Best of the Blog - Chorizo and Butter Bean Stew

There was me thinking it would be easy giving up this blog.  But here I am, posting again.  If you've read some of the posts on here, you'll know that day #366 was on September 25th this year.  I promised a last ever post to answer some of the many questions I've been asked about the blog and wrote a penultimate post celebrating a year since starting the blog.

Perfect winter fodder

The Last Post is actually sat in my drafts folder.  Its publication was hampered by an issue with my phone meaning I couldn't get the pictures I wanted for the post off.  It was then further delayed by an unexpected email and even more delayed as I sit and gaze at my navel and ponder exactly when to start my new blog.

Tonight, one thing lead to another and I had to come up with an impromptu meal for me.  Whilst it's been great to have the liberation of being able to just eat cereal or cheese and crackers for tea, I'd planned on something warming tonight (my mum's cauliflower soup) and when that got cancelled, I had to scour the fridge for something else equally 'hug-in-a-bowlish'.

Step forward Mr Bridestock's Chorizo and Butter Bean stew.  It was one of my early makes on this blog and I came about the recipe because my lovely cousin who was partly the inspiration for this blog posted about it on her own blog.  The recipe has particular nostalgia for Laura as it's the first meal that David ever cooked for her.

A little bit of Bridestock

They also got hitched during the course of this blog at an amazing wedding festival where they had a tea tent rammed full of baked goodies - including a Neopolitan Bundt Cake which was another new recipe for me, but I never blogged about it.

I'd forgotten just how amazingly tasty this dish is and it's so simple.  It's definitely going to become a staple store cupboard tea for me throughout this winter.  You can find the recipe here on Laura's blog and my original post on it, complete with rubbish picture here.  The picture above is from when I made it again tonight.  Not much better, but Instagram definitely helped a bit!

Having cooked the recipe again, I decided that I could celebrate 'The Best of the 366 Recipe Challenge' by revisiting some recipes that I really enjoyed and cooking them all over again now the pressure to do different things is off.

So keep your eyes peeled.  The posts will be sporadic but just like with everything else in life - I'm a bit rubbish at letting go of something good!

The aforementioned Neopolitan bundt

A small selection of the cakes in the tea tent

BBC Good Food Black Bean Chilli

After the excess that was Easter, tonight I really had a craving for something that at least looked healthy even if it was full of things that I shouldn't eat.  I suffer from a condition called Endometriosis.  It's not something that should be discussed on a food blog - but if you want to read up on it, there's plenty of info on the web.  In turn, it causes me to be anaemic.  Which is why I tend to go through phases of lurgy after lurgy after lurgy.

Like most malaises, there is a wealth of advice on the interweb (some of it's actually been published in quack science books too) about what you should and shouldn't eat to keep the symptoms at bay.  For endo, the list of things I should eat is as follows:

• fish oils
• Walnut oil
• flax seeds/oil
• olive oil
• whole grains (excluding wheat and rye)
• beans, peas and pulses
• brown rice
• vegetables and fruits
• oatmeal
• mustard greens
• broccoli
• cabbage
• turnips

And I should exclude

• wheat  and rye
• red meat
• refined carbs
• refined sugar and honey
• caffeine
• chocolate
• dairy
• eggs
• fried foods
• saturated fat
• soy and soy protein
• tinned foods (but I can eat tinned tomatoes - whoop whoop)
• convenience foods
• alcohol

I'm not even trying to be smug and flippant here but I can safely say that I've probably eaten everything in the exclusion list this weekend except for fried foods.  I did manage both fruit and veg but that's about it from the top list.  I'd love to be able to adhere to the diet and maybe my next challenge once I've finished this year should be to do the endo diet and stick to it, rather than whining on about all the nasty pain and side effects.  And if I stopped baking so much, I'd do really well on the no wheat, no dairy, no eggs, no sugar front.

One thing I do try to do is maintain my iron levels.  My mother keeps threatening to force feed me liver when I go to visit because I rarely eat red meat when I'm at home.  To compensate, I've started taking an liquid iron supplement which seems to help - I got a sample of it in my goodie bag after running the Bath Half Marathon last month and it's much more tummy friendly than the stuff the NHS prescribe.  I'm also looking at ways to eat more beans and pulses - hence tonight's recipe of choice which was on the BBC Good Food website under their Iron Rich Vegetarian Recipes section.

Halfway healthy mixed bean chilli

It was an interesting recipe - using Spanish paprika rather than regular chilli.  This, in conjunction with the cumin and cider vinegar gave it a really nice flavour range.  Since starting this blog, I've been paying more attention to all the little bursts of flavour you get from the different herbs and spices etc and although the odd hit of a sour taste of vinegar was a bit weird at the start, I have to say that it really worked.

Rather than using just black beans, I had a tin of mixed beans from Asda.  I don't normally shop there but was pleased with this find as most tins of mixed pulses also include chickpeas which don't always work well in some dishes.  This dish would've been one of them in my opinion.

Do pay attention to the advice to cook the tomatoes for a while first as I missed the bit that said to wait ten minutes before throwing in the beans and consequently found it a little watery.  And of course, I served it with white rice - naughty - but life is too short to boil brown rice.  Seriously.  It seems to take forever!

Will definitely be making this again on a regular basis.  Warming, filling and packed with iron.  And I'm sure it would be really nice with some chopped chorizo thrown in too.

Tuna and Cannellini Bean Salad

Despite my constant derision of my husband for being fussy, I must confess that I too am a creature of habit.  Especially when it comes to lunch in the working week.  Years ago, when I was working in London, I'd eat the same Boots Shapers bacon and mushroom pasta five days a week.  When they stopped making it, I switched to peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  

I moved jobs.  We alternated between two sandwich shops.  Despite the huge selection, I would always have Coronation Chicken from one shop and a toasted Spinach Fiorentina Ciabatta from the other.  Another job change (and an impending wedding) saw lunch became jacket potatoes with tuna and a pile of cucumber on the side.  Something I generally stick to at my current job too.

Lots of healthiness

But now, I've been seconded to one of our other sites, I'm in crisis.  They don't have a canteen.  It's in the back end of beyond, with the only hint of civilisation being the family of ducks that inhabit the litle pond outside the front door.

Up until now, I've stuck to buying my lunch because with a full time job, a toddler and having to cook three different dinners and pack two other lunches on a daily basis, I really can't be faffed to make my own lunch once all that's out of the way.  So, my options are to cadge a lift to the local bakery and buy some overpriced, tasteless sandwich and resist their tempting sausage rolls and cakes (tried this once, never again) or to drive to the local motorway services and pay for an overpriced tasteless sandwich from Costa - but get a decent coffee whilst I'm at it.  Or make my own lunch.

Hmmm…  Well in the spirit of trying new things, I had a leaf through some recipe books this morning and found a recipe in the 'Diabetes Cookbook' by Bridget Jones (no, not 'The Bridget Jones') which fitted the bill.  My mum bought me this book as the hubby has Type 2 Diabetes but I would have an uphill battle to get him to eat anything out of it other than what's in the cake section.  But it's got some lovely, healthy recipes in it that fit right in with dieting.

Ready for work. Ate the rest straight from the bowl!

I've adapted it a little as it has tomatoes in it and as you may well know from my missive about Chilli Jam from Sunday, I have issues with tomato innards.  So I plumped for sun-dried tomatoes instead.  

Although it was originally intended for tomorrow and Thursday's lunch, I ended up scoffing the second portion for tea tonight.  Have a feeling this will be my regular lunch now while I'm on secondment.  Unless anyone starts a regular Costa run….

Recipe - serves 2

• 1 can tuna chunks in brine, drained (I used this to keep the calorie and fat content down)
• 50g sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, drained and roughly chopped
• 400g  tin of cannellini beans, drained
• 75g fine green beans, trimmed
• 1/2 red onion, finely sliced

For the dressing

• 1 dsp olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 dsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
• juice of half a lemon (I used lime, but found it a bit too sweet in the end)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Lightly cook the green beans in boiling salted water until tender (approx five minutes).  Cool under running water to help retain their colour.
2. Whisk the ingredients for the dressing together in a small bowl.  Taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.
3. Combine all the salad ingredients with the dressing and serve.

The Tastiest Black Bean Tostadas

Sometimes a recipe is spoiled by the quality of ingredients and I have a feeling that this one was let down by mine.  The recipe today is from Thomasina Miers' Great Mexican Food Made Easy.  She's got some amazing fillings for tacos and wraps and I love that you can play around with how you present said fillings.

Like this one.  If I was being true to the recipe I'd've made my own little tostadas from scratch.  Instead, I made a tortilla bowl by baking a flour tortilla over the top of an upturned cup and filled it with the black beans and other goodies.

As Miers says in the book, the black beans are tasty however I reserve judgement as to whether or not they are the tastiest ever as I have nothing to compare this statement too.  But I think they were spoiled by the accompaniments that Miers suggested.  This, however, is down to circumstance and choices rather than the recipe itself.

Like when I made the Clementine Mojito Loaf at the weekend.  It was nice, but I think the flavour of the clementines I had detracted a little from the loaf's flavour potential.  Sometimes you just can't skimp.

The beans are in there somewhere...under the giant avocado...

In the case of this recipe though, I had a ginormous and rather expensive avocado from Ocado.  I didn't want a ginormous avocado.  I just wanted a lovely, small, perfectly ripe Hass avocado.  But they were out of stock.  So in their wisdom they decided I required an avocado that would feed a small nation.  It's called the 'Ocado Very Big Avocado'.  They should rename it to the 'Ocado Very Tasteless Avocado'.  Seriously it took bland to a whole new level.

Maybe mashed up in guacamole with loads of spices or something, it would be a great base to a dish.  But  as part of a salad it was bland, bland, bland.  Add to this the very sheepy-tasting Feta that I had from Sainsburys - I'm very fussy when it comes to Feta and it frustrates me that the same brand can vary in flavour from week to week - and in all, the overall dish was disappointing to the point that I didn't even finish it.

The beans were great and I can highly recommend them.  I forgot the salsa (senior moment so it'll be used in sandwiches for tomorrow) so that may have helped out.  Overall this recipe is, like all of the Miers recipes I've tried so far, potentially packed with amazing tastes on so many levels.  Just so long as you can be sure of the quality of your ingredients.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with three-quarters of the behemoth avocado that is still loitering in my fridge.  Am wondering how unfussy my spaniel really is...

A quick Google for the recipe reveals it to have been published in the good old Daily Fail.  Guess that saves me typing it out :)

Edamame And Chilli Dip

If you were expecting chatty, confessional or culinary mastery tonight, I'm afraid you're going to be sorely disappointed.  My day began at ridiculous o'clock.  It seemed to disappear pretty quickly and when I finally arrived home at crazy past darkness o'clock the thought of James Martin's warm chicken liver and chorizo salad seriously did not appeal.  In fact food did not appeal period.

The only thing I could hear calling me (other than a toddler who has been starved of mummy-love) was my lovely M&S Jersey Modal Bedding.  But a challenge is a challenge is a rod for my own back.  I had food to make.  This was supposed to be lunch one day this week, but I've now had to jig the menu plans around so that I a) don't expire from exhaustion and manage to be up for a run at 4.30am and b) actually eat something.

Just a wee snackage

So Good Food's Edamame and Chilli dip won the day for its simplicity.  Although I struggled with the making of this, it actually tasted really nice and fresh and light.  Perfect for a summers day.  Or a freezing cold night in the middle of January when you have already cooked two other different dinners (after a 12 hour work day plus commute) and really can't be arsed.  Do excuse my French, but I'm about to nod off over my keyboard.

The recipe suggests using frozen beans.  I only had fresh so I followed the packet instructions.  After double the amount of boiling they were still pretty crunchy so I just blitzed them anyway.  My blender, however, is rubbish with anything that is remotely solid and refused to give me anything other than a rustic looking pile of sludge.

Chopping veggies was as unappealing as it was dangerous for a tired person.  (I'd also been awake most of the night thanks to endo pain - but that's a whole other story).  So I tore up a flour tortilla, sprinkled it with olive oil, lime zest, sea salt and paprika and made some little crispy dipping things to go with it.

Very nice.  Lighter and healthier tasting than guacamole.  And although my dip wasn't as green as the one in the BBC Good Food picture, I liked that it wasn't all smooth and slimy.  This, however, isn't really a real meal for a normal person.  If I'd taken this for my lunch, I'd've been riffling through my colleague's drawer of goodies by 1pm for a naughty snack.  More of a TV snack or a dip to present amongst a buffet table groaning with other filling goodies.

One to keep for summer entertaining me thinks.

Quick Chicken with Garlic Beans and Chorizo

Given the number of times I've mocked the husband for eating baked beans with just about everything (and worse than that he eats COLD baked beans with just about everything), I thought he might have had a dig at me tonight when I sat down to a pile of 'baked beans' with a chicken breast jauntily perched on the top.  Thankfully Mike Dilger was on the telly (the wildlife bloke from the One Show) so I managed to get away without comment.

But these were no ordinary baked beans.  Nor were they Branston Beans which I insist we have instead of those insipid Heinz things.  These were James Martin's posh beans.

I love this recipe as it is full of simple ingredients, it was really easy to cook - save for the fiddly chopping of shallots - and it was bloody tasty.  It's the kind of thing that I can imagine French peasants sitting down to with a huge crusty loaf, slathered in unsalted butter and plenty of wine to wash it all down with.

Posh beans under chicken

Of course, I'm still trying to be good so this treat came at the expense of having anything on the side.  It's something I will make time and again now for a quick lunch (without the chicken).  I'm now planning it as the side to whatever crusty loaves I get round to baking when time permits and I've put in enough miles to justify such an indulgence.  I do have some leftover beans in the fridge which I'll probably have for lunch with a jacket potato tomorrow.  Sadly the 'freshly baked' bread they serve at work is generally stale after it's been sliced and left sitting out for hours on end so that's not an option.

Anyhow the blog is supposed to be short this week as I'm back at work which is why I love that this recipe was so quick.  I managed to cook two separate dinners and do lunches in about 25 minutes (the husband had ham, egg and chips).

The recipe is from James Martin's Masterclass.

Recipe - Serves 4

• 25ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 4x175g boneless chicken breasts with the skin on (I only had skinless)
• 1 bulb of garlic, cut in half cross ways
• 250g raw chorizo, diced
• 2 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 sprigs of rosemary (don't like it, didn't use it)
• 1x300g can haricot beans, drained and rinsed
• 150ml chicken stock
• 25g butter
• 25g flat leaf parsley, chopped (I used Garden Gourmet)
• Salt and black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6.
2. Place a large frying pan over a high heat and pour in half the olive oil.  Season the chicken breasts well with salt and pepper, add to the pan and fry on each side for 2-3 minutes or until golden brown.  Place on a baking tray, add the halves of garlic bulb and drizzle with the pan juices, then bake in the oven for 12 minutes or until cooked through.
3. While the chicken is cooking, place the pan back over the heat, add the remaining oil and the chorizo and fry for 2-3 minutes.  Add the shallots, rosemary, beans and stock and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
4. Remove the chicken from the oven and allow to rest, then remove the garlic and squeeze out the flesh from the inside.  Chop the flesh well with a knife and add to the beans.  Stir in the butter an dparsley and season well with salt and pepper.
5. Spoon the beans on to individual plates with the chicken sliced on the top (you can see from the pic I was too lazy for this bit), drizzle with the pan juices and serve.

Quick Bean and Chorizo Chilli

The Crowdey household is currently drowning in snot.  No, honestly, it's really that bad.  The toddler has toddler-flu, the husband has man-flu and I have a cold with an impending bought of sinusitus.

We're surviving on Strepsils (other throat medication is available) and unbranded painkillers and copious amounts of honey, lemon and pepperment tea.  As an aside, that was recommended to me by the little Peruvian guy who used to make me lovely toasted Fiorentina sandwiches when I worked in Exmouth Market.  Sounds like weird flavours but it tastes good and does actually stop me from losing my voice - something that's paramount when you have a toddler.

Anyhow, the last thing I felt like doing today was cooking.  Having had two sleepless nights due to my poorly girl and being riddled with lurgies myself, I struggled to know what to cook.  And my fridge, like old Mother Hubbard's cupboard is pretty bare.

Quick, warming and pretty healthy!

At the moment, the office I work in is colder than a snowman's proverbials and I'm spending far too much at the Costa bar on Creme Brulee lattes to ward off the cold (other coffee chains are available - just not at Super Spy HQ).  So I figured I could make a storecupboard recipe for tea tonight and use it for tomorrows lunch.  Red things are always warming so the Quick bean and chorizo chilli that's been lurking in my BBC Good Food binder for aeons was perfect.

It's a bit cheaty in that it uses a jar of ready made sauce, but it's supposed to be quick so I can forgive them for that.  In reality, I don't have cheaty jars of ready made sauce so I fried some onions, cumin and garlic and then added half a jar of passata.  Worked out well.  Filling, warming and pretty healthy too if you discount the huge bit of baguette on the side and the rather large dollop of creme fraiche - it is half fat though.

Speedy but nothing special.  Would make it again as it's the kind of thing I always have the ingredients for somewhere about the house.

Fingers x'd for a better night's sleep for all tonight!

Mixed Bean Salad

Today was one of *those* days.  My best intentions to get up and run at 4.30am were scuppered by a night of interrupted sleep.  So my plan to treat myself to something lovely for tea went by-the-by as the run was moved to this evening, meaning I had to re-research a recipe quick-smart.

I should've known it wasn't going to be the loveliest of days when I volunteered (read ever-so-slightly-co-erced) into doing something that wasn't my responsibility at another of our sites.  This particular site isn't far away from my main base, but you might as well be in the back of beyond.  It's a whole other hostile climate down there.  I do mean the weather of course - cold, wet and freezing on a ridiculously flat and exposed landscape is just not fun.

And the local diet is based on whatever past-its-sell-by-date fayre happens to be left in the vending machine.  So a quick lunch recipe seemed to be the solution.

Thumbing through my recipe books whilst juggling my hairbrush and eyeliner, I found a recipe for mixed bean salad - great idea to use up the leftover beans from the soup I made on Monday.

Lunch time!

The book is something like the Barbecue Summer Bible or 101 Barbecue Recipes or something like that.  One of those books that look like a really good bargain in the supermarket and then just sit there gathering dust as day after day after day it rains and then just when you pack all the garden stuff away, out pops the sun and you just can't be bothered to go to all the faff of barbecuing and head for a pub lunch instead.  Well that's what happens in our house (mostly because the husband has a bit of a fire phobia!)

Really simple recipe that you can just throw together with the contents of the fridge.  I just had enough for one portion but it was filling and felt super-healthy, even with the addition of some feta that wasn't in the original recipe.

Also, having a selection of Garden Gourmet herb tubes in the fridge is proving a real boon for dishes like this.  No more need half-dead 'Living Herbs' to adorn my window-sill in winter months.

Serves 4 as a side dish

400g tin mixed pulses
1/4 cucumber diced
4 spring onions, finely sliced
2 tomatoes, seeded and diced (I rarely have fresh tomatoes as I don't like the slimy middle so used red pepper instead)
100g feta cubed
2tbsp oil
juice of half a lemon
1tbsp fresh basil
2 tbsp fresh parsley
2-3 garlic cloves minced

Mix it all together.  Season well with salt and pepper.  Serve.  Simples!

Well the book was a bit more long-winded than that, but am now too tired to copy it out!

Mixed Bean Chilli Soup

If I've learned one thing over the past fifty-one days, it's that seasoning can really make a dish.  I'm not talking about bog-standard salt-and-pepper here, I mean the use of herbs and spices.


For certain dishes I will add a dash of this and a dash of that, but my eyes have really been opened to how a simple pasta dish or soup that I may have made before suddenly comes alive with the addition of that little something extra.

Healthy soup, healthy dollop of half-fat creme fraiche :o)

Take tonight's dish of Mixed Bean Chilli Soup.  Sainsburys sell a very good version in their chilled soup range but legend has it that this tasty soup can only be made by means of a secret rite that can be performed once a century when the moon is in the eighth house of Aquarius.  Yes, okay I watched too much 'Count Duckula' as a kid!


But seriously, ever since I took a shine to it, they seem to only sell it in winter months and maybe it's so popular it just sells out quickly but I've only had the odd pot every now and again since I discovered it.


Last winter, I had a whirl at making my own.  Quite often, I steal my recipes from the back of packets of pre-made stuff and it normally works quite well apart from when the recipe in question has quite specific flavouring.  The producer lumps herbs and spices into 'natural flavourings' before listing all the additional e-numbers and a healthy dose of MSG that are also required to give said product a modicum of taste.


So I made my own version using a basic tomato soup and some chilli.  Nowhere near the same.  After a bit of Googling, I came across this recipe on AllRecipes.com.  It sounded okay so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  And the minute I spooned the cumin into the pan, I knew what my previous attempt had been lacking.  It's silly as I use cumin a fair bit but I'd never stuck two and two together that that smell was the same as the chilli bean soup I was so enamoured with.

Top 80s Kids TV!

I am one happy camper tonight and will be making this soup regularly throughout the winter months.  

I didn't use mushrooms as the Sainsburys version doesn't and I wanted to do a like-for-like comparison.  in future, I will also try to find cans of mixed beans that don't contain chickpeas because despite cooking the beans in the soup for twenty minutes, the chickpeas still had a bullet-like consistency and the flavour just didn't really work with the other beans - or I'd just make my own bean mix next time.

Finally for those of you who are too young to remember the Eighties or who weren't living in the UK then, check this site out to find out more about Count Duckula and do watch the intro on YouTube - brings back memories :o)

Bean and Sausage Hot Pot

Six fat sausages sizzling in the pan.  Three went pop and three went bang.  Miss Abigail would've found it hilarious if she'd not been banished from the kitchen due to things cooking on the stove.

I've never fried sausages before, having been bought up to religioulsy grill them to try to reduce a little of the fat.  Now I know why people prick sausages.  An exploded, semi-cooked sausage looks less than appetising and for someone who is practically veggie these days (if I could only give up chorizo and dairy), it turned my stomach and I very nearly binned the sausages and cooked fish fingers and chips (the husband will be most disappointed by that admission if he's bothering to read this blog).

The recipe is one that's been lurking in my BBC Good Food online binder for sometime as I discovered it on the only sunny day we had this year and had been saving it for the depths of winter.  It's very similar to the recipe for Chorizo and Butterbean stew that I pilfered from the lovely @BridestockBride's blog a few weeks back but a bit more family friendly.

Sepia toning makes the broccoli look overcooked!

Family friendly if your family like food that is.  The child is not eating anything other than grapes and yogurt at the moment.  No cheese, no pasta, no fish fingers, no bread, no peas (previously her five favourite staples).  And yet she loved the tomato sauce that this came in when I fed it to her straight from the pan.  She was long in bed by the time the meal was cooked so I've saved her some for tomorrow but no doubt she'll turn her little button nose up at it.

The husband also turned his far larger nose up at it.  But with the mood I'm in, he knew better than to complain because there was nothing else on offer.  He picked out the butter beans 'they're yuck' even though they are just like overgrown baked beans and grudgingly ate the rest without complaining that I'd used Cumberland sausages (for the coarse texture) rather than our usual choice by the Black Farmer.  Served with a dollop of mash or some crusty bread, this will warm the cockles of your heart in the bleak midwinter.

If you like food with taste and texture, then this dish is definitely for you.  If you like piles of bland, cardboardy mush with a hint of plastic garlic butter, try Sainsburys Chicken Kievs which is a favourite of the husbands.