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

One Year On - Chicken and Chorizo Pasta

Well it all began a year ago today and because I a) can't let go just yet and b) still feel guilty that I didn't manage a picture of the very first recipe I tried, I decided to make it again to bring my year full circle.  In fact, I've just realised that if I was to re-cook every recipe that I did over the last year on the same date for the next 12 months, I could avoid the cleaning until 2013.  Now there's a plan....

Actually, it's been quite refreshing today to not have to worry about finding the time to cook something new and photograph and write about it.  When the food plan for today got de-railed by the weather, it didn't matter that what I'd planned for tea was in jeopardy.  Nobody would've cared if I'd not made and blogged about the recipe other than me.

I kept pondering if anyone would care if I skipped a day throughout the last year.  I managed not to with some careful planning and creative thinking at times.  And I've been touched by the number of tweets and emails I've had from people asking if it's really all over.  Although 48,000 page views in just 366 days shows that people are reading the blog, the messages really mean something because it makes me know there are some people out there who actually take the time to read what I write and don't just click a link from Google and then wander off elsewhere when faced by the waffle.

I also spend a lot of time if people are more interested in what I've cooked or what I'm waffling/whining on about on any given day.  Today, the husband gave me perfect blog fodder - which I'll save for the next instalment of my blogging voyage.  I often get asked about if he minds me writing about him.  In truth he does, but he also knows that it's my way of working out my issues with him and laughing at stuff that would otherwise have me down at the doctors looking for narcotics.

366 days on, still need to work on presentation!

What surprised me most was yesterday when I said I'd completed the last of the 366 recipes and posts and there was no more blog and he looked me incredulously and said 'what never ever?  Aren't you going to at least do one a week or something?'  After his comment when I watched Julie and Julia the other day, I was floored that he was happy for me to continue in some way.

Whatever, thank you to everyone who has been with me on this journey.  From the tweets of support, to the bloggers who have let me try and blog about their recipes (in no particular order Sadia, Mike, the two Jules', Dan, Rachel, Fi, Cathryn, Paul and Jaim); Dan Lepard for being the nicest cookbook writer ever and for making my day and following me on Twitter; my Twitter 'Family' (Paul, Kate, Dicky and Maria), Sarah-Jane for letting me coerce her into starting Cake Club; Ewan for letting me join the Olympic Food Challenge; my gorgeous cousin Laura who inspired the blog in the first place; Miss A for keeping me in cracked eggs when it's been a baking day; my second-chief cake tester* who was the best mentor ever; and all other those poor souls who've taken one for the blog and had cake foisted on them (it's a tough job, but someone had to do it).  There's no way I could've made it without you all.

And the biggest thanks of all to my long-suffering husband.  Thank you for betting me that I wouldn't make it - I don't think there's anyone else on this planet that would have made me stick to this challenge so stubbornly as you did.  Thank you for attempting to eat some of the 366 recipes.  I don't thank you for your non-constructive feedback - saying 'I don't like it because I don't like it' is not particularly helpful!  Thank you for putting up with all the washing up - especially when the dishwasher broke right on top of Christmas.  Thank you for moving my cookbooks to the most prominent bookshelf in the house at the weekend and for not burning them as promised.  And thank you for giving me the opportunity to carry on experimenting and writing - even if it is less frequently than before.

So on to the recipe.  Well I enjoyed it just as much as I think I did a year ago when I first tried it.  This time I put creme fraiche in it which made it quite rich.  I also seemed to have masses of pasta - which wasn't bad because I'd not had a proper lunch today (Vanilla Coconut PowerBars do not a good lunch make) but if I make it again, I'd probably drop the pasta to 60g per head - especially as the husband insists on garlic bread with his.  And it definitely needs some green stuff on the side.  I couldn't be faffed to buy rocket which I won't use the rest of this week so salvaged the last tiny bit of my dying basil plant to perch on the top for the picture.

Here's the link to the original recipe which I also neglected to post a year ago.

*Miss A was obviously the first!

Hairy Bikers Chilli Salad Bowls

Whilst idling away my lie in this morning, I happened across an article by Janet Street-Porter which included a part on the subject of this country's fascination with cookery books.  She likened the collecting of cookbooks to an obsession with handbags or shoes.  Expensive, and after the first few, probably unnecessary.  Despite generally finding JS-P a bit irritating, I have to agree with her on this particular point.

It was my collection of cookbooks that set me off on this mission last year.  I had around twenty which I would leaf through, imagining myself lovingly making some of the recipes for my nearest and dearest.  Then reality would surface and I'd just cook whatever made people happy.  And so I promised myself I'd spend a year using the books I had and cooking something new every day.  Did I stick to it?  Nope.

Yes, this is 'diet' food - about 450cal for the plateful

Well I stuck to the new recipe bit and the blogging bit.  What I didn't stick to was using the recipe books that I had.  I was seduced into buying some new ones that were heavily discounted 'because I need them for my challenge'.  I used recipes from my Good Food Mag subscription.  And I discovered the joys of finding recipes on the internet.  So at the end of this year, I have at least eight more cookery books* than 365 days ago, despite having enough recipe books that if I cooked one new recipe from one of them every day, I'd probably not cook the same thing twice before I die**

At the weekend, when I was out with the girls, one of them mentioned the Hairy Dieters book by the Hairy Bikers.  I'm not a fan of Si and Dave, but having flicked through some of their books at my mum's, I thought that maybe I should add their dieters book to my armoury.  I then wandered off into iPad-land and discovered that some of the recipes were published online anyway.  So did I really need to buy the book?  Probably not.  At least trying some of the online ones might sway me one way or another.  So I settled on trying their chilli bowls recipe tonight.

And this just goes to prove JS-Ps point (you can read the article here***).  I used to make something very similar many moons ago.  Except I served it in a soft tortilla rather than a baked one.  It was a staple diet meal until the husband decided he didn't want it again, and I forgot all about it.  In some respects, it was nice to be reminded of yet another option to add to our weekly repertoire that's family friendly.  But if I'd stirred the old grey matter a little more, I could've thought this one up myself.

Chilli is something I normally batch cook (the husband doesn't like kidney beans) and so I freeze portions so that I can have something different to him for dinners when I'm not a slave to the 366 Recipe Challenge.  Of course, there are plenty of people out there who've never cooked chilli before and would probably appreciate the friendly Bikers' guidance.  But once you've bought a few cook books, you should probably spend your pennies on something else.

The Wahaca book has recipes re-hashed from Mexican Cooking Made Easy.  My two Gordon Ramsay books contain around 30% of the same recipes.  The Hummingbird Bakery are guilty of recycling into the follow up Cake Days.  Even Dan Lepard is guilty, with a significant number of recipes from Short and Sweet also being available online from on the Guardian website****.  And once you own a few baking books, you notice that they all peddle slight variations on the theme of chocolate, coffee, carrot, lemon cake.  There are only so many recipes to go around.  And unless you want to eat Heston-food every night for dinner, it all starts to get a bit samey.

Nevertheless, a year on, I still love my cookery books.  They've fed my imagination since I was a child and used to make up stories in my head that involved intricate scenes of cooking lavish meals and extravagant cakes*****.

So does this mean I'll never buy another cookery book again?  Of course it doesn't.  I am as much as a sucker for cookery books as I am for high heeled shoes.  If there's a little leeway in the budget and a book appeals, I'll buy it.  And I want to buy 'classics' from the Roux brothers and Richard Bertinet.  But I'll definitely check the internet first.

You can save yourself a few quid and find the Hairy Bikers recipe I used online here.  It was an okay family meal and really filling.  I chose to eschew the tortilla bowls and use tacos instead.  I've not eaten tacos for a million years and it was great to know that you can eat three taco shells for only a handful of calories more than a single flour tortilla.  This in itself made the recipe a complete bargain.  If I was feeling extravagant, I'd add chopped coriander to the salad.

And guess what I have for tea tomorrow night?  Yes!  Leftovers.  Because there is only one more recipe to go.  And Miss A has insisted we do cake :o)

*Two were Christmas presents (Lorraine Pascale's Home Cooking Made Easy and the Great British Bake Off Book).  One I've not used at all on this challenge (Jamie's 30 Minute Meals).  One I've lost (James Martin's Masterclass).  One was the best investment ever (Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet).  One was for the Weekly Bake Off Challenge (Mary Berry's 100 cakes and bakes).  The others were Wahaca by Thomasina Miers and Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo.  I'm sure there were one or two others.
**As I child, I believed everyone lived until 100 and died on their 100th birthday just after the party.  I intend to do just this.
***I read the Daily Fail online.  So sue me.
****That said, I never would've gotten my mum into Dan Lepard if I'd not sent her links to recipes from Short and Sweet.
*****I still do this

Cathryn Dresser's Roasted Vegetable Strudel

I want it to be summer all over again.  Well a proper summer, not the non-event of a summer that we've just had.  But a proper warm, English summer when you know that you have several weeks of good weather guaranteed ahead (the last time this happened was circa 2003) and you can plan an outdoor social event with confidence. Because I want to make and eat this strudel again.  And share it with my nearest and dearest who wouldn't whinge and whine that it's meat free.

Ready to eat

This recipe is from the current series of the Great British Bake Off and to cut a long waffle short, the flavours in this were amazing.  And I didn't even stick to the actual recipe because I don't have the time, space or patience to make my own filo* nor could I find Slipcote Cheese in the local Morrisons and so I made do with regular feta.  I only made enough for one person - okay so it was a greedy one-person portion that could have been eked out to two people with a green salad, a bottle of chilled chablis and a decadent dessert to follow - but I'd love to go the whole strudel (it's meat free, remember?) and serve this at an evening soiree held at the end of a beautiful summer's day.

Although the recipe sounds involved, it's actually not.  Chop up a lot of veg into little pieces and roast them.  Make some couscous.  Wrap it in liberally buttered filo with some cheese and herbs.  Butter again. And again.  This is a very James Martin-esque recipe.  Bake.  And butter again.

Dame Mary admitted during the programme that she finds it perfectly acceptable to buy your own filo so that makes the whole experience easier.  Plus if you read the original recipe, you need to make the pastry on a massive clear space like your huge, country kitchen table** or similar space.  Or just cheat and use shop-bought filo which will save your time and sanity.

Inside - pre-bake

I learnt from this recipe that the art to successful baked Filo wrapped things is to butter in between every layer.  Ordinarily, I just butter the outside to keep the fat down.  But having buttered the pastry to within an inch of its life, the crust was perfect and crispy - just how I like it.  My arteries are slightly more furred than they were this morning, but it was fully worth it.  Definitely on the make again list.

You can find the recipe online here.  Even though the weather is as miserable as sin outside, and everyone only wants to eat huge, fat winter stews, I can highly recommend this little taste of the Mediterranean to blow those autumn blues away.  And I'd like to wish Cat the best of luck with the rest of the GBBO.

*If you didn't see the episode where Cat made this, she was being shown the Filo-whacking technique by one of her fellow bakers and her pastry ended up on the floor, covered in bits of green carpet.  I don't know if this added to or detracted from the bake that was served on the tellybox, but a similar accident in my house would leave it full of dog hair and bits of chewed up crayon - hence why it's easier to use pre-bought pastry.

**Why is it that none of the GBBO contestants have tiny, clutter-filled kitchens like I do?

Mary Berry's Steak Diane

Just five more recipes to go and I'm staying with the mothership for the weekend.  It was the last weekend that I've had to do battle with the 'I need to cook for my blog' issue and I thought I'd warm her up to the idea by offering to cook what used to be her favourite meal.  I don't know if it still is (I forgot to ask and can't be bothered to walk downstairs to check).  But I remember being fascinated as a child, on rare meals out to The Four Horseshoes in Nursling, by the waiter burning my mum's tea at the table whilst everyone stared.

The recipe comes from Dame Mary's Complete Cookbook.  According to my mother, the Steak Diane connoisseur  it's not authentic because it doesn't have cream in it.  A quick Google reveals that Gordon and AWT use cream.  The Wikipedia description doesn't mention cream.  There aren't that many 'sleb chef versions of it on the web - probably because it's considered naff as its a seventies throw back.

Despite its grand French name, the sauce is simple enough to make.  Sautee some onions; add that French classic Worcestershire sauce; season with parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper and then pour in some flaming brandy.  At the brandy lighting point I had to remind my mother that I am 35 and quite capable of setting light to alcohol by myself without supervision.  She's probably right not to trust me as I nearly set the extractor fan alight at Christmas when I flambeed the Christmas pudding (although she doesn't know this as she was too busy acquainting herself with the wine).

The meal went down well with the family although I found the sauce a little too oily for my taste.  I appreciate the sunflower oil was to stop the butter burning but I think I could've gotten away with one tablespoon rather than two.

Four more days and counting!

Hugh's Veal Stew

With only eight more days to go, I'm trying to work through all the things that I've bought during this year that have ended up languishing in the back of the cupboard or in the freezer that I know I'll never use again.  It's kind of a bit like Ready, Steady, Cook.  What can you make with veal, polenta, filo pastry, chickpea flour, black eyed beans, pinto beans, anchovies, tinned crab and a jar of pineapple and coconut curd?  I'm no Heston Blumenthal!

It's not Hugh's Stew, it's my stew!

So first up was the veal which I bought for the Olympic Food Challenge.  No idea what country it was for.  Bulgaria? Portugal?  Wherever it was, I was convinced I'd bought veal steaks and so had every intention of making Mary Berry's veal marsala.  That was until I got it out to defrost last night and realised that I actually had cubed veal which needed stewing.

Google kindly led me to Hugh's stew (with added anchovies - bonus) and I took the advantage of working from home today to make my own bread to go with it.  Normally, I don't get in before five, but I did a slow-rise loaf with just half the yeast - started off before my run at stupid o'clock this morning and popped it in to bake during my late lunch hour (3pm! - see working at home isn't fun at all).

Cracked on with the stew at 5pm and made two other different dinners as well.  I have achieved very little this year but at least next week I can go back to cooking two different dinners and eating toast myself.

Anyway, the stew was a pleasure to make.  I'm eschewed the faffy tomato stage - because I don't have a massive garden with a glut of fresh tomatoes - so I used passata instead.  I must admit I probably over-reduced the sauce so it was a little too thick for stew but the intense flavours were great, especially when mopped up with home made six-grain bread.

I doubt I'd make this again with veal due to the expense - but the sauce would go equally well with chicken pieces, so it may be landing in front of the husband and the child at dinner time very soon.

You can find Hugh's stew here.

BBC Good Food Paprika Pork

I bought some pork belly a few weeks back with the intention of cooking something from Bulgaria (or somewhere) for the Olympic Food Challenge.  It's been clogging up my freezer ever since as pork is something that is definitely not on the menu in our house*.  In fact, since I've known my husband, I've only cooked pork once - which was a rather yummy satay pork and apple dish for this challenge a couple of months ago.

With just a few days left of this self-imposed year of cooking something new, I knew I had to do something with that pork before it got left to languish in the freezer for a couple of years and then ended up in the bin as it was long past its freezer-life date.  Having thumbed relentlessly through my recipe books, there was nothing that was quick and easy for a work night so I took to good food where I found the paprika pork recipe.

This particularly appealed because my Grandma used to make a turkey-based dish just like this when I lived at home, served with tricolore pasta twists**.  It was during a particularly difficult period in my life when my mother had just 'abandoned' me in favour of her first husband.  My mother had never liked the dish and I swear that my gran used to make it whenever my mum was coming to visit just to spite her on my behalf.  My Grandma was an amazing woman and always saw both sides of every story, but in this case, she didn't approve of the husband and approved even less that my mum effectively picked her own happiness over her daughter and so I'm sure this was her secret way of making a point.

As the dish was cooking last night, all I could hear in my head was my mother going 'Oh no.  Not smoky turkey again, you know how I hated that'.  To make the dish authentic, I added red and green peppers which give it a little colour through the thick sauce and they're also great for bulking out the dish a bit if you're stretching it to feed a few extra mouths (or if you're just greedy like me).

Not one for my family - I didn't even bother to try convincing them to try it after the 'stinky winky sauce' of last night - but something I'll make again in the future, probably with chicken when it's just me and Miss A for tea and her palate's developed a little.

You can find the original recipe here.  I added the equivalent of two bell peppers to the dish if you were making it for four and fried them with the onions.


*Unless you count bacon and sausages
**So Nineties

BBC Good Food Hidden Vegetable Sauce

"I don't like that.  It's stinky winky!" came the plaintive voice from the dinner table.  I was in the kitchen photographing my own plateful and I knew at that moment that I'd failed.

I'm sure you've guessed from the title that I was trying to fool Miss A into eating vegetables.  It's one of those great bugbears of parenting.  The child who won't eat vegetables.  Thankfully, because I don't have the opportunity to hang round with many other mothers for more than a few minutes - apart from a minute or two's snatched conversation in the Ladies' with equally harrassed looking female colleagues who are also trying to juggle parenting and working - I've not had the misfortune of coming across one of those awfully smug mothers whose child eats every vegetable placed in front of it.

It smells quite nice, actually

Awful person that I am, I almost wept tears of joy when one day I spotted one of my neighbours returning with their child from McDonalds*.  Although deep down I know that Happy Meals are nothing like they were when I was young (I have only read about this in the papers), I was just a little bit smug that Abigail has never been inside the place.  And if I have anything to do with it, won't go in there until she's in her teens.

In fairness, my neighbour is a keen cook and on the rare occasions when we've spent time together, I've nodded sympathetically whilst she bemoaned her own child's adventurous palate.  It's so heartening to hear honesty from another mother.  Women of a certain age and background willing to admit that their child is far from perfect are as rare as hen's teeth.

The closest Miss A comes to eating vegetable is having a bit of lettuce in her mini fajitas.  It's been a trial over this past year to get her to eat meat.  I am proud to say that she no longer has fish fingers or pasta for tea every night and will eat chicken or steak or meatballs with aplomb.  But despite her eating fajitas, she'll religiously pick out every trace of onion and pepper.  It's also difficult to hide them as I make her mini wraps using a pastry cutter from a big tortilla.  They're barely big enough to hold a piece of chicken so the veg is really obvious.

Pretty colours

So tonight's experiment was to make this tomato-based sauce which is rammed solid with carrots, leeks,  peppers, onions and celery.  I thought it would be a good thing to do regularly as I usually end up with various leftovers of all of those rotting slowly in the bottom of my fridge.  In winter I'd throw them in soup but in summer they wilt until I end up feeding them to the dogs.

The sauce is really nice.  Its smell is reminiscent of my grandmother's minestrone and despite processing, it keeps a good texture.  The addition of balsamic gives it a little kick.  Sadly, Miss A didn't like it and although I didn't dare serve it to the husband, he took one sniff and agreed that it was 'stinky winky' and then asked what was in it in his own inimitable style.  The answer did nothing to persuade him it was worth trying.

But it freezes well so I have now stocked up on a great, healthy pasta sauce for me to eat all to myself.  And the grumpy pair can just have plain pasta with cheese.

You can find the original recipe here.

*I wonder what Mrs Sconegate would have to say about that?

Barney Desmazary's Lobster with Thermidor Butter

Okay, I wimped out in the end.  I just wasn't brave enough to buy myself a real, live lobster and so ended up with a pre-cooked one instead.  In my defence, living a fair distance from a decent fishing port means that live lobsters are hard to come by.  Some research on the t'internet revealed a fishmonger on a farm shop some forty miles from here.  As I was only cooking this for me, I really couldn't justify the petrol and expense of a huge, live lobster.  At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Pinchy's final mug shot

I've mentioned before how I'm a bit of a wuss and if I had to kill my own food, I'd be a confirmed vegetarian before you could say 'peanut butter on celery'.  Had I gotten my hands on a live lobster, I most certainly would've been tempted to be like Homer Simpson and turn it into a pet.

That particular Simpsons episode evoked memories of a holiday on the Isle of Wight with friends of my mother.  I was probably about five or six at the time and they drove an estate car which back then, we kids just used to ride in the boot of.  That particular summer, we got to share the boot with the world's most ginormous live lobster.  I swear blind that it lived in the boot of that car for most of the two weeks of our holiday.  I don't know why it was there or what was meant to happen to it but it definitely happened as there's a picture of us all sat in the back of the boot somewhere at my mum's house.

Anyhoo, having avoided the need to choose between stabbing the poor thing through the head or flinging it into a pot of boiling water, I turned to Dame Mary for advice on how to cut and clean the lobster.  There are a squillion and one online guides on how to do this, but the trusty 'Know How' section in Mary's Complete Cookery Book (the original one, not the re-released one Amazon now peddle) has a step-by-step pictorial and I just knew that I'd be safe with Mary at the helm.

One downside of having a cooked lobster was that the husband failed to be terrorised by it.  He's a bigger wuss than I am and will not remove spiders or moths from bedrooms nor will he collect seaweed with Miss A at the seaside.  On the other hand, Miss A wanted to play with pinchy and had a full on meltdown as I tried to explain that he was for tea.

It's lobster, not mini octopusses.  Or octopi??

I now also know that I wouldn't ever want to get into a fight with a lobster.  It was pretty easy to knife through the shell but ouchy - those claws have got some nasty sharp bits on the outside when you're trying to extract the lovely claw meat.

I'd originally intended to serve it with Thomasina Miers' pumpkin mole but forgot the coriander (next time I see langoustines, I'm so doing that recipe) so I went for thermidor butter instead.  Next problem was assuming it was possibly to change a nappy in the time it would take for the wine to reduce from 150ml to not much at all.  Wrong.  Burnt shallots do not taste good.  Nor do shallots burnt in white wine that has been open for several weeks.  Oops.  Did I mention I rarely drink?

I got there in the end.  I must say the mustard was slightly overpowering - but that may have been just the brand that I had (Waitrose own) or that I used a little too much.  Other than that, it was a really simple recipe and should I ever find myself cooking a meal for another lobster lover, it's great because you can prep both the butter and lobster well in advance of serving.  Chances of that are probably less than zero but hey - you never know what life may bring you.

You can find the recipe I used here.

Olympic Food Challenge: Hoppin' John - Bermuda

Ask anyone what they know about Bermuda and they will tell you about one of two things.  The Triangle or shorts.  In honour of this post, I'm writing it whilst listening to Barry Manilow singing Bermuda Triangle.  Yes, it's in my iTunes collection.  Hell, if you've read any other posts on this blog, I've probably told you worse things about me than that I have Bazza's Greatest Hits.  It's all because I love Copacabana.

In fact, I could tell you something worse about my husband.  Some of you may know that we disagree about most things.  It drives me potty when we go out in the same car that he'll change whatever I'm listening to.  I started listening to Radio 5 Live because of him but this summer I've not been allowed to listen to it because he only likes listening to the football commentary and not the news.  He grew up in the eighties, and being a massive eighties fan, I like most of his CD collection - but he won't let me listen to them in the car.  When we went to Scotland in the summer, I swear he chose eight hours of music he knew I'd hate on purpose.  Anyhow, recently, I got into the car with him and pre-emptively switched from the CD and he actually changed it back.  Because the CD had Copacabana on it and apparently he loves it.

Maybe we'll be like the Ballad of Tom Jones, but rather than being saved by Tom, we'll eventually stop fighting like cat and dog and be saved by Bazza's Greatest Hits.

I digress. Bermuda.  I'm supposed to be talking about food and the Olympics.  Right.  Okay.  Well the first thing that surprised me was to find that one of the most popular dishes in Bermuda is fish and chips.  But not a fancy foreign version.  Good old English fish and chips.  I never realised that Bermuda is British territory.  Or that it was quite so far away from the Caribbean - I'd been expecting the cuisine to be more akin to West Indian food.  Every day is a school day.

So after discounting the majority of the dishes listed on Wikipedia, I settled on Hop n' John which is apparently the national dish.  Wikipedia states that it's a dish of rice and peas which I know is common in the West Indies - if you were to ask my half sister what's for tea, she'll tell you she's having 'rice and peas and ding' every day.  But like most simple 'ethnic' dishes, there were a zillion and one recipes for Hoppin' John out there.  Mostly with a creole bent.

In the end, I just made up my own recipe.  About the only thing all the recipes agree on is that you need white rice and black eyed beans.  Or peas.  But I believe the beans and peas to be the same thing.  Then you can add any of the following - red and/or green bell peppers, dried or fresh chilli, herbs (commonly coriander, parsley or thyme), onions - regular and/or spring, tomatoes, bacon, ham, sausage - frequently chorizo, chicken and so on.  I didn't come across a dish that specifically used seafood in it but you never know.  This is definitely my kind of dish and it's now my new favourite storecupboard tea.

Before I give you my version of the recipe, a little about the Olympics.  Despite sending eight competitors to London 2012 to contest in five different disciplines, Bermuda left empty-handed.  They have just one athlete competing in the Paralympics in the 100m, 200m and 400m.  I wish her the best of luck.

Recipe - Serves 4

• 1 medium onion, finely sliced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 4 rashers smoked back bacon, snipped into small pieces
• 75g chorizo, cubed
• 1 small red or green bell pepper, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 400g tin black eyed beans, drained
• 200ml fresh chicken stock
• Handful of fresh parsley or coriander, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, deseeded and diced
• 2 spring onions, finely sliced
• salt, freshly ground black pepper and garlic granules to season
• 300g basmati rice (dry weight), cooked according to package instructions

1. Heat the olive oil over a medium flame in a large frying pan.  Gently fry for 5-10 minutes until caramelised.  Remove from the pan and place to one side.
2. Fry the bacon and chorizo in the pan for 3 minutes until starting to colour.  Add the celery and pepper and cook for another two minutes.
3. Pour in the chicken stock and beans and cook for a further five minutes until the beans are tender. and the stock has mostly evaporated.  Return the onion to the pan and heat through.
4. Season to taste with the salt, pepper and garlic granules then stir through the parsley or coriander.
5. Divide the rice between four plates, top with the Hoppin' John and garnish with  the spring onion and tomatoes.

Pan Seared Scallops with Lime

I don't drink much but there is always an open bottle of tequila in my cupboard.  It's been the subject of choice between myself and a friend for a while so when Ocado scuppered my plans for sweet chilli scallops for tea tonight, tequila was the first thing I thought of as I quickly Googled a new recipe.

I've not much more to say on the subject other than this sauce is the best sauce ever (the one that I poured over the scallops, not the neat tequila).  I was surprised the recipe used parsley rather than coriander given the Mexican overtones, but the freshness worked really well with the piquant flavours of the tequila and lime. I could easily imagine making this again with many kinds of fish or perhaps chicken to go with a summer salad.

Some alcohol-based recipes are just a waste of really good alcohol, but this definitely isn't.  As I'm now making inroads on the rest of the bottle (well I have a margerita by my side as I type), I will finish this post here before I post something really dumb :)

You can find the recipe here.

Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

Sings tunelessly ♪ ♫ "Chim chim-eny, chim chim-eny, chimichurri"♪ ♫ 

I really only chose today's recipe just so I could include a reference to my favourite film ever.  Mary Poppins for the uninitiated.  I have watched it approximately eleventy-million and one times in my life.  I know it word-perfect.  I want to be Julie Andrews in that dress when they jump into the chalk picture. Still.  

More sauce than steak

If Sir Jimmy Savile (RIP) was to pop up and ask me to name my price, I would without a doubt eschew the chance to have enough plastic surgery to deal with my wobbly belly, wobbly thighs, squirrel flaps and sagging boobs; a massive lottery win (although that would also deliver the Poppins-dream); and the chance to snog any of my guilty crushes (although there is one I'd possibly pick over the Poppins-dream) in order to wear that dress and dance with Dick van Dyke (as he was then, not as he is now).

Last week I had a bit of a win on the dinner front in that I managed to get both Miss A and the husband eating steak.  So Thursday's was declared as steak night and with that in mind, I decided to whip up some chimichurri sauce after reading all about it on Tonight's Menu during the Olympic Food Challenge.  And it gave me an excuse to open the blog with the Chimichurri pun.  

It's dead simple - a lot of parsley, a pile of garlic, some onion, lemon juice, olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt and chilli flakes.  Mix it up, dollop onto steak.  Perfect for a Thursday night tea.  And my colleagues will be eternally grateful that I'm working from home tomorrow because boy, did the raw garlic have a kick to it.  Although I'm wondering if all the parsley negated that? 

It made the steak more enjoyable than my usual staple when I'm dieting which is just simply pan fried with salt and pepper.  Although it had oil in it, the green bits at least made me feel I was being a bit healthy.  And having chosen a portion of angel hair pasta on the side, it became clear that the spare sauce would make a good raw pesto.

I chopped all my ingredients by hand because I couldn't be faffed with cleaning out the food processor. Looking at different recipes, they mostly agree on the basic recipe for the sauce with variations on the herbs but some advocate the herbs being hand chopped and the garlic and onion only going in the food processor while others process the lot.

Whatever.  If you have really fresh parsley - I had a mahoosive bunch from the Morrisons Market then it's definitely worth a make.

And it means I get to post the Argentinian flag on my blog tonight.  Huzzah!

Even better, I've volunteered to help complete the sweep up for the Olympic Food Challenge during the Paralympics so watch out for more foreign dishes (and flags!) heading to this blog shortly.  Happy days!

Argentina - previously colonised by Ewan from Tonight's Menu

BBC Good Food Asian Steamed Fish with Shiitake Mushrooms and Noodles

There is definitely no such thing as a free lunch.  Where I work, the pork pies are one of the favourite features of a working lunch.  I'm really fussy when it comes to pork pies and will only eat them if they don't have jelly in them.  In some ways that's good because it stops me from eating them too often.  I only really like the pastry bit but when in polite company, it's not really the done thing to hoick out the pink (or more often grey) nugget of 'pork'* and scrape out the jelly bit.  But the work pork pies are pretty good.  Pink meat*.  Crusty-ish pastry.  No jelly.

So of course I had one.  Or a half anyway.  My boss kindly showed his chivalrous side and let me have the only diet Coke to make up for a less than healthy lunch.  But even that did little to negate the impact of my poor lunch options and my need for a consolatory Flake in the late afternoon.  Hence why I ended up with a super-healthy fish dinner tonight.

I wrote yesterday that I'm still having trouble letting go of the Olympic Food Challenge.  Three days on, and I was really tempted to do another foreign recipe, but I ended up saving the Chimmichurri Steak (inspired by our esteemed OFC Coach Ewan**) for tomorrow night and cooking a country-agnostic fish dish instead.

Overdid the veg - the fish and noodles are in there somewhere!

Having not quite managed to let go completely, this allowed me to make a second use of the steamer I bought to make Nepalese Chicken Momos for the OFC.  I need to embrace my steamer and make good use of it before it manages to disappear into the black hole that my tupperware dishes have fallen into.***

The dish is pretty simple in that you just pop everything into the steamer for ten minutes, and hey presto healthy, tasty, low fat dinner for one.  The downside is that it is a pretty expensive dish what with the mushrooms, ginger, chillis etc which you can generally only buy in multiples and not in quantities for one - so something that you would possibly only afford once in a while.  It does use Pollack however which is pretty cheap in the fish stakes (no pun intended!).

I still have my head very firmly buried in the sand about just how much I've spent in this past year buying food I wouldn't normally buy just to complete this 'challenge'.

That point has actually given me some inspiration for my future ramblings over on my new blog which will be coming online in October.  I'll also be doing a bit of guest blogging elsewhere - more on that shortly.  In the meantime, I'm thinking about how to best let go of this blog.  I'd like to do so with some input from the lovely people who've taken the time to read my blog.  At the moment, I've had just over 35,000 page views since started.  This has blown me away and so I feel I should draw a definite line at the end of the year and celebrate the finish.  So I'd like to invite anyone who has read this to ask me a question about the blog.  If you visit 'The Last Post' page and leave a comment then I'll do one final post after 26th September (day 366) where I'll answer them all.

PS In lieu of me posting a flag today, I'll leave you with this cartoon I pilfered from FaceAche on the subject of Tupperware.  This sums up my relationship with plastic boxes perfectly.

PPS: The recipe for the fish can be found here


*factory floor sweepings in most cases
**I stole the asterisk thing from Ewan as I use to many bracketed comments in my stream of nonsense (it's not quite a stream of conscience)
***the husband sneaks things he deems to be clutter into the bin when he thinks I've not used them recently and I might not notice they are missing.  I then end up buying new boxes to replace them.  He then throws them away so I buy more....you get the vicious circle...

Olympic Food Challenge - Chicken Momos - Nepal

So here we are on the penultimate day of the Olympic Food Challenge and, for that matter, the penultimate day of the Olympic Games.  Team GB have just clocked up another amazing win from Mo Farah in the 5,000m.  Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to view this feat on my phone whilst perched on the toilet seat in the bathroom as Miss A had her bath.

Sadly for Nepal, their athletes (five competitors, three disciplines) will be returning empty handed.  But thanks to their presence at the games, I got to make one of my favourite recipes from this challenge.  More on that shortly.

They are actually dumplings.  Not garlic bulbs!

As for a bit about Nepal, well this is where I've really failed.  Some years ago, one of my most lovely friends decided that he and I needed to take a trip to Nepal.  I have no idea why he chose this location.  I'm sure he must've said at the time but I was too busy nursing a broken heart after being dumped by my first serious boyfriend.  I think it was something that F had always wanted to do and thought that dragging me along for the ride would be entertaining.  I duly went out and bought a guide book to Nepal, scared myself silly as it was totally not my kind of holiday but thanks to Fate, F got a shiny new job, the moment passed and all I have to tell for the tale is that guide book.

Lord knows where it is.  I'm sure it's probably still in one of the packing boxes from when I finally moved out from the house I shared with the ex (I stayed on for a year after that).  I've moved twice since then and have boxes scattered at my current house, my mother's house, my grandfather's house and there are still a couple at the ex's house that he keeps trying to convince me to take.


Rather than boring you with details you can find on Wikipedia, I will tell you what I know off the top of my head.  It's somewhere in Asia.  It's landlocked.  It's where Everest is.  Those three points alone put me off of wanting to do the trip 12 years ago (although F is an amazing mate and I would have gone despite my misgivings).

Had I made it, I hopefully would've gotten to try Momos.  They're basically a dumpling like Chinese dim-sum but filled with a curry-based mixture of either meat or vegetables.  For real authenticity, I bought a Chinese bamboo steamer (much to the husband's dismay - it's another piece of kitchenware that will eventually end up in my massive box of rarely used utensils in the garage).  I also went so far as to make my own wrappers - mostly because I wouldn't have a clue where to buy them in provincial Wiltshire.

Best flag of the challenge

It was all surprisingly easy.  Chop up some meat and veg finely.  Stick in a shed-load of spices and leave to marinate for at least an hour.  The wrappers are just a flour and water dough, kneaded for ten minutes and then shaped into small balls and rolled out to 3 inches in diameter.  You fill, twist the tops and then steam them for 10-15 minutes.  This also scared the husband because he has a thing about fire and got all twitchy when I put a bamboo steamer over a naked flame.  How he missed the whacking great pot of water sandwiched between the two is beyond me.  I swear he was one digit away from dialling 999.

The filling was tasty.  Kind of like a Chinese-y curry rather than an Indian one.  All the taste but none of the heat (despite me going overboard with the chilli).  It would make a good spring roll filling too and I intend to do this with the rest of the mixture and some filo pastry tomorrow night.  The wrappers came out well too.  I was worried they'd be a little doughy, but they were kind of like a soft pasta.  I must admit, I'd run out of regular plain flour so used 00 pasta flour which may or may not have made a slight difference to the texture.

A gold for this one and I'll definitely be playing with the steamer again.  I can see us investing in a fire extinguisher for the kitchen very shortly though.

You can find the recipe here.  I made a fifth of it and it was enough to make 12 dumplings.  There are also tons of other tasty momo recipes to try on that page (which I'll be doing soon!)

Olympic Food Challenge: Kebapche with Shopska Salad - Bulgaria

Bulgaria is forever tied to one of my childhood food memories.  My godfather used to travel there a lot for work in the eighties and for some economical reason or another, the Bulgarians couldn't get enough of Sterling.  He used to return home with bags full of Toblerone because apparently, whatever you bought, they gave you the change in chocolate.  One tale I remember quite clearly involved buying a bottle of pink champagne for just £1 and getting one of those mahoosive Toblerones you can only buy in Duty Free as change.  If only you could do that today - I'd be there like a shot.

Kebapche with Shopska Salad

The other food thing I remember was him complaining that all you ever got for pudding was yogurt and cherries.  Everywhere.  He's a chef with his own fancy pants fine dining company and so he's not the kind of person to seek out the most English of foreign restaurants when he's away.  He'll do his best to eat 'native' - short of accosting someone in the street and insisting that they take him home and feed him.  He said it put him off of yogurt and cherries for life.  At the time, I thought this was an amazing thing to have every night for pudding.  Muller Fruit Corners were in their infancy back then and I remember pleading with anyone who would listen to let me have one because I so wanted to taste that glorious shiny black cherry sauce with the snowy white yogurt.  Now, as an adult, I can see that it's not actually the be all and end all of desserts.  But if the restaurant gave you Toblerone as change when you paid, I wouldn't be complaining.


Anyhow, whilst doing my research, I did toy with the idea of an easy-win by doing something with yogurt and cherries.  But I couldn't find a recipe for it!  I then decided to make a Bulgarian Wine Kebab which is basically pork sauteed in wine and served with mash.  But of course, the weather decided to buck its ideas up and I wasn't in the market for a heavy dish like that tonight.  The meat has now been placed in the freezer to languish there for a few months as I'm really not a pork fan.

Luckily, my back up recipe was for lamb kebapche with shopska salad.  Basically minced lamb kebabs with a chopped salad covered in feta.  Simple, fresh and summery.  If I'm honest, similar to a meal that I'd cook myself.  I was a little disappointed by the lack of taste in the meat - the recipe uses minimal spices and I find that lamb mince tends to need a lot thrown into the mix to stop it tasting like cardboard.  My go-to recipe for lamb burgers/meatballs/kebabs is definitely the Lorraine Pascale recipe that's the number two most read post on this blog.

As for the salad, I liked the addition of herbs which is something I wouldn't normally do and the red wine vinegar dressing worked for me.  I normally make the same dressing time and again (olive oil, balsamic, lime juice, garlic, salt and pepper) so it was good to have this lighter combination of flavours. I think I've got some learning to do about appropriate dressings for different salads.

The Bulgarian flag isn't stunted - it's white at the top!

For simplicity, taste and crowd pleasing abilities, this gets another silver for Bulgaria to go with the one they won in the woman's wrestling.  The only medal from the 63 athletes competing in 16 disciplines.

And finally, whilst on the subject of women wrestlers, a week or so ago I happened across a link on the BBC website that allowed you to compare your physique to that of an Olympic athlete.  I am closest to a shot putter or weightlifter (*horrified face*).  The only way I could get round this was by elevating my height to that of when I wear my stilettos - the extra four inches turning me into a footballer instead.  Amusingly, someone commented that pretty much every female they knew came out as a weight lifter, shot putter or wrestler and it must be a fix because nobody came out as a female volleyballer.  Nobody that is, except for one of my male friends.  That did make me chuckle!

Olympic Food Challenge: Pollo Encebollado - El Salvador

What a fabulous day for Team GB!  Medals for Wiggo, Chris Froome, the rowing ladies and Michael Jamieson (and hopefully some others that I missed).

Unfortunately for El Salvador, they've never had an olympian make it to the podium for a medal of any colour - so London 2012 could be a first for them.  But with just ten athletes competing in seven disciplines, the odds are possibly stacked against them.

It's almost gold rather than silver

The smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, and situated in the Pacific Ring of Fire, El Salvador is home to some stunning scenery (thank you Interweb for sharing this with me) and diverse wildlife which includes many endangered species.  The food is heavily influenced by Mexican and Spanish cuisine.  This is where I came a little unstuck because yet again, I couldn't find Cassava or Plantain in the local supermarket here in Hicksville.  I'd also already tried and blogged about Horchata - a popular drink in El Salvador - courtesy of Wahaca: Mexican Cooking at home.

Eventually I happened across a recipe for Pollo Encebollado or Chicken Smothered with Onions.  It's commonly cooked in several Central American countries and I picked it because it was something that was simple to do on a work night and - I hoped - would be family friendly.

In a nutshell, it's just chicken simmered with onions, stock and wine.  Inoffensive, not spicy, just plain and tasty.  Of course, I wimped out and let the husband have his usual baked chicken with Uncle Ben's microwave rice and Miss A had scampi and plain boiled rice although she did share my chicken with me and declared it yummy.

It's something I'd definitely consider cooking again although it looks a little insipid on plain white rice - I'm sure the husband would be more likely to eat it if it came with a pile of sautéed potatoes.  I think this deserves a silver medal for the combination of ease and taste.  Well done, El Salvador.  Onwards to Guinea Bissau tomorrow!

You can find the recipe I used here.

Olympic Food Challenge: Keftah with Harissa Hummus - Algeria

Having competed in 11 Summer Olympic Games, Algeria have won just 14 medals and this year have sent 42 athletes to London to compete in 12 disciplines with a hope of extending that tally.  Historically, their best events have been Boxing and Athletics (specifically middle distance running) but Beijing 2008 saw them collect two medals for Judo so who knows what they'll achieve this year.

Located on the northern coast of Africa between Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria is home to 37m people.  Populated since 10,000BC, Islam was introduced into the country in the 7th century with around 90% of inhabitants now being Muslim.

No, it's not burgers and beans with Sainsbury's pita...

The country gained its independence from France in 1962 and this mix of influences is very apparant in the wide range of dishes attributed to Algerian cuisine.  Dishes vary from region to region and make use of seasonal vegetables.  According to Wikipedia, all meals use grains.  Wikipedia is quite obviously wrong because the recipe I cooked tonight didn't come with grains.  It could've done.  But it didn't.

Geography lesson over, tonight I increased the 'meatball tally' of the Olympic Food Challenge by one meal by choosing to make Keftah.  Like so many countries in the Mediterranean, Algerians have a fondness for highly spiced lamb made into either meatballs or kebab shapes.  I much prefer the term Keftah or Kofte (Turkish) to the very American meat ball.  It's like meat loaf.  Stating the obvious but doesn't sound that appetising.  My favourite term for meatballs is the German Frikadeller, although I've never tried real German ones.

The recipe was once again sourced from t'interweb and I was entertained by its lack of precision.  Put roughly this and a bit of that and a pinch of something else together with enough meat to make three smallish meatballs.  Great for a bit of experimenting.  Meatballs are a popular meal in this house, but if you've read some of my other posts on the subject, you'll know that the husband will only eat Waitrose Aberdeen Angus ones cooked in Rachel Allen's pasta sauce with spaghetti.  This is an advance because before this blog, we didn't eat meatballs in this house so it's one extra meal on the menu.  But he's poo-pooed all the homemade versions that I've tried.

When he found out that Miss A and I were having meatballs, he plastered a pout on his face that would rival Posh Spice.  But once he realised they were lamb rather than beef, he was quite happy to sit down to his boring dinner of plain chicken and plain pasta with cheese.  Until I put my plate on the table.

Algerian flag

'But it's meatballs on baked beans.  I'd really really like that' came the plaintive wail.  Revealing that the beans were actually chickpeas shut him up pretty quickly and let me eat my very yummy meal in relative peace.  As the 'hummus' was so spicy, I didn't give Miss A any, serving her meatballs with pasta and fresh tomato sauce.

I did tinker with the recipe a little because I wasn't a fan of the sauce which was basically water with some Harissa stirred in and then reduced.  So I added some chopped tomatoes, sea salt and sugar to the mix and garnished it with fresh coriander.  Much tastier.  The husband eventually stole one of Miss A's meatballs and you could tell from the look on his face that he actually liked it but wasn't willing to admit to it.  He can stick to his manky shop-bought ones until he retracts his scathing opinion which was based purely on sight.

Served with Khubz also known as Dan Lepard's Perfectly Plain Pita (I adore these and won't ever by shop bought again), it has to be my favourite meal so far and I'll definitely make it again.  First gold medal.

Just as an aside, the Keftah recipe has many similarities to the recipe for Lorraine Pascale's Minted Lamb Burgers (third most popular post on this blog) which I then turned into Moroccan Meatballs the following night.  It's a small world...

Recipe -  Serves 4 (Adapted from Shawna's Food and Recipe Blog)

For the Harissa Hummus

• 1 tbsp Harissa Paste
• 400g tin chickpeas, drained
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 200ml water
• pinch of brown sugar
• pinch of sea salt

For the Keftah

• 400g lean lamb mince
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely diced
• 1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp table salt

• Fresh coriander to garnish

1. Mix the ingredients for the Keftah together in a mixing bowl until well combined.  Divide into twelve even sized pieces, shape into balls and place on a plate.  Rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
2. Heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan over a medium/low heat.  Place the meatballs in the pan and fry until browned and fully cooked through (I popped mine into the oven on 180c fan for ten minutes, wrapped in foil just to make sure they were fully cooked after frying as they're quite large).
3. While the meatballs are cooking, place the chickpeas in a small saucepan.  Pour in the water, tomatoes, Harissa and simmer over a medium heat for 5 minutes.  Add the salt and sugar and simmer for a further ten minutes until the sauce begins to reduce and thicken.
4. To serve, spoon the hummus onto serving plates and top with three meatballs for each dish.  Garnish with coriander and serve with Khubz (pita) or rice or couscous.

Olympic Food Challenge: Chicory with Cheese and Ham - Belgium

No faffing around tonight.  A recipe slathered in cheese sauce?  Belgium, you have been awarded the first gold medal of the 366 Recipe Challenge entry into the Olympic Food Challenge.  I salute you.

Based on previous performance, Belgium will surely welcome this medal, averaging just one gold per Olympics over the past few events, but with an impressive 139 medals in total over 24 Olympics - not bad for a relatively small nation. With 124 athletes competing in 16 disciplines, they should surely stand a chance of adding to their current haul of a solitary bronze in the judo.  Cycling is by far the best event with one fifth of their medals won on the road or track.

The linguistically diverse country is home to just shy of 11m people, speaking Flemish, German and Dutch as well as excellent English.  I know because I've been there.  To a Cliff Richard concert*.

Chicory, not chicken.  Honest!

Ask anyone about Belgian cuisine and they are likely to mention Chocolate, Beer, Fries and Waffles.  I missed an opportunity here because the two national dishes are steak-frites (lush) and moule-frites (equally lush).  Sadly, I appear to be allergic to mussels having never successfully held down a portion of moules - I've made several attempts at this.

Instead, I took the opportunity to pick the brains of one of the consultants who is working on one of my  projects at work for advice.  Not only is she Belgian, but she works for a company that sponsors the Olympics so she was the perfect choice to sort out today's recipe.

Despite a desire to dust down my waffle iron and make piles of them, laden with cream and caramel and bananas, I opted for A's favourite dish of chicory with ham and cheese.  She was kind enough to send me links to a series of recipes and her own personal opinions and experiences of them.  This was listed as a childhood favourite so I just had to try it.

I bought some chicory a few months ago to try in a Jamie Oliver meal but never got round to it.  Mostly because I seem to have mislaid the book (this is entirely possible in our house, trust me).  So having wasted one opportunity, I decided I absolutely had to tick it off of the list this time.  A mentioned that her mum used to also make this with leeks for a more subtle, child-friendly flavour.  Having tried the chicory version, I would probably go with leeks in the future for both flavour and cost.  The bitterness is interesting, but I won't say I'm a huge fan of them.

Belgian flag (in case you couldn't work it out!)

My sauce did go a little runny on cooking.  I would recommend using slightly less milk, but this could equally have been because I kept the calories down by using skimmed rather than full fat milk.  It still tasted fantastic though.

The recipe says to serve it with mash, but given the huge calorie overload from the cheese and the vaguely warm temperature from today, I opted for a side-salad instead.  In mid-winter on a bad day, I could fully eat this with a pile of buttered mash and some spinach on the side, just to make me feel a little bit good about such indulgent nursery food.

You can find the recipe I used here.  And thank you A for your help in finding the recipe!

*Don't ask.  It took enough guts to publicly admit I actually did this.

Olympic Food Challenge: Jollof Rice - Nigeria

Nigeria have fifty-five competitors competing in eight disciplines at the London 2012 Olympics, hoping to break their 16 year gold-medal drought.  I learn so much about the world from Wikipedia.  Sir Tim Berners-Lee is continuing to help rectify the average secondary education that I had.  For that, and Twitter, I salute you sir.

As for the country, Nigeria is the 7th most populous country in the world and the most populous country in Africa with just over 166m inhabitants but is only the 32nd largest country in the world by land area.  Most importantly, the cuisine is colourful and vibrant with the typical West African spicing.  (Because it says so on Wikipedia, so it must be true).

Jollof is a rice-based dish, and the only reason I picked it was because I was amused by the claim on the website that it's a vegetarian breakfast dish.  I'm assuming that the author considers chicken eaten at breakfast to be quite alright within the confines of a vegetarian diet.

Vegetarian Jollof - with extra chicken

Whilst pondering this post, I Googled other recipes and was interested to see the variance in ingredients.  BBC Good Food has a recipe that adds bell peppers and Okra.  If you ask Wikipedia, it says that Jollof is a rice dish, cooked with tomatoes and spices which you can then add vegetables and meat or fish to.  It's a dish common throughout West Africa, but mine definitely came from a website stating it was the Nigerian version. 


It was a doddle to cook - pretty much like doing a paella but with less faff.  I was intrigued by the addition of Lea & Perrins.  I never would've thought that you could buy something like that in Nigeria - but I am happy to stand corrected.  The best bit was the slightly burnt bits from the bottom of the pan where the sauce 'caught' as the rice had absorbed all of the liquid.


We had it for tea because I couldn't face the idea of a chicken and rice dish for breakfast.  Miss A liked hers, although I'm sure she only ate so much because we bribed her with the promise of a summer pudding cupcake if she finished - we knew she wouldn't.  The husband was intrigued (he had Mary Berry's Chicken Tikka with Dan Lepard's Naans) because it looked just like red rice with Chicken - his Wednesday night staple.  Sadly he spotted it was packed with carrots, peas and French beans.  The closest he gets to a vegetable is when I put his sandwiches in the fridge behind a lettuce.  I enjoyed it and would definitely cook it again as a way of getting veg into the family.  I may just try some other veg like bell peppers in place of carrots and then the husband may just try some.


I think we have our first silver medal on this blog.


You can find the recipe I used here.  Vegetarians, beware!