A Scot Living in Switzerland Writing About Food and Life in General
{ Category Archives }
Simple roast chicken, one of life’s most sublime dishes if done well. I LOVE roast chicken and searched for a long time before I found a recipe which I think provides the pefect roast bird, juicy with crispy skin!!
This cooking instructions for this roaster are from Delia Smith who is in my opinion the Queen of British cookery, you either love her or hate her and I’m a big fan. Her recipes work, plain and simple…
What to do with a huge tray of turkey escalopes??? That was the question facing me today. I’ve been trying to use up all of the meat we had in the freezer and so over the past week or so we’ve been eating quite a lot of red meat and it’s much more than I’m used to so I really want to steer clear for a few days. There was a special offer on at the supermarket and since I can’t resist a bargain I bought a tray of turkey, my only problem was that there was 1.5kg of the stuff..
As I walked/waddled/hobbled around the supermarket last night I tried to figure out at least one dish I could use the turkey for… and then thanks to seeing some smoked bacon lardons I had one of those eureka moments.. I would make a lasagne. This would not be a traditional lasagne as Stewart doesn’t care for bechamel sauce. I have decided to try one of those, I’ll make it up as I go along recipes and hope it turns out ok.
This morning I told Stewart that if he picked a recipe from any of my cookbooks which could utilize the pack of beef stewing steak and another which used the minced beef which I had in the fridge then I would happily make one for tonight and the other for tomorrow night’s dinners. After flicking through a couple of books I was presented once again with my copy of Cook With Jamie as Stewart really liked the look and sound of the recipe for The Best Stew With Potato and Rocket Pasta Cushions. I read through the recipe to find that we had almost all the ingredients in the fridge but I since the potato and rocket past cushions are a little too high in carbs to be diabetes friendly, I have decided to just concentrate on making the stew and serve something else as my side dish.
Check back tomorrow to see what I made using the minced beef.
In the meantime here is The Best Stew….
I was watching Great Food Live the other day and Jenni Barnet was interviewing Helen Tse. Helen is third generation British Chinese and has just written a book called Sweet Mandarin which details the story of her family and their journey from China to the UK, it sounded really interesting. Helen has also just opened a Pan Asian restaurant with her sisters in Manchester also under the name Sweet Mandarin.
This curry recipe came from Helen’s grandmother Lily and has apparently become very famous at the restaurant. I’m a real curry devotee so when I saw Helen make this on Great Food Live it was definitely a recipe I wanted to try out.
This recipe is another from a cookbook which has sat dormant on my bookcase for a couple of years and has been completely overlooked. Healthy Cooking For Two (or just for you) by Frances Price does have some rather unusual recipes but as I flicked through it this afternoon I came across a recipe which I though had some potential even though it had a bit of a strange title.
The name Bachelor’s-Prize apparently stems from the fact that “apparently” most singletons have peanut butter and natural yogurt in their fridge and that this recipe is so simple that “noncooking bachlors” are assured of success. Those are not my words or sentiments I hasten to add but those of the author.
Since I love just about anything featuring peanut butter I decided to proceed, adding a slight twist of my own.
The doctor had referred me for a massage on Monday to help my back but it feels worse today than it did before. I was hoping to feel the benefit by now but instead I’m just having pangs of pain in one of my nerves. Good news is that I went to the Diabetes clinic on Tuesday and my blood sugar is well under control so the food plan is working!! I can’t tell you what a relief that is!
Anyway, back to food related matters….
After digging out my copy of “Cook with Jamie” the other night I’m on a roll and have decided to test drive another recipe. We both liked the chicken wrapped in pancetta the other night and as I’ve already said it’s about time I started to ensure that our freezer was was well stocked with homemade dishes. The bottom drawer of the deep freeze was still quite full of meat prime for making some casseroles etc and today when I looked I found a couple of packs of minced beef. Perfect!!
Whenever I buy minced beef I always make sure it contains no more than 5% fat otherwise I buy rump steak and ask the butcher to mince it for me. There is nothing worse than coming across a UFO (unidentified foreign object) in your mince after you have slaved away all day making a culinary masterpiece, it’s been my experience that the very lean minced beef has a much lower chance of containing anything nasty since you a pay a premium price.
I’m a bit predictable when it comes to recipes using minced beef, generally I make one of three things:
b) Meatballs (a recipe based upon one from Natalie which I think in turn was based on an Antonio Carluccio recipe)
c) Traditional Scottish mince and tatties
Instead of following my usual meatball recipe I thought it would be nice to give Jamie’s recipe a try.
Jamie’s original recipe was called Pappardelle With A Ragu Of Tiny Meatballs and he gave the recipe for making the pasta but I’m not bothering making fresh pasta.
As anyone who has been a regular to this site will know I’m a big Jamie Oliver fan. Natalie bought me a copy of Jamie’s latest book Cook With Jamie for my birthday back in October but I’m afraid this coincided with the time in my pregnancy when cooking was the last thing on my mind. With a beautiful sunny day outside I’m in the mood for something equally as sunny and I have decided to dust off my Cook With Jamie and finally sample one of the recipes within.
There were so many good looking recipes which I really would have loved to try, like the tomato, basil and ricotta risotto but because of my diabetes I had to select carefully and unfortunately for the moment risotto is out.
We had some chicken in the fridge so a recipe from the section on Roasted Chicken Breasts was the most logical choice. I hope you like this one!
The last time we visited one of the local food markets I picked up some hot Hungarian paprika and I’ve been really looking forward to sampling it.
My back has been acting up this week and the doctor has advised me to get lots of rest so I wanted a recipe which would require me to be on my feet for as little as possible. Mindful of this I turned to Google, read through a ton of recipes and after getting a good idea about which ingredients go into a goulasch and thought I’d give my own version a try and throw it into the slow cooker/crock pot.
If there is anything left over after we’ve dished up this evening then I’m planning on popping it into the freezer as I really need to start stocking up for when the baby comes.
I was talking to Natalie on the phone last night and she mentioned a fantastic Jamie Oliver recipe for roasted monkfish. I’m not a fan of monkfish so I opted to try it using cod as a substitute.
I served new potatoes crushed with a little olive oil and spring onions as the accompaniment but it would the dish would work well with rocket leaves dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
