Christmas Dinner

Christmas is a time of good food in our house. I spent most of christmas eve baking and getting as much preparation done as possible.



This is turkey cooked the Tom Kerridge way. It is simply a turkey breast stuffed and rolled and then wrapped up in lots of layers of clingfilm and foil. It was cooked for about two hours at 100 centigrade.



Meanwhile the other oven was full of vegetables and potatoes. With the turkey we had roast potatoes and a mixture of sweede, parsnip, sweet potato, butternut squash and beetroot. The brussells sprouts were not forgotten, they were shredded and stir fried with chestnuts. The whole lot was lubricated with gravy, cranberry sauce and bread sauce 


This is another inspiration from the television. Mary Berry made this chocolate torte last week and it looked like just the thing for after a big roast dinner. It was incredibly simple to make and needs to be kept in the freezer, so really handy to make it a day or so beforehand. The most difficult bit was getting it out of the mould. It was served with a raspberry coulis.



Panettone cooked in a breadmaker

With plenty of time to experiment, and christmas just a bit over a month away I thought I would have a go at some christmas classics. This is a panettone made in the bread machine. Instead of candied peel I used dried apricots and cranberries, partly because that's what I had in the cupboard and partly because I like them better. The end result is delicious. I ate the first slices within minutes of the machine finishing.

Christmas dinner in a tin!

This is attempt one, at a christmas dinner loaf. I'm trying to assemble all the flavours and ingredients of a christmas dinner, but that can be served sliced. In this one I covered the base of a big loaf tin with sliced parboiled parsnips and topped this with a stuffing made out of breadcrumbs, onion, chestnuts, dried cranberries and finely chopped parsnips. The next layer is thinly sliced chicken breast followed by stir fried shredded brussels sprouts, more chicken, more stuffing and another layer of parsnips. The whole creation was baked for 50 minutes and then served in slices with gravy.

The next version is going to include sausage meat and bacon and possibly bread sauce. I guess I've got about a month to get it perfect!

Great British Bake Off at home

I'm sure someone once told me that macaroons are difficult to make. I took that to be a challenge. Here is my first attempt, pistachio macaroons. The individual macaroons are made with ground almonds in a meringue mix and the buttercream inbetween is made with ground pistachios. They taste lovely. There will be more pictures when I have made new flavours.

Mary Berry, the queen of baking.

Mary Berry is undoubtably the queen of baking, and this is one of her recipes. For once, I followed the instructions exactly and the result was delicious. Tarragon is a fantastic accompaniment to chicken, and the leeks and mushrooms make a small amount of chicken go a long way.

Spicy lamb and feta skewers with Greek brown rice salad

In the time it took to cook the brown rice, I had this dish assembled, cooked and ready to throw together. The recipe suggests serving the rice cold with tomatoes, cucumber, olives, onion and fresh herbs stirred through. I decided that hot rice would be nicer, so I added exactly the same bits to it, but served it hot. The skewers are simply a mixture of lamb mince and feta cheese with a little harissaa paste added for a bit of tang. And the best bit is that I have enough left for tomorrows dinner.

This time I followed the recipe!

This is probably the first time I have followed a recipe exactly and I was very pleased with the result. The pastry is full of lumps of cheese giving it a rustic appearance, or in other words a bit scruffy looking. Underneath the tomato layer is a mixture of finely sliced onions that have been gently fried until they are sweet and sticky and fresh herbs. Bread crumbs are added, presumably to soak up any juice leaking out of the tomato layer

It looked just like the picture in the magazine before I baked it and tasted delicious afterwards. We ate it straight from the oven, sitting out in the garden in June sunshine. Later on we ate the remainder for tea. It was delicious cold too.

A really Simple After-Work Dinner

After a hard day at work, arriving home tired and wet, I can't be bothered to cook long complicated recipes. I still like to eat well though. Here's a colourful solution. A circle of roasted butternut squash, topped with a round of goats cheese, baked until soft and golden. I served this with stir fried leeks and red cabbage. I roasted the squash yesterday so this meal took no more than 10 minutes to prepare today.

Another Nearly Followed Recipe!

This recipe was called squash, chicken and couscous one-pot, and I nearly followed it. Inevitably there were changes I made because I didn't have the required ingredients, and also changes I made just because I could. I started with red onions, chipotle paste (should have been harissa), cumin and coriander and fried these until soft, then added a pack of chicken style quorn pieces (recipe said chicken breast). At this point the chipotle paste gave off a fantastic smokey smell which filled the house. Next I added two tins of tomatoes and a heap of cubed butternut squash. I left the pan on a very low heat for most of the afternoon. At tea time I added four quartered tomatoes, some bacon (ready cooked) and the zest and juice of a lemon. I cooked some quinoa instead of couscous and kept it separate from the casserole. The recipe said just bung in some couscous and let it cook in the juices. The end result is very good. Perhaps next time I would add a little less lemon. The bacon was an afterthought when I found it in the fridge nearly out of date. It would definitely look better on the plate with some greens

Fish on Friday

Time for fish again. I love cooking fish as it's so quick. This time it was a fillet of plaice, fried, and served with broccoli, cabbage, mashed potato with spinach and mushrooms. The brown zig-zag is balsamic glaze and makes a lovely addition to white fish.

Now it's Time To Empty the Vegetable Rack

Another freezer raid yielded a pack of prawns, while the vegetable rack sported a collection of tired looking plant material that urgently needed cooking or composting. In a pot in the fridge was the remnant of the honey, mustard and chilli dressing, made for the quinoa salad and which has already had an encore on the salmon yesterday. A stir fry seemed to be the ideal solution.

While I'm in the mood for yeast cookery, I made a batch of naan bread dough and experimented with flavours to create garlic and coriander naan. After the dough had risen I added a crushed garlic clove and some ground coriander. Fresh would have been better but I didn't have any.

The stir fry was made from red onion, cabbage, garlic, ginger, pepper, mushrooms and baby corn. Once cooked it was topped with leftover chopped and toasted hazelnuts (from quinoa salad) and the dressing.

Fantastic, now I've got an empty fridge and an empty vegetable rack. Time to start again.

Salmon with Leftover Sauce

I don't like throwing anything away, and this is reflected in the recycling that goes on in my kitchen. Here I have panfried a salmon steak and topped it with the honey, mustard and chilli dressing that I made for the quinoa, beetroot and squash salad. The salmon is served on a bed of potato crumbs, made by squeezing boiled potatoes through a ricer onto a baking sheet and then grilling it until the top turns brown. It makes an interesting texture and variation from mashed potato. Beside the salmon are wilted spinach, leftover from the quinoa salad and cauliflower and peas, leftover from the day before.

I now have a good dinner and an empty fridge.

The simplest Prawn Curry in the World

Just as it's name suggests, this was a quick 'ready, steady, cook' style creation from the freezer and storecupboard. I chopped and fried an onion then added a tablespoonful of tika masala paste. Next, in went a whole tin of reduced fat coconut milk followed by some diced up butternut squash. The whole lot was gently simmered until the squash was cooked and at the last minute a pack of prawns was added.

I served the curry with leeks, brown rice and a home-made naan bread. It was delicious. Curry flavour without any heat.

Quinoa, Beetroot, Squash and Feta Hot Salad

This dish was inspired by a recipe in the April Good Food magazine. The intended recipe was for a cold salad but in March this had limited appeal, so with a few small adaptations I created a hot dish.

I started out by roasting a chopped butternut squash, then towards the end of cooking time, adding a finely chopped red onion and a couple of ready cooked beetroot. Meanwhile the dressing was getting a good whiz in the food processor. Olive oil, honey, mustard, red wine vinegar and a red chilli combined to make a sharp but sweet vinaigrette with a kick of chilli to finish. I had never cooked quinoa before, so following pack instructions I boiled the grains until soft. Chopped hazelnuts were roasted for a few minutes alongside the vegetables. At the last minute the hot ingredients were tossed together and the baby spinach added to wilt down and cook in the heat of the other vegetables. Once on the plate, crumbled feta cheese and hazelnuts were added followed by the dressing. The completed dish was served with homemade naan breads and was absolutely delicious.

The naan breads are a recent addition to my cookery repertoire. I discovered that the dough can be made the day before and stored in the fridge, allowing fresh naans to be rolled out and baked in a very hot oven in less time than you can make a slice of toast. These are made with plain flour, milk, egg and dried yeast.

Possibly the desert that brings back more childhood memories than any other, this is 'Granny's' chocolate mousse. Made with just plain chocolate and egg, it's amazingly rich and needs to be served in very small dishes.