Silvana Franco's Patatas Bravas

I think I should have been born Spanish.  Tapas definitely appeals to my inability to make a decision.  I hate going to a restaurant where I want to try just about everything on the menu and have to commit to one dish per course.  If I luck out on what I choose, then fantastic.  But if I pick something and it's below the par of my expectation then I spend the rest of the evening (or if you ask my husband, the rest of the week) mithering on about how I wish I'd chosen something else.  Give me a restaurant where you have three choices per course and only one of those is chicken or vegetarian and I'm happy.

I did manage to save a bit for a picture

On the other hand, I love tapas. Because you can order lots of little portions of different things without feeling terribly greedy and if I don't like one thing, there's always something else I'll like.  Plus I can order something I'm not quite so sure about and if I like it, then happy days; if I don't then I can just compensate myself with an extra spoonful of something else.

When we first moved to the sticks, there were only Chinese or Indian restaurants in town.  Italian was limited to Pizza Express - and at a push you could just about say that Pizza Hut was the alternative.  Or fish and chips (which Buckles do very well thank you).  Anything else and you had to travel.  We now have a lovely tapas restaurant, which I'm dying to try.  But I just know it's not the husband's type of place and being a full time working mother, there's just been no time to cultivate relationships with other women* in order for me to suggest it as a venue.

So today, given that it was meant to be sunny and I had the house to myself for a whole hour and a half (the child was having her nap, the husband was out) I decided to make myself patatas bravas to go with the six grain loaf** I'd knocked up earlier.

The recipe was simple enough - a bit of chopping; pop the stuff in the pan; wait impatiently for it to cook; get disturbed by husband coming home early; don't eat as planned due to domestic issues; stand in the kitchen later on eating cold patatas bravas straight from the pan and consequently feel sick from overeating.

Really really liked it and it's a great way to use up leftover new potatoes.  We rarely use them and I normally end up letting half the bag go rotten.  So now, I will be really good and use them up making patatas bravas instead.  The only thing missing was the sunshine and a glass of chilled white or Rijoa.  There's always a next time.

You can find the recipe here.

*I do know other mothers but most of them either make me feel totally inadequate for working full time or just make me want to stab myself in the eyeball with a fork with their competitive mothering antics.  And if any of them read this blog, I'm sure they'll dislike me even more!
**Flour purchased from Wessex Mill.  First time I've made a brown loaf that the husband has liked.  Result!

BBC Good Food Black Pudding Potato Cakes

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet by @TheFoodNut saying that the odds were on Stephen getting fired from The Apprentice.  I was desperate for Stephen to go as he was truly irritating so I tweeted back that if he didn't, I'd eat black pudding - the culinary equivalent of eating my hat.  We Sky+'d The Apprentice that night and I left the telly on BBC2 instead.

A waste of a perfectly poached egg

Rather stupidly, I came down just after 10pm and saw that someone else had been fired.  Annoyed both that Stephen appeared to still be in and that I'd seen the result before the programme, I wandered back upstairs and added some black pudding to my Ocado order.  Never let it be said that I don't keep my word*.  Even to someone I've not met.

You can imagine how gutted I was several days later when we finally watched that particular episode and I discovered that Stephen had indeed left in a double firing.  And of course, I already had my black pudding.

This has bothered me for nearly two weeks now.   Every time I've opened the fridge, it's been staring at me.

I decided to discuss it with my mentor.  Normally I like him and respect his opinion which I why I asked him to be my chief cheerleader and motivator (at work!).  One of his roles is to ask me why I'm making particular decisions in my (work) life and challenge me if he thinks I should be doing something else.   I'd desperately been hoping he'd say something like 'Are you completely mad?  I wouldn't feed that to my dog!'**  He told me that black pudding is one of his favourite foods ever and I should definitely try it. I'm now considering looking for a new mentor.

So this weekend it came time to bite the bullet.  I'm emptying the fridge of perishables in advance of our impending holiday and conveniently, it went out of date today.  I'd researched this recipe a while back.  It seemed like a good idea because it wasn't a whole piece of black pudding; nor did it require expensive ingredients to go with it (scallops and black pudding is such a waste of good scallops).  I made my mash yesterday but couldn't bring myself to eat it at lunch time so it became today's breakfast.

That fateful tweet

Having forgotten to mix in the spring onions, I panfried them and served them on the side.  As I don't like cherry tomatoes - and didn't want to buy some just for this one recipe - I used up some of the Chilli Jam that I made a while back (batch number three!).  And I served it with a poached egg because I prefer them to fried ones.

The verdict?  Well it was okay, but it's not something I'll be cooking again.  Ever.  Unless the husband ever decides to like black pudding (in which case I'll probably just divorce him).  It had a very earthy flavour.  Almost like I'd made the potato cakes by mashing in the (unwashed) skins.  And it gave them a bit of spice too.  But it didn't rock my world.

Maybe I should just try it on it's own as part of a full English.  Or in some fancy restaurant, cooked perfectly with scallops or made into pakora or something.  But the chances of going to a swanky restaurant in the current millenium is probably hovering around the zero mark.  So I don't think I'm ever going to have a torrid love affair with the stuff.

Here's the recipe for your delectation.  If I adapted it in any way, I'd drop the black pudding and serve it with some lovely pink rashers of smoked bacon.

*Well most of the time....
**He doesn't have one

BBC Good Food Potato Salad with Caesar Dressing

Whilst the warm weather has made me productive in some areas (getting the washing done and dried), it's made me lazy in other areas (slaving over a hot iron/computer to write my blog/hot stove etc etc).  Tea last night was an indoor/outdoor barbecue (last Friday's post will fill you in on this).  We ate the leftover food from Friday's barbecue along with salad and new potatoes.

I always over-estimate the number of new potatoes I need (or rather that the husband will eat - approximately two) so was left with a huge pile in the fridge.  Having been to lazy to make myself sandwiches last night, I had an epiphany at about 4am this morning as to what to take to work for my lunch - potato salad.

Not just any potato salad, but a Caesar dressed potato salad - the idea coming from a recipe I happened across on Friday when looking at recipes for Caesar dressing.  Bingo.  I still had some dressing left from Friday so stirred one bowl into the other and hey-presto, I had lunch.

A little heavy on the prosciutto!

To give it some body I also threw in a chopped up frankfurter (we always have them in the fridge because it's about the only lunch the husband can make for himself).  It was a really nice lunch - mostly because my beloved grandma used to make me a similar potato salad with frankfurters for my lunch when I was a kid (and probably why I was so fat back then).

Because my dressing had been 'developing' in the fridge for a couple of days, I will admit that iit tasted fishier than I remembered from Friday and if I'm honest and was making it again, I'd probably leave them out because I'm really not a fan and I'm sure the dressing tastes fine without them - it's just obviously not a true Caesar dressing.

You can find the original potato salad recipe here.  It's much easier than the one I made Friday because it uses shop-bought mayonnaise rather than making your own.  The dressing I used came from Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Easy, one of my favourite books.

And because I'm so lazy and there was so much left over, I ate the remainders for my tea - without the frankfurter but with baked prosciutto crumbled over the top.

Dan Lepard's Flash Bread

I've been writing this post in my head all afternoon, but now it's come time to put fingers to keys (so sad that it's not pen to paper), I still haven't quite formulated it into a coherent ramble.  Originally I was going to waffle on about looking through the archive of the past six months in my phone's gallery with Miss A this afternoon, but then I decided on a whim to make bread and that post has a definite subject.

Late afternoon snacking, the civilized way

You see, a few days ago, Miss A and I stopped for a drink and a snack in a Sainzlebob's cafe.  She won't drink milk but thinks babyccino is coffee like mummy's and it's a game I'm happy to play even if it is a slightly expensive way of getting calcium in to her.  As she was hungry and had already consumed my stash of grapes and the emergency organic gingerbread man, I helped her to choose a cheese scone (rather than a cupcake or chocolate croissant) believing that I was making an okay choice as a frazzled mother. But then I decided to tweet a picture of the event and got taken by surprise.

I received a tweet back about then potential content of Sainsbury's cheese scones and the useful information that they contain an ingredient that can be used to make wallpaper paste.  Very true.  We have yet to make pasta pictures with flour and water glue, but it's something I did many a time in my childhood.  My mother was never concerned that my innards would be glued together.  And I've made it to my thirties so she was right.  But rather sadly, that one tweet of mine taken out of context sparked a defensive streak in me.

Potatoes, vinegar and yeast.  Yummy!

If I'd been feeding her turkey twizzlers and blue smarties (on the same plate because I'm classy like that) I could have understood a bit more.  Or if I'd tweeted a picture of her in McDonalds or sucking on Fruit Shoot like so many other toddlers, I wouldn't have minded so much.  But what's so wrong with a cheese scone?

Really, deep down it sparked the simmering guilt that this mission of mine to broaden my family's food horizons isn't working as well as I had hoped.  Miss A is going through a fussy phase - at one time for weeks she'd only eat pasta with cheese and yogurt and fruit.  Slowly but surely, we've moved back to eating bread and meatballs and peas and this week baked beans have been added to the list.  But it's been hard work.  The number of times I've slaved over making some uber healthy, toddler friendly recipe only to have it tipped onto the floor with a cry of 'pasta Mama' exceeds the number of fingers and toes that I have.  Honestly, I try.  In fact, Miss A is offered far better food than either the husband or I get.  She just refuses to eat it.

Back when I first started weaning her, we did baby-led weaning.  None of your faffy puree stuff and I made darned sure that she had fresh home-baked bread daily, no chocolate, sweets or cake in her diet.  Because I was totally in control of her environment.  But now, with the influences of the time she goes to nursery, her awareness when we're out and about and interaction with peers plus a strong will means that food battles occur frequently and my standards have slipped somewhat.  These days I'm happy that she chooses something savoury rather than me having to deal with the tantrum that ensues when I tell her that no, she can't have chocolate or no, she's had far too much fruit or cheese for one day.  And it rankled that someone who doesn't know me and how hard I work both in and out of the home should dare to question my parenting skills.

Fresh from the oven, so tempted to rip it apart

Of course, the comment was well intentioned if misdirected (she admitted that her own nephew's grandmother could do with some lessons in healthy toddler food) and badly timed.  But after a lot of sulking, it did guilt me into remembering that now Miss A is back eating bread, I should make more of an effort to try and bake more than once a week.

Which is why I chose Dan Lepard's Flash Loaf.  He claims that with some ingenuity, you can have a freshly baked loaf, cooled and ready for slicing in just two hours.  I would say that's a little wide of the mark because there's the weighing and measuring (10 mins if you include gathering ingredients and equipment); two lots of kneading plus three ten minute rests; shaping and then a 20-30 minute rise and 40-50 minutes in the oven.  At the extreme end of those times, you'd take the full two hours to get it onto the cooling rack.  But, from a man whose sourdough takes two weeks to make, this is a fast loaf.

The recipe calls for potatoes and vinegar plus five teaspoons of yeast (slightly shy of two 7g sachets) to kick start it in addition to the usual flour, salt and water.  There is no specification for the type of potatoes or vinegar to use.  If I'm honest, these two ingredients leant the bread a faint aroma of chips once it was cooked - only if you put your knows right up to the loaf mind you, but chips all the same.  You can see from the picture that it had a lovely crunchy crust and the insides were beautifully soft and doughy.  I found the bottom to be a little damp and so popped it back into the oven for five minutes once I'd turned it off and it was starting to cool down.

Fairy princesses eat delicately...

I don't know if the type of vinegar or choice of potato (I used regular malt and bog standard baking potato respectively) would make any difference to the flavour.  They did make a wonderfully textured loaf that you just can't get with my two-hour loaf recipe, but I can't quite get my head around eating this loaf toasted and slathered with jam in the morning.  Four fruit marmalade and chips anyone?

And for a toddler who hates chips (yes, they do exist, I own one!) Miss A wolfed the bread down like her life depended on it.  And as my white flag of truce, I shared a picture of her snorfing the bread down with the lady who rankled my inadequate mummy feelings.  Will I make it again?  Perhaps.  I need to spend some time reading up on the theory section of Short and Sweet to see if there is any advice on best vinegar or potato types.  I did really enjoy it but feel that it is best suited to certain dishes or meals such as part of a posh ploughmans or with lots of lovely picnic savouries, whereas my bog standard white loaf is a bit of an all round crowd pleaser in this house.  Or I might stick to Dan's own easy white bread recipe which I tried before as part of this challenge.

Give it a go and see what you think!  The recipe I used is from Short and Sweet, but it's also on the Guardian website.

Fondant potatoes

Vegetarians, look away now!

I'm finally getting around to updating this post.  On this very day (the one the blog is for, not the day I'm finally getting to write the post), I was looking forward to staying over at my mum's for the night.  Her and my step dad were going out for the evening, I planned to put the child to bed and then make myself a really nice steak with fondant potatoes and then spend the evening by myself reading recipe books and channel-hopping.

Of course, nothing ever goes to plan.  The child was an angel all day.  She got ready for bed, said goodnight to the grandparents, I took her upstairs, put her in the travel cot and she promptly climbed out.

The travel cot is something we've used when staying at my mum's for the last two years and I was hoping to get at least one more stay out of it.  Sadly not.  Miss A is very tall for her age and really doesn't like going to bed.  Many parents will be shocked, but she's still got the sides on her cot bed at the moment as we've not gotten round to resolving all the inherent dangers in our house to allow us to even attempt to let her sleep in an open bed.  We live in a townhouse with stairs that aren't suited to baby gates so not only do we have to stop her getting downstairs in the night but we also have to worry about her getting upstairs.  Or in the bath.  Or climbing the cupboards in her room.

Steak and potatoes.  Good, hearty food.

Anyhow, knowing that my mother's house is a death trap for an unattended toddler at the best of times, I ended up taking her back downstairs with me whilst I attempted to cook my tea.

The recipe from potatorecipes.co.uk was an interesting one as for four large potatoes, it suggested only 75ml of stock.  I would've thought that you needed far more to poach even one fondant potato but with having to ensure the child didn't break twenty million different ornaments, pull the telly upon herself, fish in the cat litter tray, discover butchers machetes in the kitchen drawer, open the cupboard where the cat food and bleach lives etc etc, I didn't have time to find another recipe or advice.

In the end, the potatoes were okay if a bit burnt because the liquid just evaporated.  The steak was perfectly cooked because I didn't have the time to leave it in the pan too long and I even had time to savour it because my really fussy child decided that a medium-rare steak looked like a good thing to eat and she sat perfectly at the table and munched on a bit whilst I ate mine.  Sadly I didn't have the time or energy to cook any veggies to go with it.

As for recipe book reading, it didn't happen.  I was in bed by 8pm with a slumbering toddler taking up 5/6ths of a double bed so no chance of lights on for reading.

So veggies, I'm sorry for the picture of the potatoes with a huge steak, but if you're looking for a good recipe I'd try a different one.  In fact, next time I'm going to try the BBC Good Food Garlicky Fondant Potatoes, as recommended to me by the lovely @EversNanaJules.

Curried Potatoes (Aludam)

Continuing the recent theme of my mother not understanding my personal challenge of cooking something new every day for 366 days, this morning I sat down with her for a slightly more frank conversation about food.  Regular readers will know that my mum was a chef until she had me and so a lot of my basic skills have been picked up from her.  And perhaps a bit of natural talent with certain things too.

Before anyone starts nagging me for being an ungrateful daughter, me and my mum love each other dearly.  We just don't always see eye-to-eye.  Take, for example, me mentioning that I eat my breakfast at my desk. "God that irritates me" says my mother. "People stinking the office out with their porridge; they should just stop being so lazy and get up half an hour earlier and eat at home."  So any sympathy I would be looking for from her on how I get up at 4am three days a week to go running; before I drive 45 minutes to work to start by 7am; so I can hopefully get to spend some time with her precious grandchild at the end of a long and stressful day evaporated before I'd even opened my mouth to defend myself.

Apparently, I have no self control either because my mum, who leaves home at 7am after getting up at 5.15 (why, why, why???) and eating her breakfast at 6am, is perfectly able to get through an entire morning of work and not eat anything else until 1pm.  If I eat at 6am, I'm hungry again by 9am.

We meandered on to talking about cook books and food.  I was shocked to discover that she reckons she only owns three cookery books.   Having spent the rest of the day thinking about that statement, I know it's not entirely true.  But if we're talking about ones published in the last twenty years, then the figure is probably quite accurate.

She mentioned she has never cooked anything from any of them aside from the "Hairy Bikers Stollen Doorstop" that she made for Christmas.  "That's exactly why I'm doing this" I said.  "I own over fifty recipe books and whilst the spines are well-cracked, most of them are pristine inside"  I then asked why she's never cooked from them.  The answer included phrases such as "I can't be bothered after a long day at work" and "I can't be bothered at the weekend after I've baked all my bread and rolls for the week" and when I mentioned some of the really easy, healthy and tasty recipes I've tried of late she decried the lack of meat in my diet "I was bought up when you always had meat for every meal and despite it being so expensive, I refuse to believe that a meal is a meal without meat" (she's only 57!!) and then ticked off a long list of things she won't eat including beans (except green ones), pulses, sun-dried tomatoes, anything sweet with meat.....  And she calls me fussy!

It saddened me in a way.  I always had this idea in my head that she enjoyed cooking.  But it seems like she finds it a chore, which is sad when she used to do this for her job.  Then again, I'm sure analysing business practices doesn't have much appeal outside of the workplace.  I suggested she try just one new recipe a week for a year.  "No time"  "One a month then?"  "Can't be bothered.  You won't persuade me".  So I gave up.

Then I realised that despite over the past year, she's tried lots of the things I've made. The summer berry drizzle cake which I packed with the glut of raspberries from my garden last year; the healthy mac and cheese from a few weeks back; the Hummingbird Lemon loaf which is a staple in my cake repertoire when we have visitors; she made some funky baked salmon dish with Hellman's that she'd found a recipe for somewhere or another for tea on Friday night; and she's talking about trying the Lorraine Pascale Fish Cakes I made the other day.  And the whole weekly bread baking ritual.  She only started doing that regularly when I started baking my own bread last year.  Stubborn as a mule, my Gran would've said.  Lovely with it too though.  I'll wear her down one day.  And I've already told her that churros will be on the menu next time we visit.

So in a fit of feeling sorry for her Hairy Bikers' Cookbook which was almost condemned to the bin after the stollen disaster, I copied out a few recipes from there to add to this challenge.  The first of which, I tried tonight.  Having been stuffed to the gills at lunchtime with a turkey roast and the best apple and summer fruit crumble I've ever eaten (she's still got it!), I wanted a light-ish dish I could try this evening.  I'm still trying to find something to wean the husband off of his need to have Sharwoods microwave pouches of Saag Aloo with his Mary Berry's chicken tikka and Dan Lepard Naan Breads and failing miserably.  Until today with this tasty little curry.

Not being able to find the green chilli I knew was lurking in the fridge somewhere, I used a Scotch Bonnet instead.  Thankfully, because I reduced the quantity, I didn't scald my mouth-lining whilst eating it.  However.  Beware.  The book doesn't warn you that when you first add the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli to the smoky hot pan that a) it spits everywhere and you're liable to pick up a war-wound or too if you're stood too close and b) it's likely to scald the lining of your lungs with the hot, pungent, spice it adds to the air in the immediate vicinity.  I sounded like a sixty-a-day-woodbine-smoker by the time I finally got the tomatoes into the pan.  But it was worth it.  A definite keeper dish that I will make for the husband next time I do tikka.  I'll just need to scale back the chilli for him as he's not into hot stuff (goodness knows why he married me then ;o)) but I think that it will hold it's own just as well with less heat.

From the Hairy Bikers 'Mum Knows Best' (I'll admit that sometimes she does - just not on the breakfast at work issue)

Serves 10

• 2kg white potatoes, peeled
• 200g white onions, peeled and sliced
• 50g fresh green chillies, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves
• 50g fresh root ginger
• 50g fresh coriander
• 150ml rapeseed oil, for frying
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 100g tomato passata
• salt and pepper

Cut the potatoes into small dice (about 1cm) and boil in lightly salted water until partly cooked.  mix the sliced onions with the green chillies.  peel and finely dice the garlic and ginger then add them to the onion and chilli mix.  Was and chop the fresh coriander.

Heat the oil in a large pan until a blue haze appears.  Add the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli mixture.  Fry for a few minutes then add all the remaining spices, tomato passata and a pinch of slat.  Fry for a further five minutes.  Add the potatoes and saute until all the ingredients have combined and the potato is cooked.  Adjust the seasoning to taste and garnish with some fresh coriander.

Palak (Saag) Aloo

Somewhere in this house, I've got a copy of 'The Curry Secret' which I bought several years ago when I had an inclination to cook a chicken bhuna totally from scratch.  I didn't because the first instruction was to make about 3 gallons of authentic curry sauce by slicing about 20 kilos of onions.  It seemed a little excessive on the off chance that the husband wouldn't like it.

Palak Aloo

Amongst the recipes was one for saag aloo.  It's something I always order when I have a curry at our local curry house.  Recently, in a moment of madness, I bought a pack of pre-made saag aloo.  The husband loved it.  It was just about passable, but looked more what Popeye squeezes out of his spinach cans than the gloriously green potato dish at the Akash.  And having mastered Chicken Tikka, Mango Chutney and Naan Breads over the past few weeks, I figured that saag aloo should be my next recipe to try.

Not being able to find The Curry Secret anywhere, I resorted to Google.  Oddly, not many recipes came back and the ones that did had quite low ratings.  Then, after a fair bit of reading, I discovered that a) it's one of those dishes that has been created in the UK for the British palate, rather like tikka massala and b) it's correct name is Palak Aloo with people mistakenly interpreting saag to mean spinach (it's in fact a spinach-like mustard leaf).

Sauteed spinach and spices

So searching for palak aloo returned a few more hits.  The best-rated one appeared on Food.com.  I then read all 34 reviews and picked up on some of the advice and hoped that the people who said it was tasteless were wrong.

I used baby new potatoes as I only had rooster potatoes and they were too floury.  And I took the advice of one of the commenters and changed the order I cooked things in.  I also added some chopped tomatoes for authenticity which the original recipe doesn't use.

Despite needing a fair bit of salt to bring out the flavours (this may be just because of this stupid cold ruining my palate at the moment), it was a really lovely, fresh tasting dish and I'd make it again to eat on its own as a main dish with naan.

Of course, the husband didn't like it.  So he can go back to shop bought Popeye Aloo and I'll stick with the vaguely authentic stuff.

The original recipe is here

This is how I made it...


Palak Aloo - serves 4 as a side dish

• 300 g fresh spinach
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 inch fresh ginger, roughly chopped
• 2 onions chopped
• 1-2 chillies chopped with seeds
• 200g waxy potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 4tbsp butter
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tin chopped tomatoes
• salt to taste

1. First saute the garlic, ginger, onions and green chili together till the onion started to brown. 
2. Add the spinach and cook till it wilts and puree. 
3. Par boil the potatoes till almost done  
4. In a deep frying pan fry the cumin seeds for about 20 seconds till they start to lightly brown and then add the turmeric and other powdered spices and fry for about 20 seconds to bring out the flavour. 
5. Add the spinach-onion paste, chopped tomatoes, salt, and potatoes and cook for a few minutes for the flavors to absorb and the potatoes to fully cook.

Leek and Potato Latkes

One of the troubles of supermarket shopping is that most veg comes pre-packed.  And when you're the only person in the house who eats vegetables, you can end up eating the same thing day after day after day.  Or making a lot of soup.

At the moment, I have a fridge full of leeks.  I only wanted one for soup last week, but loose ones were more expensive than the bargain pack for 50p.  So of course, I figured that I'd buy the bargain pack and do lots of leek-y things.

Fast forward a week and all but one of those leeks is still in my fridge.  I am rubbish at cooking dinner for myself some nights because by the time I've cooked for Miss A and the husband, I really can't be bothered to cook for me. And with my tastebuds having been obliterated by a cold this week, there really wasn't much chance of them getting used.

I know I could go to my lovely local farm shop, but when you're a full time working mum, the last thing you want is to schlep around three different food shops with a fractious toddler every weekend.  This is sadly why supermarkets do so well and so much food gets wasted.

Latkes, topped with a poached egg

Anyhow, after my day out was sadly cancelled, I found myself looking for leek and potato recipes and happened across one for the latkes.  Latkes are a Jewish dish, commonly served over Hannukah - woohoo, I'm doing seasonal food! - and are usually potato based but have lots of other additions.

In essence, they're similar to a rosti - something I've never cooked myself - but they seem that way.  And I wouldn't know if the recipe I used was genuinely Jewish or not, having never eaten a latke before.  Looking through the variety of recipes available on the net, there are different methods including using breadcrumbs, matzo meal or flour to bind the mix together.

The recipe I chose, however just relied on the egg and starch from the potato to bind.  I wasn't convinced by this method and once I'd made it, despite squeezing as much liquid as I could from the potatoes, they were still really wet.  I squeezed each pattie before I cooked it but I really had to be careful when flipping them to stop them falling apart.

I then added some flour to the remaining mix which made them a bit more like a traditional potato cake, but they lost their delicate leek-y flavour.  Topped with a poached egg, they made a great light lunch.  I think if I made them again, I'd wrap the grated potato in some kitchen towel after the initial squeeze-fest to remove any residual liquid.

The recipe can be found here 

Loaded Potato Soup

This challenge was inspired by my lovely cousin @BridestockBride.  A while back, she made this very soup and it was the accompanying blog post that sold me on the idea of trying something different every day for a year.

Having bought a huge bag of red potatoes several weeks back to make the soup, I finally got round to it tonight and I must say it was worth the wait and that I should've made it sooner.  It's a really filling, comforting winter-worthy soup and if you're a skinny-minnie, you can load it up with all kinds of goodies, but equally, the lower fat version that I made works just as well.

I'm supposed to be doing the eat-less-exercise-more thing between now and Christmas.  I made a good start yesterday and was going strong until at 7.25am, one of my colleagues presented me with a homemade brownie his young son had made.  Now nobody apart from my mum ever gives me homemade cake (this is an issue that needs addressing!!).  So I felt I couldn't refuse the offer.  Doubly so when I discovered that he'd bought in a box of out-of-date Mr Kipling apple pies to share with the rest of the team.

The brownie was much enjoyed with an afternoon cuppa (see I have SOME willpower) and I think that in the name of nurturing the aspirations of a young boy, I had no other option than to give it my full undivided attention.

Of course, that put paid to my plan to make the original version of this soup.  The one that requires handfuls of cheese.  And of course, despite him refusing to even go near this soup 'it smells', I would've made the husband put his handfuls of cheese in rather than my own.

Fully loaded

When arriving home, any notion of using cheese was scuppered anyway as the husband had used the entire weeks-worth of cheese - aside from a token dairylea-sized piece - to make himself a sandwich.

So I used skimmed milk and half-fat creme fraiche to reduce the calorie count.  Cheese was omitted from the actual soup and I scattered just a teeny bit on top along with some chorizo rather than bacon (no health reason behind this - just had some leftover in the fridge).

I can definitely see how this would benefit from copious amounts of cheese - what savoury recipe wouldn't?  But it was nearly as tasty without.

Also liked the top-tip about why you should only put pepper in at the end - 'the flavour of pepper evaporates the longer it's cooked' - so I've learnt something new today as well.

Basil gnocchi with tomato sauce

Because I've got such a hectic couple of weeks coming up, I've made a list of all the things I intend to cook between now and when Ocado replenish my fridge next week to make sure I have all the ingredients I need.  On the menu this week we will hopefully have (not in any particular order) cauliflower and stilton soup, @BridestockBride's loaded potato soup, chocolate mint bars, lemon curd (practice for the christmas hampers) and...erm...well I got stuck at around five, but I'm sure I can pull something out of the bag with the random fridge contents.

Giant gnocchi!

The trouble is when you're only cooking for one - I've seriously given up trying to feed the other two anything different, unless it incorporates chocolate - you end up having to buy huge packets of things and eating the same thing for days on end.  Not much help if you're trying to try a new recipe every day. Take the red potatoes for example.  Because I've still not found time to get to the fabulous Allington Farm Shop, where you can buy as many or as few potatoes as you need, I'm now saddled with a huge 2.5kg of Red Rooster potatoes.  Given that a bag of four baking potatoes can last three months in this house, I will probably end up roasting the rest of the bag for Christmas.

So, in the spirit of economy, I decided to make gnocchi tonight.  It's something that I often buy for the child from the chiller cabinet as it's a really quick and easy tea for her when I get in from work.  I've never tried making my own.  The last time I remember having home made was when I was in fourth year juniors and my mum did a cooking lesson at school for my class.  I didn't like them back then - not sure why - but I figured if a ten-year-old can make them then they can't be that hard.

I found today's recipe on the BBC Food website.  And they are simplicity in themselves.  Stir some flour and seasoning into mash, roll into sausages, cut into bits, stick in boiling water and serve with tomato sauce.  Nearly as quick as opening a packet.  Plus the child got some of the mash (pre-seasoning) for her tea - two birds, one stone.

If I made these again, I would make them less 'rustic' ie smaller as I didn't realise how much they'd swell on cooking.  And I probably wouldn't bother with this particular tomato sauce recipe - as tasty as it was, I'm not sure it was worth an hour's worth of cooking, especially as it was only made with tinned tomatoes, not fresh. There are plenty of other fab tomato sauce recipes that can be made in a quarter of the time.

The recipe can be found here.