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.