My local butcher stocks really good quality meat but doesn’t supply chunks of stewing lamb as by the time he has taken all the cuts of meat from the animal there is very little left to cut into pieces worth selling. For some reason though the supermarket does sell stewing lamb and so when I saw a couple of packets in the reduced refrigerator section I decided to snap them up and find out whether we like traditional Lancashire Hot Pot (we do)…

Some recipes for this dish call for lamb kidney but being a hater of all things offal I gave these a miss and made a simple stew of lamb pieces, 2 sliced onions, 3 carrots chopped into mouth sized pieces, 2 parsnips (instead of turnip which some recipes called for) and finely sliced celery heart (including the flavoursome leaves).

The meat was browned by heating a little vegetable oil to a high temperature then added all the chopped veg and sauteed it all with the lid on for a little while, I added a teaspoon of cornflour to thicken the stew liquor, some thyme and a bay leaf, loads of black pepper and a little salt. I then added just enough water to cover the ingredients. About 3 potatoes were sliced thinly (skin left on) and arranged in a pretty overlapping circles pattern across the top.

I then went to collect the kiddies from school and when I was giving them their tea I brought the hot pot back up to a gentle simmer and the casserole dish was then baked with the lid on for about 1.5 hours at a low-medium heated oven, then 30 minutes before eating the lid was removed, the potatoes were brushed with oil and returned to the oven without the lid so the potatoes could go golden and crunchy on the top.

It was really nice. We had it without any extra vegetables as Bealers was in a hurry to go out to meet someone but I thought it would have been even better with a portion of freshly cooked purple sprouting brocolli.

Mmm-mm. Whilst sorting out my cupboard I found 3 full bags of red lentils which is a lot for someone who only knows one recipe calling for red lentils. As we are keen to use up store cupboard supplies in light of my recent thoughts on food prices increasing but me being determined not to let any more of our income go on the weekly food shop thought I’d better increase my lentil repetoire.

A quick search on ‘red lentil recipe’ came up trumps as one of the first recipes I found (on the BBC Recipe website) was for a quick, easy and tasty sounding dish, was gluten-free and I just so happened to have all the ingredients for (apart from the cream so I just omitted it). I added a bit more cayenne than it called for too (2 teaspoons instead of 1/2). It was delicious and what’s more the Meat Lovin’ Husband thought it was tasty too. We had it with a green salad with a lemon juice, olive oil, sun dried tomato paste dressing.

Ingredients
175g/6oz red lentils
350ml/12fl oz water
110g/4oz cheddar cheese, grated
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
½ tsp cayenne pepper
a little lemon juice
1 large egg
3 tbsp single cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp butter

Method
1. preheat the oven 190C/375F/Gas 5.
2. Pick over the lentils for any sticks and stones. Rinse thoroughly and cook in a tightly covered pan with the water for 10-15 minutes. Check after 10 minutes in case you need to add more water. The mixture should cook to a stiff purée.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and mix in the grated cheese, chopped onion, parsley, cayenne pepper and lemon juice. Season to taste.
4. In a separate bowl lightly beat the egg, stir in the cream and pour this mixture over the lentils.
5. Grease a 450g/1lb loaf tin with the tsp of butter and press in the mixture.
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes until the top is golden brown and the mixture feels firm to the touch.
7. If you are serving this loaf hot, let it stand for 10 minutes in the tin before turning it out. Alternatively, serve cold with a salad.

• Rice flakes
• Millet flakes
• Toasted coconut flakes
• Raisins
• Mixed nuts (brazil, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts)
• Sunflower seeds
• Pumpkin seeds
• Chopped dried apricots
• Chopped dried dates

Mix together & enjoy with milk!

This recipe for Christmas Chutney is taken from ‘Delia Smith’s Christmas’. I made it for the first time tonight and have included it because it was really easy & quick to make. I can’t, however, vouch for how tasty it is as it needs about a month to mature in the jar before eating. It smells nice though and has lots of tasty ingredients in it. It took me about 10 minutes to weigh and whiz up the dried fruits and onions, a pleasant hour of simmering then about 2 minutes to spoon into 5 large jam jars.

I plan to give four jars away as Christmas presents and to keep one for ourselves to eat with cheese and ham.

Christmas Chutney

This is so-named because it is made with dried fruits, which I always associate with Christmas: prunes, dates and apricots. It’s dark, spicy and delicious with cold cuts, pork pies or hot sausages – and it goes splendidly with matured Cheddar.

Makes a 1 litre jar
Ingredients

• 12 oz (350 g) pitted ready-to-eat prunes
• 10 oz (275 g) pitted dates
• 10 oz (275 g) ready-to-eat dried apricots
• 1 lb (450 g) onions, peeled
• 1 pint (570 ml) cider vinegar
• 2 oz (50 g) sea salt
• 1 level dessertspoon grated fresh root ginger or 1 heaped teaspoon ground ginger
• 3 oz (75 g) allspice berries
• 1 lb (450 g) demerara sugar

You will also need a 1 litre jar and a small piece of muslin or gauze.

The dried fruits and the onions need to be chopped very small, and this can be done in a food processor, or with an old-fashioned mincer, or else with a sharp knife and lots of patience!

When they’re all dealt with, put the vinegar in a large saucepan with the salt and the ginger, then tie the allspice berries up in a small piece of muslin, or gauze, very securely so they can’t escape and add these to the pan. Bring everything up to the boil, then stir in the chopped dried fruits and onions together with the sugar. Leave it all to simmer very gently without a lid for about 1½ hours, or until the chutney has thickened. Stir it from time to time during the cooking period. When it’s ready, you will be able to draw a spoon across the surface of the chutney and make a trail that doesn’t immediately fill up with surplus vinegar.

In the meantime, the jar should be washed thoroughly in warm soapy water, rinsed, dried and heated in a moderate oven for 5 minutes. Spoon the cooked chutney into the warmed jar, seal well with waxed discs and tight lids, and label as soon as it’s cold. Keep this chutney for 1 month to mature before eating.

We had a really good harvest of pumpkins. We planted just four small plants in the spring and by mid-October had ten lovely big orange fruits. Most we have given away as gifts to friends who visited from London but some we kept, made lanterns with and also some nice tasty treats.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

A top treat after scooping out the indards of a pumpkin to make a spooky Halloween lantern or having made another pumpkin recipe. I saved all the seeds from two lanterns and two lots of pumpkin soup before I shoved the oven tray covered with fat juicy seeds into roast while I was cooking some fish at the same time.

1. Wash & dry pumpkin seeds, having pulled them out of the sinewy orange pulp.
2. Leave until you have enough to roast
3. Spread over a large roasting tin and drizzle with olive oil, season with a good sprinkle of salt.
4. Roast on a high heat for approx 10 minutes but keep checking they haven’t been burnt.
5. Remove from oven
6. Store in an air tight container

Easy Creamy French Pumpkin Soup

My french mother-in-law always brings us a pumpkin when she visits with my dad. She showed me the following recipe one year and I’ve been making it ever since as it is ’souper’ easy.

1. Fry a sliced clove of garlic in butter in a large sauce pan
2. Add diced, peeled pumpkin flesh (not the stringy stuff though)
3. Cover with milk (sometimes if I have a bit of left over chicken stock I use this too)
4. Boil for about 10-15 minutes
5. Blend in the pan with a hand blender
6. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.

I’ve just realised that I’ve stumbled upon a new improved way of feeding my children which has been mighty successful.

Instead of cooking a classic dinner such as spaghetti bolgnaise, fish fingers and mash etc with vegetables and then battling with them to eat up and finally, defeated hoovering most of the left overs up myself. I now don’t know what I’m putting on the table until a few minutes before and just raid the fridge for ‘grazing items’ bearing in mind that a good meal will have representation from the major food groups (carbohydrates, protein and of course the all important fruit n veg).

It seems to me that both children are now eating far more fresh fruit and vegetables than before as they prefer raw snacks and as there is a wide choice of things to pick from both are eating their fill of things they enjoy but occasionally tempted to try something they would not have previously entertained eating. They are also rarely eating processed food.

As an example tonight for tea I opened the fridge and grabbed the following and a delicious spread was provided by the time they washed their hands and sat down:

• Half a corn on the cob each (microwaved) with a big knob of butter next to it
• Half a pitta each
• Cherry tomatoes for Edie
• Sugar snap peas for Mo
• A wedge of Edam cheese
• A slice of ham
• A glass of milk
• Chopped apple for Mo / orange for Eden
• A fromage frais

Yum!

So now I try to have a load of fresh salady items in the fridge (carrots, celery, tomatoes, peppers, cucumber) and a fruit bowl full of fruit (apples, oranges, pears, bananas, grapes), a few different cheeses (cream cheese, cheddar, Edam), some meats (ham is a favourite, so is beef, tins of tuna in oil), a few bready/cereal options (pitta, sliced white, tortillas, crackers, rice cakes) fruit juices, milk, yoghurts. My son also loves dried fruits such as apricots, banana chips, prunes, cranberries.

One of my kids loves rice, noodles and potatoes but the other hates them so as a result I never cooked a kids meal with these things in. I do however cook extra rice or potatoes in the evening if I am cooking them for myself and Bealers, pop the leftovers in the fridge and have a very delighted child when they are presented with a small, cold bowl of beloved carbs to munch on.

This morning saw another flash of foodie inspiration. It was Day 4 of kids being ready to leave the house for school by 8.20am. Yesterday I was charging around the house at 8.19 looking for hairbands, flannels to wipe faces, shouting for them to get their shoes on etc so I told them today would be different. They were to get dressed BEFORE they went downstairs (a first) I told them this was because they are now Big Children and I know they won’t spill cereal on their school uniform. They were then to brush teeth and then they would be allowed to watch TV but only until 8am when we would all do final last minute bits & bobs before leaving the house (ie. not gawping at the telly until the moment we were due to leave the house and then announcing they needed a wee).

It worked like a dream and as an added bonus they were sitting at the kitchen table chatting to me pleasantly and looking at their reading books (what angels!) while I merrily made their daddy’s lunchtime sandwich. I asked them if they’d like some bread or fruit. They both ended up eating half an apple (one chopped in half to share as , some milk and some nice warm crusty baguette. I was pleased as am not convinced that they’ll last until lunchtime without a snack at school.

Mealtime grazing seems to be the way forward for the younger members this family especially now that they are having hot school dinners of a traditional nature (shepherds pie, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken neopolitan, vegetable korma this week).

We made homemade potato crisps which were very nice and tasty - they tasted almost exactly the same as a shop bough packet of kettle chips. We flavoured them with salt and pepper. It was quite a lot of effort for a smallish plate which was devoured in seconds but at least the kids now know how the things are made.

We thinly sliced unpeeled potatoes by using the vegetable peeler *around* the cirumference of the potato to give us a nice round shape crisp rather than peeling shaped, fried them in a deep pan in olive oil in batches (to prevent the whole lot from sticking together) and removed them with a slotted spoon before they became too golden, left each batch to drain on kitchen roll and then seasoned with sea salt and cracked black pepper.

When our friend asked if there was anything needing doing in the kitchen the other day I told her no because I only had to make a bit of coleslaw before we were ready to eat two minutes later.

When she asked me how to make it I made a note to myself to add the details here for those who haven’t discovered the joys of homemade ’slaw:

• A chunk of white cabbage, very thinly sliced
• A few carrots roughly grated
• Sping onions, finely chopped (optional)
• A big blob of mayonnaise
• Salt & black pepper to season

Put all the above ingredients into a bowl and mix together. It doesn’t keep for more than 24 hours but only takes 5 minutes to make and is great with burgers, jacket potatoes, chunky sandwiches (ham, cheese, salad).

(This is blatantly pilfered from my husband’s blog but luckily we exchanged vows in 2001 stating what’s mine is his and vice versa)

Ozficici Salsa

June 24th, 2007 by Bealers

For a while now I’ve been seeking the Holy Grail in salsas with my efforts to-date not really cutting it in both texture and subtlety stakes (though tasty enough and certainly spicy). So during this weekends Uptonbury I asked my mate Kurt Ozficici who’s a great cook for his recipe; he didn’t disappoint.

Ingredients

• 8-12 tomatoes
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 spring onions
• 1 green pepper & 1 orange pepper (others would do but we want some colour variations)
• A ‘good handful’ of coriander
• 1 Scotch Bonnet chilli (you could put less in, if you’re a lightweight)
• Good olive oil
• Lemon juice
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp crushed black pepper

I began by chopping the toms on a nice big chopping board with a good sharp knife. A key part of this process was to keep chopping over the top of the last one to further reduce the chunk size down. I also sprinkled the toms with the salt half way through chopping to help grind it all down a bit more. Once done with the toms they all went into a bowl containing a good glug of olive oil and taking care to not lose any of the tomato water.

To the toms I added very finely chopped garlic (crushed first), finely chopped peppers, chopped spring onion, micro finely chopped scotch bonnet (from the freezer and last years’ crop) and the black pepper.

Finally Kurt took a spoonful of mustard (apparently making it up from powder is better) the lemon juice (we only had it from a bottle) the sugar and water and mixed it up into a cloudy brew. This was added to the salsa and everything was mixed up into a delicious juicy, erm, salsa.

Yum.

• Large piece of steak cut into strips and marinated for a couple of hours in the fridge in natural yoghurt, lime juice (from a bottle hanging around in the fridge), Encona hot chilli sauce

• Boiled rice
• Tortilla wraps
• Chunky salad of orange pepper, cucumber, spinach leaves, ripe avocado
• Natural greek style yoghurt
• Salsa made from:
  • Tomatoes
  • Onions or Spring onions
  • Balasamic vinegar chilli sauce
  • Corriander (we should have this had but Upton shops don’t stock it so we are waiting to grow our own plants)