A day in the life of my Rayburn

Got up to another showery day, with gaps between the showers too brief for a walk, and the flue on my fire requiring a bit of attention so a studio day out of the question, all leaving me a bit loose endy feeling.

So I reverted to my default setting for a rainy day, I lit the Rayburn and spent the day cooking.

I started by playing a little game I like to call  'Deep Freeze Tease', which basically involves finding random unlabelled packages in the chest freezer and cooking something out of the contents.

Today I found:

2 duck breasts
1 small joint of shin of beef
1 handful of chestnuts
5 hot dog sausages

which translated to:

1 spicy chinese duck with noodles
1 beef curry
1 mediterranean beef casserole
6 spicy beef kebabs
10 sausage rolls

So here are my recipes for June

Spicy Beef Kebabs

500g  lean beef 
3 slices of bread
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
4 tablespoons of dried parsley
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of tomato puree


I started by piling all the ingredients into my food processor and whizzing them all up together.

If you are going to barbeque these, then make sure you soak the kebab sticks, but as I am going to grill mine I haven't bothered.

Flour your hands and take a golfball size of mix and roll between your palms to create a sausage shape, then push the stick up through the centre.  Coat with flour and leave to set in the fridge for at least an hour before cooking.

 This the joint I found in the freezer, as you can see it is not that big, but it was half price, and that is always a selling point.

After taking the bit required for the kebabs, I cut the rest up into little chunks and spread them out between two further dishes, a curry (on the right) and a light summery mediterranean casserole.



Mediterranean casserole

2 large onions roughly chopped
1 kilo of tomatoes roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic
500g of lean beef cut into small cubes
1 large courgette cut into chunks
12 pitted black olives

Fry all the above in a little olive oil, then add a litre of water and a veggie stock cube and leave to cook overnight in a Rayburn or 4 hours at 150°C, season and serve with hot crusty freshly baked bread.

Spicy Duck Noodles

Marinade ingredients:


2 cm of fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 fresh red chilli
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
2 limes
1 tablespoon of sesame seeds
1 teaspoon of chinese 5 spice powder
1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper

Blitz everything up together in a food processor.

2 duck breasts
1 small glass of wine
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
250g of dried rice noodles

Take 2 duck breasts or chicken or pork or whatever meat you have, and cube, then stir over the marinade and leave for about 4 hours in the fridge.

Scoop the meat out of the marinade with a slotted spoon and fry.

Once browned add back in the marinade juices and leave to cook for a couple of minutes. 

In the marinade dish break up the dried noodles and pour over enough hot water to just cover the noodles, cover and leave for 5 minutes, enough time for the noodles to swell and soften and absorb most of the water. 

Add the noodles to the meat pan, pour over a little glass of wine and finally add a teaspoon of brown sugar to thicken and sticky up the sauce.

And finally, what are you supposed to do with 5 random hot dog sausages and a handful of chestnuts.....

....well sausage rolls of course.

Chestnut Sausage Rolls

Whizz up some hot dog sausages with a couple of teaspoons of whole grain mustard and a handful of blanched and peeled chestnuts.

Roll in some pastry, either filo or flaky, whichever you have or whichever you like to make, I like to make neither but usually have a roll of flaky in the fridge for tarts and the like.

Bake in the oven at 180°c for 20 minutes and eat either hot or cold. 

Well - that's the rainy day cooking over, just enough residual heat to make me a pot of coffee!

What's for dinner tonight.....

 

Continuing the theme of leftovers this week - poor family, they have been fed a smorgasbord of leftovers this week - old grotty ham from the fridge in quiches, soft squidgy tomatoes in yet more quiches, frozen chilli con carne leftovers in pasties, and limp hot dogs and out of date ready roll flaky pastry for sausage rolls.

But tonight I am going one better, the whole dinner is made up of random leftovers I found when making space in the freezer in the barn, so here goes:

Take a couple of handfulls of frozen cherry tomatoes

About 1 large chopped leek

A bowlful of frozen french beans

and 8 random chestnuts

Unfortunately I did not peel the chestnuts before freezing them, therefore first things first, boil the chestnuts for a couple of minutes then while still hot, peel the bitter skin off, although this does scald your fingers, it is much easier to do while the chestnuts are hot.  Once peeled, roughly chop the chestnuts.

In a large pan, pour in a tablespoon of olive oil, then the chopped chestnuts, a couple of grinds of black peppercorns, and 2 cloves of garlic just smashed up with the blade of your knife.  Fry for a couple of minutes, then add a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of paprika, and a teaspoon of dried chillies.

Add the leek to the pan (no need to defrost), fry until the leek is soft, then add the cherry tomatoes, and continue frying until the tomatoes are soft too.  

Add a litre of chicken stock, the beans and leave to cook for about 8 minutes, until the beans are cooked through.

To finish, a big pinch of dried oregano, stir through and serve as a side to whatever meat you have knocking around, we had ours alongside some beef steaks I bought reduced a while ago.  Mop up the juices with a couple of doorstep wedges of homemade multi grain bread.

I find my family can manage to stomach leftovers if served alongside some good thick portions of quality meat, pork chops, roast chicken legs and beef steaks.

French onion soup with a Tuscan twist

OK - so the photo does not do it justice. In fact it looks pretty awful. Good job it tastes totally yummy.

I call it a French onion soup with a Tuscan twist - because it has cured ham in it - and apparently that is a Tuscan touch to a traditional French recipe.

So here is the recipe and my economical cooking method.

French Onion Soup with a Tuscan twist

4 large white or yellow onions
1 red onion
2 rashers of pancetta cut into lardons
2 litres of chicken stock
1 large baking potato
3 tablespoons of dried parsley

Use a heavy bottomed, cast iron pan with a lid if you have one.

Chop the onions thinly, then fry in a tablespoon of olive oil, with some generous twists of pepper and the lardons.

This is not a lot of oil, but the fat from the lardons will help the frying, when it starts to dry out in the saucepan, add a bit of water rather than any more oil, cover and leave the onions to sweat for a couple of  minutes until they are starting to become translucent and soft.

Add the stock and bring to the boil - taste and season if you need to, but the pancetta is quite salty so go carefully if adding more salt.

Cut the potato into small cubes, less than a centimetre, without peeling, then add to the soup and just bring it briefly back to the boil.

Then turn off the heat and cover the saucepan with its lid - then cover again with a layer of aluminium paper.

Leave to stew in its own heat while you go off and do something more interesting - I went for a 5km walk with the dog and came back starving.

To serve, just heat up - the small cubes of potato will have cooked in the residual heat in the pan and their starchiness will thicken the soup, throw in the parsley, stir through and munch a bowlful with some home baked bread.

With a helping hand from Ferguson

Today it is lovely and sunny, and rather warm for an autumnal day, which goes some way to making up for the fact that it has dropped below freezing for the last three nights, in fact last night it got down to -5°c.

Meaning of course that things are dying off in the garden, first to go were all the pumpkin plants, all those thick stalks full of water have no chance when it  keeps freezing, consequently no champion sized pumpkins this year, but a plentiful crop nonetheless, now with their backsides drying in the sun before heading underground for winter storage.

The next thing to go were all the tomato plants outside.  Those in the greenhouse are all doing fine, although I am doubtful that they will all go red in there before the heavy frosts start.

And some things are remarkably resilient, have reseeded themselves and are going rather well already - radishes of course.

Took a third cut of my cut and come again broccoli heads today as well, and here are half of them boiled up ready to make a broccoli quiche slice for lunch.

Line a tin with some flan pastry, then add in the cooked florets of broccoli.

Make a basic quiche mix, a good way of using up surplus eggs, I use 5 or 6 eggs, 250ml of cream, 1/2 teaspoon salt, lots of black pepper, a tablespoon of dried herbs usually parsley and 1/2 teaspoon of paprika.  I know that using cream does not make for a healthy quiche, but it does taste lots better.

Add the broccoli - if I had any spare bits of sandwich ham I would have added this too, but as the fridge is bare, veggie slice only on the menu.

Top with some slices of ripe tomato, then bake in the oven for 35 minutes at 180°C.

Serve hot or cold with salad for a tasty quick lunch.

And just to prove how hard my inner nerd worked - here is my wardrobe all aired, refolded, neatened, straightened and sorted.

You name it the cats have slept in it today....

Went to hang out the washing, three cats asleep in the washing basket, cleaned the fruit bowl out, Thea's kitten decided it made the best bed, tried to clean the window, kittens asleep over the window sills, you name it and they have been there today.

Very busy morning catching up on my own housework before work, then back at 5 to consider what we are going to have for dinner.

Leftovers again it looks like, but how to make them interesting.

Here is my ultimate VERY LAZY STUFFED MARROW recipe.

1. Be lazy and leave the courgettes in the garden until they grow into marrows.
2. Finally get round to cutting the largest marrow you can find.
3. Dig around in the freezer until you find an unlabelled carton of something that you think is beef stew leftovers.
4. Cut the marrow into rings about 7 cms deep and scoop out the seedy bit in the middle.
5. Place rings in an oven proof dish.
6. Hack at the frozen solid leftovers until you have enough bits small enough to place in the hollowed out marrow.
7. Add a couple of limp carrots chopped into little rings.
8. Pour in enough water to come half way up the marrow, season well.
9. Cover and put in the oven at 200°C for an hour.
10. Eat on your lap in front of the TV.

Invasion of the courgettes

You turn your back on them for one day and they have taken over. The invasion of the courgettes has begun.

 Time to once again delve deeply into the recipe searches to find something interesting to do with them.

Today's courgette recipe idea is courtesy of the Smitten Kitchen website.  I found this by following a link from a link from a link, a chain that started by clicking on the 'next blog' button on the taskbar - a sure fire way to get lost in space for a couple of hours.

I am making an adaptation of her ratatouille tart.

Courgette Tart


On this occasion I am in complete agreement with the smitten kitchen, summer is too short for making pastry, so I am using ready rolled feuillette pastry - a type of puff pastry readily available in the chiller cabinet here in France.

Roll out over a baking tray, and smear on a fine layer of tomato puree.

Then layer on thin slices of aubergine and courgette.

Add a sliced ripe and and juicy tomato, then drizzle with a little garlic infused olive oil, and some freshly ground black pepper.

Just before baking, add some mozzarella roughly torn into chunks and a generous spinkle of dried or fresh basil leaves.

°

Bake at 180°C for 30 minutes.

Serve warm or cold for a summery lunch or as we are tonight, as a side dish for some barbequed pork chops.

Seven Courgettes

Harvested my first seven courgettes from the garden today.

So tonight we will be eating....

Courgette and Bacon Frittata


I usually use 1 medium sized courgette per person, and 1 slice of bacon per person and adjust the eggs  accordingly.


Heat some veg oil in a non-stick frying pan, fry courgettes, bacon and a large onion chopped finely, for a few minutes until the onion is soft and golden.


For the frittata mix:

2 tbspn fresh thyme
1 tbspn fresh rosemary
2 eggs
salt and pepper

Whisk together, then pour over the courgettes, bacon and onion in the pan, season a little more if required - depends on the saltiness of your bacon usually.

Cook over a low heat for about 4 minutes, or until set, then grill for a couple of minutes to brown the top, garnish with a few fresh leaves of thyme.

The frittata will be accompanied tonight with some freshly dug salad potatoes, boiled in their skins, then once cooled, a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise stirred through them, seasoned and a liberal sprinkling of freshly chopped dill fronds.

Off to watch the fireworks later for our local town's summer festival, bands in the street, a fair with rides, tables and chairs in the road outside the cafe, free fireworks set to music.  Lovely.

What's better than 14 jars of cherry jam?

Well - 14 jars of cherry jam and 2 litres of cherry vodka steeping away.

Had a lovely afternoon picking cherries and chatting with friends, then came home and got stuck into making jam.

The Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Cherry Jam Recipe.


Rinse cherries through a colander, then squeeze the pips out, discarding the stones and throwing the slightly squished cherry straight into a saucepan.

Squeeze out as many cherries as you can, all three of us worked at it until our fingers had gone all prune-like and wrinkley.

Boil the cherries in their own juice, and the juice of 2 freshly squeezed lemons (see what I did with the title of the recipe there) for about 20 minutes until soft and squishy, remove any scummy bits from the surface as they boil.

Meanwhile sterilise some jam jars - wash thoroughly, rinse then pour in some boiling water, put the tops on tightly and stand upside down until ready to use.

Now comes the tricky bit, using a measuring jug or a cup measure transfer the cherries to a jam making pot.  The pot needs to be much larger than your volume of cherries as they need to bubble when cooking.  Count your volume, either how many litres of cherries and liquid you are transferring or how many cups it takes to transfer to the bigger pot.

Now for every full measure you need to add 3/4 of sugar; for example if measuring in cups (my favourite because it is so easy)  1 cup of cherries transferred = 3/4 cup of sugar therefore 4 cups of cherries transferred = 3 cups of sugar, or,  1 litre of cherries = 750ml of sugar.

There you go that's all the complicated maths over with now.

Start the liquid off into a rolling boil, it should only need about 7 minutes, but check with the saucer test until jam consistency is reached (drip a bit of the jam mix onto a cold saucer, wait 60 seconds then touch the edge of the drip, and a light skin should have started to form on the top).  I really must get round to buying a jam thermometer.

Pour out the cooled boiling water from the jars and start ladling in your hot jam.  Seal tightly and turn onto lid to cool for a few minutes before turning the right side up to store  (metal lids should pop down as the jam cools once right way up).

For an Italian-esque style jam, add a couple of drops of almond essence into each jar.

Photos will be added to this tutorial tomorrow when I have remembered to charge the battery in my camera again! - done

So thank you (you know who you are) for the gorgeous cherries!

The best cherries for jam making are the bright scarlet slightly sour cherries, for eating the darker purple berries are much sweeter.

Once we had eaten all the cherries we could manage, there was still half a bag full so I have added them to some vodka.  They will be left to steep for about a month in a cool dark place, until the vodka has gone a rich red in colour, then it will be cocktail time - in fact, just in time for my birthday!

Day 6 - Scotch Pancakes for Tea

With Saturday night looming, and nothing on the box but Doctor Who, we decided to have a girlie supper in front of the TV, and we opted for the ulitmate comfort food, light and fluffy pancakes and chocolate spread!

I call these scotch pancakes to differentiate between them and crepe suzette pancakes.

They are so quick and easy to do, just smear them with chocolate spread or jam, or the Amercian way, with Maple syrup.

In a bowl whisk together 4 heaped tablespoons of self raising flour, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 egg - this the amount I use per person so for 2 people double the amounts, for 3 triple them, etc etc etc. Gradually stir in enough milk to make the batter runny but still thick - think meringue consistency.

Take a large flat bottomed frying pan, and put over a gentle heat, brush the base of the pan with a vegetable oil, or butter. Dollop in q table spoon of mix at a time, once you see the bubbles rising through the batter, flip to cook the other side. Only a minute or so each side, then spread lavishly with something delicious, sticky and sweet.

Enjoy...