Best recipes for leftovers: Cauliflower cheese with mashed potato
Danny likes our cauliflower cheese especially when I add ham and tomatoes and serve it with garlic bread. Quite often I pick up 6 pints of milk from the Tesco CFC and make it into white sauce, ladled into plastic zip lock bags and frozen flat in the freezer. This takes the strain out of making CC as the palaver of making the sauce is already done. The sauce can be gently heated from frozen in a sauté pan. Then all you have to do is add the cheese. I discovered that my cauliflower bought in the market with suspiciously long leaves was the...
read moreCauliflower, tomato and asparagus cheese recipe
Being a devoted alpha carnivore Danny’s face always drops when there is the prospect of a low meat meal. My Wednesday plans were kyboshed when he returned home with two fillet steaks for £2.50 from the Waitrose CFC. “As they are rather brown I think that we have to cook them tonight.” So he did. The next day I decided to pull all the stops out for a different sort of cauliflower cheese. We used to make cauliflower cheese over a layer of bacon/ham. Now we add fresh tomatoes to the ham layer. A wicked combination of...
read moreMushrooms braised in butter and red wine recipe
At the moment we are flat out making jars of chutney and Christmas relishes for our garden gate stand which hopefully will be up and running this weekend. So supper has to be quick and easy. The slow cooker is busy bubbling away with meals which are frozen in portions so we can eat well with the minimum palaver. I’ve discovered that freezing in portions of about 2 centimetres deep means that these meals can be heated from frozen very gently in a sauté pan with a lid. We quite often eat steak and kidney pie filling without the pastry...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Broccoli and watercress soup recipe
“I bet we’re the first in the world to be having broccoli soup and flash fried squid for breakfast.” Danny dunked a chunk of crusty bread in his soup. With me still at home we tend to have a late brunch these days but yesterday was the first day that we’d gone wild and had soup and seafood. I’d bought the broccoli in the market. Two giant heads for a pound. As the vegetables don’t have a long shelf life we ate broccoli with the skirt of beef stew and the rest was chopped and popped into the slow cooker to make soup. I’d also...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Easy passata recipe
“Now you are going to see a piece of kitchen equipment that hasn’t been used for twelve years.” Danny was goggle eyed as I moved the Wellington boots to access the kitchen cupboard. I’d remembered that years ago Seraphina had given me a food mill for pureeing apples. It was right at the back – a bit dusty but complete with a range of three grinding disks. After a few minutes I worked out how to assemble the beast and clipped it onto a saucepan. I glanced at the handle – this was an Italian model reassuringly named...
read moreHerby Boulangere potatoes recipe
I like to bake food in the oven every now and then. Somehow I think that this releases me to get on with other things rather than keeping me anchored to the sauté pan or grill. So I prepare the dishes, work out the timings and pass responsibility over to a small green portable timer, that has a bleep so irritating that it can’t be ignored. I decided to make Boulangere potatoes to celebrate Danny’s first full trug of spuds. These are scrummy and low fat. They were to accompany pork chops baked in blackberry and apple jelly and oven braised...
read moreSam Raithatha’s gently spiced rice (for three)
Danny snaked back from the post run last night holding a Waitrose curry aloft. Like the Olympic torch. “£3.99 down to £1.49. We couldn’t make it for that price,” he beamed. Danny is a chicken Korma sort of guy. He doesn’t like hot, spicy food. “But you only eat mild curries and this is a Vindaloo – look, it’s got a 3 chilli rating.” “Oh.” “Never mind. I’ll whistle up some dishes that will cool down the heat. And we can try Sam’s rice dish.” Apart from having healing hands in common, both Sam and I adore food...
read moreDazzling crispy new potatoes recipe
My father was in the army and my parents were stationed in Germany after WW2. The country was devastated and poor. “Every single piece of each garden was filled with vegetables. No flowers. No lawns. Just vegetables. I think that a lot of people were starving.” My mother always described them quietly. My parents swapped a pack of fresh coffee for their first Min Pin, Nippy. The couple didn’t want money. They longed for coffee – not available in their shops. The pup was named after the Nippies – the waitresses at Lyons...
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