Recipe for beef cheeks braised in stout: slow cooker/crock pot
I only started watching Masterchef towards the end of last year and I’m totally hooked. Recently a team of contestants were working in Jason Atherton’s restayrant kitchen. The main course was beef cheeks braised in stout served with horseradish mashed potatoes – it looked delicious and I thought that I’d try making it in the slow cooker/crock pot. Beef cheeks are double the price of pig cheeks in the UK but they are still a budget cut of beef at around £5.99 a kilo. Don’t be alarmed when you cut them as they are very tough indeed!...
read moreRecipe for chicken, mushroom and tomato risotto
I’m not very keen on the combination of chicken and cooked tomatoes. Would never have chicken on a pizza. But I had half a tin of tomatoes left over from our favourite sausage and bean dish and thought that I’d bung them into a chicken risotto as an experiment. Risottos are so easy to make and are a great way of using up scraps that are knocking about in the fridge. The result was really tasty and good. Danny was amazed – I hadn’t told him about the experiment just passed him his plate of food and slipped nervously into the kitchen as...
read moreRecipe for sausages baked with herby garlic infused beans, bacon and tomato
There are two words that sent Danny into a fluster. “Bake” and “penne”. There is just one phrase that makes him visibly pale and narrow his dark Irish eyes. “Pasta bake”. The reverberations that take place when I dare to mouthe these two innocent words deserve their own paragraph. I watch with envy as families in the TV commercials tuck happily into pasta bakes. I love simple, sling in the oven and repair to a comfy chair sort of recipes. Between you and me I’m planning a baked risotto for next week but I wouldn’t dream of...
read moreRecipe for lamb shanks braised in red wine with shallots: slow cooker/crockpot
Lamb shanks are perfect for long slow cooking. The price has shot up over the years and now they are expensive to buy. Luckily Danny found some on the Tesco CFC* and I came up with this recipe. Lamb shanks actually have quite a bit of meat on them so we managed to get six good meaty portions out of the shanks. And of course bone in meat makes a much better casserole. The key ingredients were the shallots and tomato. Our one remaining onion had gone bad so I grabbed some of the shallots that we grew last summer. We had our best ever harvest...
read moreRecipe for slow cooked ox cheeks braised in herbs and beer: slow cooker/crock pot casserole
Beef in beer used to be a big hit in Bistros in London in the 1970’s. Although I ate out a lot in those days, I can’t remember actually sampling beef in beer. All that I can recall now are hummus and taramasalata starters with slim cut warm pitta bread – still a favourite with me. And the noise of those places – high ceilings and wooden floors. People perched either side of converted sewing machine tables and the Moulin Rouge posters on the walls. Sweaty waiters in long aprons that deftly snaked between the tables. And above all...
read moreRecipe for squid in marinara sauce over spaghetti
This may sound crazy but up until the past month or so I’ve always though of squid as a starter. It’s often knocked right down in price at the supermarket but I’ve tended to avoid it – my eye being on ingredients for a main course. When I made my yummy squid soup I suddenly realised that this seafood had enormous potential. Surely if soup could be this easy and this good there must be other ways to use squid? I spent a couple of hours researching squid as a pasta sauce. 95% of sauces used tomatoes so I decided to go with that. This is...
read moreRecipe for quick and delicious horseradish and mayonnaise sauce
Photo: ©Marie Iannotti Danny found some thin steaks to flash fry on the CFC recently. Having been holed up in bed with a bug for a few days I fancied some lean meat – so one of these was a perfect introduction to something a bit more substantial than soup. We ate the steaks with low fat oven fries and a simple tossed salad. Just before everything was about to be served I decided that I’d like a piquant sauce. Mustard or horseradish would be too strong so I mixed a little horseradish with mayonnaise and came up with this sauce. Simple,...
read moreRecipe for Celia’s potato pancakes: canapés, starters, light lunch
We don’t tend to have a starter on Christmas day as I prefer to serve canapés if people are feeling peckish. Traditionally these are smoked salmon on thinly sliced brown bread. Danny is a bit picky about the sort of salmon that he likes, ideally the salmon should be wild and not farmed. But as we were having a budget Christmas this year I secreted a pack of farmed smoked salmon trimmings in the fridge and planned a different sort of canapé. Initially I considered making blinis and asked on Twitter for a good recipe. Celia – of Purple...
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