toasted cashew nuts).  I also made zucchini fritti - which are unbelievably simple and delicious.  I noticed that there are an enormous number of elaborate zucchini fritti recipes involving batter, breadcrumbs, parmesan, beer, panko breadcrumbs (for those of you who really care) - and probably, for all I know there is one that uses goat curd too)



Take a quantity of zucchini - cut off any manky bits (most of the elderly zucchini in my possession are well endowed with these) and cut them into large matchsticks/batons/julienne strips - anything roughly 5cm by 1-.1.5 cm.  Put in a colander and sprinkle with salt - leave for half an hour.     Fill a large frying pan with a depth of oil - not very deep, but enough to cover the strips without letting them float and heat the oil.  If you can afford it, use olive, but rapeseed is perfectly acceptable.

Give the zucchini strips a gentle squeeze, put on a clean tea towel to dry them off a bit, then toss them onto a floury plate, cook them in batches in the oil, allowing them to brown on both sides, turning as necessary..  Drain on kitchen paper - they stay hot for a while and are good eaten lukewarm dipped in mayonnaise - or just on their own, or as a side dish with something else.  I am thinking of serving them with drinks...they are just so nice.  My sons hate them.