Fish pie & stuffing/ Mexican beans / Sweet potato cake

On Thursday made fish pie.
Used 2 bags of frozen fish from Sainsburys, one cheapie cheap bag of white fish and a small pack of wild salmon to add some colour and omega 3.
Poached the fish in milk.  Used milk to make a white sauce.  Fried some onion and celery and then made the roux around this.  Also sprinkled some cheese on top of fish and on mashed potato topping.  Served the finished pie with sweetcorn and some really good onion, leek and chive stuffing from sainsburys (Taste the Difference).  This was a combination which worked really well and added a real 'big meal' factor to the fish pie which with teenagers sometimes to be forgotten 1/2 an hour after they've eaten it.

Yesterday, Saturday, cooked some really beautiful black Mexican beans I got in a fancy jar for £2 from TKMax. I soaked them overnight, boiled for 10mins then simmered for 40.  Tasted them to see how they were getting on and found them so good I ate loads of them there and then.  Later finished off: frying onion garlic and a finely chopped red pepper, adding a tin of tomatoes and the beans with a little of the black cooking water. ( I had translated the Italian cooking instructions on google and it said 'add the beans just short of their water').  Seasoning, I added salt and honey (just a couple of teaspoons).

I thought they were very good and served them with boiled millet (complementary protein set).

Sunday, Caribbean Rum and Raisin cake made with sweet potato.  This was a really exciting looking recipe I came across the other day when sorting out some other papers.  You boil and mash the potato before mixing it in the cake with eggs, flour, spices, vegetable oil (I used Rice Bran Oil).  There is also orange rind and juice, rum soaked raisins and coconut.  The icing was also made with orange, rum and coconut.  I think this is going to be a useful cake but for me may be spoiled by the coconut.  I like coconut but I think it is an ingredient which tends to dominate others it is with.

Weather this weekend is much milder than of late which is a relief.  Jon and I went to the cinema last night to see the Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.  We had a delicious meal at Bella Italia and when we came out it was nice not to be hit by a wall of cold.  Jon repaired a broken headlamp on the car yesterday.

Chicken risotto and some other stuff.

Left over roast chicken + stock from the bones.
Fry an onion, add risotto rice. Fry for 1 min.  Add some frozen mixed veg- stir. Add hot stock- stir.
Bring to boil, put in oven for 45 mins.  Add left over chopped chicken.
Easy, cheap, healthy and a great way to keep out the winter cold.

Today is bitter.  All the snow is gone now except for little lumps here and there, but the wind is really arctic.
At work we had a meeting today about the Pathology review for the South East region. They want to turn us into one big 'hub' lab with 4 small ones- going to be 45% redundancies.

Spicy Georgia Peach Chicken

I got this idea from a website called 'Hidden Valley'.

I have adapted it. It really is delicious- unless you don't like chicken, peaches or can't stand meat and fruit mixed together (you don't know what you're missing) you just can't go wrong with this.
Serve with rice and green salad or some nice fresh green beans.


Boneless chicken breast (enough for 4)
1 onion
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup of some sort of spicy 'ranch' style dressing (i have been using (with great success) Morrisons sweet piri piri dressing)
2 tablespoons dijon mustard ( i have been using grainy mustard (as above))
1 can (15-ounce) sliced peaches, drained and cut into chunks.

Season chicken with salt and pepper.
Heat olive oil in a large frying pan, add chicken and cook for 5-7 mins each side or until golden and juices run clear.

Remove the chicken to a plate.

Add butter to the pan and finely diced onion- cook for 5-10 mins until soft and browing.
On a lower heat, add the brown sugar, stirring until smooth and dissolved.
Stir in both the dressing and the mustard, stirring until bubbly.
Add a tiny amount of water if the volume seems too small to coat the chicken and peaches.
Return the chicken to the pan, add the peaches and cook until heated through.

This recipe really is a winner- loads and loads of flavour and the sweetness makes it very satisfying- you don't need a pudding afterwards.
We had it yesterday with potato and swede which was not really an ideal combination but was what we had in the cupboard and I still got clean plates. 

Sunday- 1st of Advent

The spelt risotto was very good. The spelt cooked to a nice texture in 25 mins still having a little bite.  Couldn't help thinking it might make quite a good sweet pudding with milk, cream and sugar.

Had a most delicious Normandy pork (from Delia) with my friend Eileen this lunchtime (think it had apricots in it); will have to look that one up.

Made a batch of oat and carob truffles recipe from www.thefoodcoach.co.uk (passed to me by my friend Frances).
I wouldn't say these are exciting but they are super easy and quick (if you have a food processor).  They are also exceptionally healthy and I have found they fill a gap at tea-break and are very satisfying.

Ingredients
1 cup of porridge oats
1/2 cup stoned dates
1/2 cup raisins or sultanas
1/4 cup almonds
1 tbs of carob or cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla essence

A few tablespoons of cold water to bind.

Method:
Put all dry ingredients into food processor. Process until resemble fine breadcrumbs.  Add cold water a little at a time and process until mixture clumps into a ball.
Mould the mixture into sensible sized balls (according to preference ) and chill in fridge for 30mins.  I used small cake cases to hold these.  Once refrigerated they are not too sticky and wrap quite well in foil for lunchboxes.

Spelt risotto

Today we're having a sort of risotto made from spelt which comes from Somerset and is grown on the farm at Sharpham Park belonging to Roger Saul.
I have added onion, leek and celery to the risotto which we will have with minced beef and onions and also some nice carrots and parsnips which are roasting.  I tend to cook with quite a few vegetables at the weekend because preparation time can be short during the week.

Will be dishing up in 5 mins. Let you know later how it turned out!

Introduction

I am 'foodie' of sorts, though not in the 'buying only organic, shopping regularly at farmer's markets or keeping truffle oil in the kitchen cupboard' sense (this is not to say that I never buy organic or local and I would be lying if I said I had never picked up a bottle of truffle oil in the supermarket- I just didn't buy it.)

I am a foodie because I love food, I love cooking, I am fabulously unfussy; eating almost anything that anyone, anywhere has ever called food and usually enjoying it. (To my regret there is one big hole in this portfolio of gluttony and that is shellfish- not because I don't like but because I can't seem to tolerate.) 

The only two things I can think of that I have ever eaten and not liked are:
1/ that kind of fruitcake which is mostly a stiff sponge with just a little fruit in it- usually called farmhouse cake or something like that and
2/ those oriental snacks (rice crackers?) which come in various shapes, sizes and colours and are sort of sweet and sour, coated and shiny. I once had to rapidly remove from a room after putting some of those in my mouth at a social function.

My especial pleasure in food comes from trying new ingredients and new or surprising recipes, from making interesting and nutritious meals for my family at a reasonable cost and using superfoods of various kinds (grains, pulses, seeds, berries and oils) to boost and protect health.  I am particularly interested in food medicine though have never made a formal study of this. 

One thing the reader should be warned about is my opinion on fats- it is in many ways counter to current received wisdom.  I think the extreme 'polyunsaturated' hype of the 70s, 80s and 90s was misleading and possibly harmful.  For me butter is a superfood (I will write more about this before too long) though obviously to be used in moderation.  Olive oil- of course- a safe, safe, wonderful food-I don't need to say more about that.  For roast potatoes and pastry, dripping (or even lard) is my preference.
My feelings about fats are informed by two main sources, firstly my own experience of living in my body and observing what happens when I eat what and secondly, a little bit of knowledge obtained from study (HNC in Applied Biology (Dissertation on trans fats), BSc in Biomedical Science and currently studying for MSc Clinical Biochemistry) but I have a lot more I would like to find out from a scientific perspective if I ever get the chance. I am not going to say anymore about this right now as I can get seriously boring on this subject and it is not (I hope) going to be the main topic of this blog.

My intention is to write about some of the ways I solve the problem of feeding my family whilst satisfying my own need for interesting and varied food.  A lot of these will be very mundane but I do have some good recipes and am occasionally inspired to produce a memorable 'one-off' meal.  Also, I occasionally break my own rules (re polyunsaturates etc).