Warm Asparagus Pasta Salad

Warm Asparagus Pasta Salad

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 servings pasta

7 asparagus tips

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon oil

4 asparagus spears

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 onion

1 garlic clove

2 cups tomato sauce

1/2 cup cream

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Grated cheese, to serve

Seasoning

Detox Calzones

Blog note: I have just realized that although I've been editing all my photographs to be clearer and brighter, I have consistently been uploading the dark, unedited ones. Argh! I will be (slowly) going back through and redoing most of the photos because of this. Thanks for bearing with me.

It was a long weekend. When we got back, we were desperate for something healthy and fresh, so I suggested pizzas piled high with fresh vegetables. Luckily, Tom volunteered to make the dough (I do hate the hassle and mess of making dough), and the recipe he used suggested calzones, so that's where we went. We used asparagus, onion, spring onion, tomato, pepper, sukgat (edible chrysanthemum) and some chopped herbs from our balcony garden. We did not put cheese inside the calzone, but on top. You can substitute whatever you have to hand, because this is more a set of guidelines than an actual recipe. It was really, really good, and did its job as health-overload perfectly.

Dough notes: as mentioned above, we used this yeast-free recipe but Tom reports that he had to add way more flour and only used half the amount of baking powder. I have used this SmittenKitchen recipe to great effect before, as well as the SK pizza dough with wine and honey. You could also go pre-made, too.

Detox Calzones

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 2 calzones

Dough (see note above)

1/2 cup cream cheese (with garlic and herbs if possible)

1/2 to 1 cup grated cheese

Seasoning

Vegetable filling:

3 stalks asparagus

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1/2 onion

5 spring onions

1 tomato

1/2 red pepper

Handful edible chrysanthemum

1 tablespoon fresh mint

1 tablespoon fresh sage

Asparagus Hash Quesadillas

I have another recipe waiting in the wings to be published but this one was too exciting and spring-like to wait. Inspired by SmittenKitchen's asparagus pancetta hash, these quesadillas are bright and filling and surprisingly un-messy to eat. The bacon could easily be omitted for a vegetarian take, and the amount of grated cheese you add is totally up to you - I used about a quarter-cup per storey, which worked perfectly for me but was not quite enough for Tom.

They could technically be oven-free if you fried the quesadillas rather than baking them - this recipe on Pioneer Woman shows you how to do it, with pictures. Also, the amount specified below was enough for dinner for us (one double-decker quesadilla each), but I hasten to add that I knew we each had a quarter of a reduced-price about-to-go-off cheesecake to eat afterwards, so dinner was a little on the small side.

Asparagus Hash Quesadillas

(Printable Recipe)

Makes two double-decker quesadillas

2 tablespoons oil

3 large potatoes

1/2 onion

2 garlic cloves

130g asparagus

6 rashers bacon

1 teaspoon mixed herbs

1 tablespoon cream cheese

6 tortilla wraps

Grated cheese

Seasoning

Creamy Tomato Soup

I have a few backlogged recipes to catch up on, unsurprisingly, but this most recent meal is crying out to be blogged as soon as possible. I've made tomato soup from this BBC Good Food recipe before as a pasta bake sauce and as a soup, and it's worked really well. Unfortunately I don't have any baking soda, although the milk trick works really well, so substituted with cream. A really great easy soup, even better with grilled cheese on toast.

Creamy Tomato Soup

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 2 small or 1 large portions

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic

1.5 teaspoons basil, fresh or dried, divided

3 cups tomato sauce/passata

1/2 teaspoon parmesan dust (optional)

1 tablespoon cream

(OR 1 tablespoon milk with 1 pinch baking soda)

Seasoning

Garlic Black Bean Enchiladas

These chicken enchiladas are so good. They are, however, made using a packet of ready-made black bean sauce. I'm a big fan of making most things from scratch - so much so that it often doesn't occur to me that there's a quicker, ready-made way to do it - but this was different, partly because I just did a search for a black bean sauce recipe and couldn't find anything. Apparently black bean sauce isn't too hard to find in the Asian section of most supermarkets. If you see it, get it, and make this. It's brilliant.

Get some garlic too while you're there. This recipe, based on a Guardian Food garlic topping for patatas bravas, calls for five cloves of it. Pungent. Despite having two eggs in it, it went mousse-y rather than omelette-y, providing a really nice contrast to the much chewier texture of the chicken. Oh, and I also went waaay overboard on the chicken, using four whole chicken breasts for the meal. I recommend using two breasts and then adding half a head of broccoli cut into small florets, or some other vegetable or bean to bulk it up a bit. This also means that this could be adapted to make a pretty good vegetarian recipe.

Garlic Black Bean Enchiladas

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 onion

4 chicken breasts

(or 2 chicken breasts + vegetable/bean - see note above)

4 tablespoons seasoned flour

1 cup black bean sauce

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon chilli powder

Seasoning

2 eggs

5 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 cup oil

Seasoning

4 tortilla wraps

1 tin kidney beans

1/2 cup grated cheese

Veggie Burgers

I was going to make bean burgers again at the weekend, except I didn't because it's actually way too hard for me to soak those un-soaked chickpeas we've got. And it's not like I have any excuse - the same day I intended to soak the chickpeas, we took the time to create paper ties and scrap-fabric chokers attached with a 21st birthday badge in order to attend Tom's brother's wedding (congratulations to whom, by the way) via Skype. So intead we made vegetable burgers. They were good. And huge. And served with Jansson's Delight.

In other news, would anyone like the recipe for a vegetarian chilli con carne with sweet potato? I based mine off this recipe, but changed it a lot, as usual - my only worry is that I used a packet of barbeque seasoning and curry cubes, as the original spices are impossible to get here. I feel like it would be difficult for you to recreate elsewhere because I used prepackaged stuff.

Anyway: on with today's recipe...

Veggie Burgers

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 6-8 burgers

2 sweet potatoes

1/2 head broccoli

2 cloves garlic

1 tin red kidney beans

1/2 cup milk

2 tablespoons tomato sauce or paste

1-2 teaspoons chilli powder

1 teaspoon mixed herbs

2 slices bread, made into breadcrumbs

1 egg

1 cup flour, plus more for shaping

1 tablespoon oil, plus more for frying

Seasoning

Bean Burgers

What to do with a bunch of chickpeas? Whizz them up with kidney beans and turn them into bean burgers. Obviously. I was planning on doing a roast chicken (more on which tomorrow) but as it hadn't completely defrosted, I was stuck with a bowl of chickpeas (which had been soaking for two days, which means I bought them raw and not in a can!) and the knowledge that when Tom came home to bean burgers for dinner, he would be a very happy man. Indeed he was. His genuine enthusiasm was quite endearing.

Anyway, for some reason I'd decided not to blog this recipe, hence the lack of in-process pictures. Also the fact that you may need to play around with quantities a bit to get the texture of the burgers right. Regard the below as guidelines (fairly accurate guidelines, but guidelines nonetheless) and enjoy a meal which is tasty and meaty (except it's not!) and actually - in my case - going to be quite easy to do again, as long as I remember to soak the chickpeas first.

Bean Burgers

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 6 large burgers

1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic

2 cups chickpeas

1 can kidney beans (410g)

1 tablespoon mixed herbs

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon powdered stock

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I used crushed Pringles)

1 egg

2 tablespoons tomato sauce

1/2 to 1 cup flour, plus more for your hands

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon oil

Seasoning aplenty

Herbed Potatoes

We had a giant lump of pork in the fridge, which I didn't want to do anything complicated with. Salt, pepper, oil, roast is, I find, the best way to eat pork. (Except of course this BBC recipe which I cooked once and haven't been able to since and I'm still sad about that. It was so good.) So I decided to go all-out on the potatoes. The herb mixture was gorgeous, as were the occasional tastes of blackened onion, and I love the way mint adds a freshness to a mix of flavours without overwhelming.

I meant to photograph the entire process of potato-preparing but didn't get very far with that. Hence the lone photo of two onions on some foil.

Herbed Potatoes

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2 as a side

2 onions

5 small potatoes

2 tablespoons oil, divided

2 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon each mint, rosemary, thyme

Seasoning

Bacon Vegetable Stew

A recent dinner had to be converted from a soup recipe to a stew recipe. Regular readers may already know why. Although Tom has been pushing his boundaries recently, with forays into the worlds of mushrooms (twice) and anchovies, I thought messing with his aversion to soup might be a step too far. Thankfully it was easy enough - just skip the blending part, really - and dinner was wonderful. The mint adds depth and freshness to what is otherwise a stodgy mess of vegetables. I really enjoyed the comforting mix of surprisingly complex flavours. And yes, I blended the leftovers for soup the next day. With a cup of wine. It was even more wonderful.

As I type this, I am nibbling away on something baked and brilliant, which I promise to share with you tomorrow. What a cliffhanger!

Bacon Vegetable Stew

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4

1 tablespoon butter

10 rashers bacon, separated

1 onion

500g leeks

1 clove garlic

4 potatoes

2 sweet potatoes

1 litre stock

50ml rum

2 fresh mint leaves

100ml cream

Seasoning (salt, pepper, mixed herbs)

Jansson's Delight

I made this from a recipe suggestion in Niki Segnit's The Flavour Thesaurus, under 'potato and anchovy' which suggests mixing chopped onion with anchovies at the bottom of a baking tray, covering with "fat matchsticks" (i.e. chips) of potatoes, and set them swimming in cream in the oven for forty minutes. I cheated and used hefty amounts of anchovy powder rather than real anchovies, and then didn't tell my significant other that it had anything fishy in it - and he didn't notice. He even went back for seconds. So I would venture that the anchovy powder just adds saltiness and depth to the dish, rather than an icky fishiness. It was good.

I served mine with chicken oven-steamed with balsamic vinegar, mustard and garlic. I figured that the super-creamy potatoes would need something acidic to balance it out - and it worked pretty well. To see how to oven-steam chicken, check my recipes here and here.

Jansson's Delight

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4 as a side

1.5 to 2 onions

1 tablespoon anchovy powder

3 potatoes

1 sweet potato

600ml mixture of milk and cream

(I used 200ml milk and 400ml cream)

1 slice bread

1 tablespoon butter, sliced into pats

Seasoning

Lemon and Mushroom Carbonara

I had big, if vague, plans for dinner last night. There was going to be chicken, and marmalade, and caramelized onions were going to get a look in, and who knows what other exciting things. It was going to be a hodge-podge of super.

And then I looked in the fridge and in the freezer and instead of having four chicken breasts, like I thought, we had exactly zero. So I decided to do burger and chips. But we don't have chips. So I actually had to cook. Carbonara seemed the best way to go, to use up bacon and cream, and then we bought some mushrooms a while ago, and a lemon had been sitting mournfully on its own in the fridge for god-knows-how-long, and - well, dinner happened.

Dinner was good. It was fragrant (I love the smell of lemon) and spicy with the chilli powder: eminently refreshing, and nice to cook. It was slightly too sharp for me, by which I mean after I ate half my meal my throat was burning, so I've scaled back my measurements a little for this recipe, but Tom enjoyed it. The enokitake mushrooms (which Tom will eat! Hurrah!) are chewy, so be warned if that's not your thing, but add a delicious meatiness to a nearly-vegetarian meal. (Feel free to leave the bacon out and call it 'pasta with lemon mushroom sauce', if you prefer.)

Lemon and Mushroom Carbonara

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

150g spaghetti

1 tablespoon butter (plus some oil, optional)

1 bunch enokitake mushrooms

1/2 onion

1 clove garlic

4 rashers bacon

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 cup cream

1 teaspoon oregano

2 teaspoons chilli powder

1 lemon

1/4 cup grated Parmesan plus more for serving

1 egg

Seasoning

Birthday: Sweet Wine and Garlic Pasta

My birthday dinner. It was gorgeous. Subtle and delicious. I'd accidentally bought a bottle of semi-sweet sparkling wine, and while it was okay, it wasn't my drink of choice on my twenty-first birthday, so into dinner it went. My version of this meal differs slightly from the original in that it is more friendly to a two-hob kitchen with minimal washing up. I have no idea how many pans they were using in the original, but it was too many!

Oh, and it was Tom's first purposeful at-home foray into the world of mushrooms! I decided that I wanted mushrooms on my birthday, and he ate them, with no complaints, and just the observation that they were a bit chewy. This is a major milestone.

Sweet Wine and Garlic Pasta

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 an onion

250ml sweet wine, separated

200ml chicken stock

1/4 teaspoon each of any herbs on hand

1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon butter, separated

1 handful enokitake or other mushrooms

1 tablespoon cream

Lemon juice (optional)

Seasoning

6 garlic cloves

150g spaghetti

Apple and Blue Cheese Soup

When my parents were at university, they made stilton and cider soup. When I was at university, I also made stilton and cider soup. It was rich and decadent and the kind of soup that you could spread on toast. Out here in Korea, after buying Blue Cheese! in Seoul, it was the first thing I wanted to make - with, of course, substitutions. I mentioned earlier how we are in a cider-free country (except for the fact that Sprite is known as 'cider', which I swear was only done to annoy me). So, apple it was.

I made this soup alcohol-free, because I did make it just after getting out of bed this morning, but feel free to use cider yourself, or use white wine to deglaze the pan after the onion has softened. Adding a potato will thicken it, and be careful not to over-salt - just keep tasting it until it's right. The blue cheese will make the back of your throat burn slightly as you eat it, which I like, but will make you wary of eating too much.

Apple and Blue Cheese Soup

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 3-4 servings

1 tablespoon oil

Half an onion

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoon flour

200ml milk

250ml apple juice
1 apple

1 teaspoon chicken stock powder

60g blue cheese

Seasoning

Mixed Roasted Pepper Sauce

I can think of at least two other ways, beyond the one I used last night, to eat this sauce. I mixed mine (which uses 4 bell peppers and 2 chilli peppers) with 200g cooked pasta to make enough to feed four. You could up the the bell pepper for a juicier sauce (which would be good with rice), or the chilli for a spicier one. You could blend the sauce for a salsa to go with tortilla chips, or stuff a chicken with the peppers and pour the rest of the sauce over it for a summery roast.

As mentioned, I used four bell peppers and two chilli peppers, and ended up with a nice pasta-to-pepper ratio. Obviously you can get pepper in more mouthfuls if you chop them beforehand, which is something I only bothered to do for the chillis. What follows is what I chose to do - and the pictures are a pretty accurate representation of the dish as a whole, I didn't pile all of the peppers into one bowl for a photo! - but this is a recipe designed for change. Roast some onion slices with it, or tomatoes.

If you've ever tasted Tesco's own roasted-pepper-filled fresh pasta, this tastes almost exactly the same.

Mixed Roasted Pepper Sauce

(Printable Recipe)

For quantities, see notes above

4 bell peppers (use a mix of colours if possible)

2 chilli peppers

1/2 cup oil

4 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon tomato puree

1 cup water or pasta water

1/2 teaspoon each basil and parsley

Seasoning

Grated cheese to serve

Slice the peppers into thin strips and toss in a roasting tray with about half a cup of oil, or more if you think it's necessary.

Roast in the oven at 200 degrees for thirty to forty minutes, depending on how blackened you want them to be.

In  the meantime, finely chop the garlic and add to a large pan with some oil over a low flame. Once the garlic starts sizzling, add the peppers to the pan, along with all of their roasting juices.

Cook for about a minute before adding the balsamic vinegar, tomato puree, water (or pasta water), herbs and seasoning. Allow this to simmer for two to three minutes more.

If you are serving with pasta, stir the cooked pasta into the mix and allow everything to heat through before serving, topped with grated Parmesan. Otherwise, dollop on top of cooked rice, or cool slightly before blending.

Biscuit Chicken Potato Pie

Last night I thought I would have a go at recreating the Gallimaufry Pie, which was my fiftieth post on this blog - this post, incidentally, is (I think) my ninety-fourth, so we're nearly at the 100 mark! Very exciting.

Anyway, I wanted to use up some chicken, as well as the cream we bought yesterday, and I completely forgot to add the bacon, and we don't have any sweet potato anyway, so this pie is actually quite far removed from the original Gallimaufry. Hence the far less imaginative name.

It's a good pie nonetheless - I love the easy biscuit topping. (In fact, I loved it so much I made it again this morning. More details on that coming up.) It was tangy and sweet and salty and crunchy and creamy and gorgeous. What's more, it could easily be adapted to suit your particular tastes on any given night: add more potato, or some sweet potato, for a heavier meal, or courgettes for a lighter one. In fact, add whatever you bloody well like. I bet the bacon would be good in it as well.

That said, it is a bit of a frantic meal - in my small kitchen, with no help (during all the parts when I could have used a hand, Tom was conveniently either still out or on the toilet), I felt a bit overwhelmed at times. If you have time, this recipe can be done calmly and still be ready within, say, 80 minutes. As long as nothing burns, everything is perfectly happy to stay on the heat as long as you need it to.

Easy Biscuit Chicken Potato Pie

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4 with a side

2 large onions

2 garlic cloves

1 large chilli

2 chicken breasts

Chilli powder

3 small potatoes

1/2 glass white wine

100ml cream

1 bell pepper

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1/2 tablespoon brown sugar

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon lime juice

1 teaspoon mustard

Seasoning

Dough:

2 cups flour

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon lemon vinegar

2 tablespoons oil

1 tablespoon of milk, separate

Finely dice one of the onions, both garlic cloves and the chilli. Chop the chicken breasts into chunks, sprinkle these ingredients with chilli powder, and fry in a large pan on a low heat.

Chop the potatoes (peeling first if you want) into chunks roughly the same size as the chicken chunks, and boil for about ten minutes.

Add the white wine to the chicken pan and turn the heat up, allowing the alcohol to burn off. Once the potatoes are ready, drain and add them to the chicken pan, along with 100ml cream (or slightly more if that looks too dry). Chop the bell pepper chunkily and add it to the pan. Turn the heat down to its lowest possible setting, and season. Add more chilli powder to taste.

Quickly mix the flour, milk, baking powder, vinegar and oil in a bowl. The mixture should be thick and sticky and difficult to stir.

Rinse out the potato pan and dry it. Heat some oil in the pan while you finely slice the second onion in half and then into crescent-moon shapes, and then dump into the pan. Stir. Once the onions are fairly soft, add the sugar and balsamic vinegar and stir to coat. Continue cooking this on a low heat, allowing the onions to soak up the balsamic flavour, while you prepare the mayonnaise mixture.

Mix the mayonnaise, lime juice and mustard in a small bowl and whisk.

Now it's time to assemble the pie!

Spread half of the chicken potato mixture on the bottom of your oven-proof dish. Pile half the caramelized onions on top and dot with half of the mayonnaise mixture. Repeat with the second half of each mixture.

Using a couple of spoons, blob the dough mixture on top of the pie. It's going to look ugly, but don't worry. You're meant to be able to see the pie filling underneath the various biscuit blobs. Brush each bit of dough with the tablespoon of milk you kept separate.

Put in the oven at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for twenty-five minutes. Serve.

Mexican Shepherd's Lasagne

I've mentioned already today that the last few days have necessitated quick comfort food. I'm something of an expert at whipping up meals that make me feel better - but only for myself. Tom isn't generally a fan of what I, personally, think of as comfort food. And the lack of decent cheese in Korea has hindered my ability in this area somewhat. (No, I will never stop going on about how much I miss cheese. It's even mentioned in my about me section - that's how deeply I'm affected by this.)

I had defrosted some mince yesterday, so decided that I wanted shepherd's pie. Unfortunately I didn't have the energy for mashing potatoes, and we'll be having shepherd's pie next week anyway (an annual celebration - I'll attempt to explain more at the time). So I thought - tortilla pie. And immediately discarded that thought, because we'd had tortillas the night before. In the end I went for a combination of the two, with a little bit of lasagne-esque layering thrown in - I'm just cool like that.

Dinner was pretty good, with the comfort factor of being able to eat it with a spoon, although the potatoes retained enough crunch to make it just on the wrong side of comfort food. Not necessarily a bad thing. This could easily be made vegetarian following the recipe for mince from the tortilla pie recipe rather than including mince.

Oh, and I shall warn you before you look at the recipe and pictures: this is not a pretty meal.

Mexican Shepherd's Lasagne
(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4 with a side.

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 chilli pepper

1 pack of mince (250g)

6 small potatoes

2 tablespoons gravy powder

300ml tomato sauce

Pinch of cinnamon and anchovy powders

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon chilli powder

1 tin kidney beans

1/2 cup red wine

1 tablespoon mayonnaise or sour cream

Grated cheese

Seasoning

Chop the onion, garlic and chilli and fry until softened. Add the mince and stir, breaking up any large clumps, until browned. Sprinkle with gravy powder.

In the meantime, slice the potatoes into thin discs and boil on a medium-high heat until easily pierced with a fork. Peel them first, if you like.

Add the tomato sauce to the mince, along with cinnamon, anchovy, sugar and chilli to taste. Reduce for ten minutes, then add the kidney beans and red wine. (I also added leftover mashed beans from the night before, to thicken the sauce a little - you could skip this step, or mash some beans before adding to the pan.) Cook for a further five minutes before adding a tablespoon of mayonnaise or sour cream to the mince and stirring through.

Drain the potatoes and allow to cool for a moment. In a deep oven dish, spread 1/3 of the mince mixture, cover with 1/3 of the potatoes, and sprinkle a little bit of cheese on top. Repeat until all the ingredients have been layered, using a heavier hand with the cheese on top. Bake at 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit) for twenty minutes.

Serve.

No-Fish Fishcakes with Garlic Hasselbacks

So what are no-fish fishcakes? They are my attempt (based, of course, on ideas from Niki Segnit) at creating crab cakes that Tom the fish-hater will eat. They are made from sweet potato, bacon, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise and lime juice, and are really quite good. Served (as they were) with garlicky Hasselback potatoes and caramelized onions, they were amazing - the combination of flavours was superb. I was very happy with last night's dinner, and I didn't even have to prise a crab into several pieces to make it.

This recipe isn't, however, quite perfect as is. The cakes were fairly soft, although it wasn't the end of the world. To create a cake that truly holds its shape, you could add perhaps a tablespoon of flour at the mixing stage, or (as Segnit suggests) deep-fry them. I'm currently struggling with a few concepts related to food texture, so if I come up with any other suggestions, I'll let you know.

Oh, and I fried the bacon in melted butter, just because. Oh my god, it smelt so good. No doubt it was particularly unhealthy, but it felt like a bacon-in-butter night, and I'm so glad I did it.

No-Fish Fishcakes with Garlic Hasselbacks
(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

(Makes 9 cakes and 7 Hasselbacks)

7 small potatoes

3-4 garlic cloves

2 large sweet potatoes

1 pack bacon (10 rashers)

1 slice of bread

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1 tablespoon lime juice

Oil

Butter (optional)

Flour

Seasoning

Balance each small potato in a wooden spoon and make cuts through it, as detailed here.

Nobody will know I re-used this picture from before.

Thinly slice the garlic cloves and put a sliver of garlic in between each 'chip' in the potatoes. One clove should be enough to stuff two potatoes.

Like this.

Put the potatoes on an ovenable tray, drench in oil, and heavily sprinkle with salt. Put them in the oven at 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit) for forty minutes. (They will need extra cooking time, but we'll come to that later.)

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes and put them in salted boiling water over a high heat. Fry the bacon (in butter!) until it has reached the texture you like.

Make the bread into breadcrumbs - I used the blender - and put it a mixing bowl. Season.

Carefully remove the bacon from the buttery heat, allowing the fat to drip back into the pan, and either chop it finely or blend it into oblivion. Mix with the breadcrumbs.

The forty minutes' cooking time for the potatoes should be up around now. Turn the oven down to 150 degrees (300 Fahrenheit) and cook for a further thirty minutes, topping each potato with a pat of butter if you feel like it.

Back to the cakes:

Drain the sweet potato and mash it thoroughly, with a splash of milk if necessary. Tom swears that the secret to mashing is to keep mashing until it's smooth, and then mash for a minute longer. Tip the sweet potato into the bacon-breadcrumb mixture, and add mayonnaise, lime and more seasoning before shaping into cakes. I made nine, each of them a little smaller than the palm of my hand. Wrap the cakes in clingfilm and refrigerate for twenty minutes.

Flour the cakes very lightly on each side and cook in the buttery bacon fat from earlier, adding oil if necessary.

The cakes should only need two to three minutes cooking time, turning once. Make sure they are heated all the way through - as long as you don't actually burn them, it's probably better to over-cook than under-cook.

Serve with the garlic Hasselbacks and caramelized onions.

Apple Mustard Risotto

Risotto has been one of my favourite lunches for a long time - it was one of the first meals I posted, not that I strictly wrote recipes back then. It's the sign of someone who doesn't have to go to work until after 2pm. If I ever have a real job, I'll miss lunch risottos.

So yesterday I made an apple and mustard risotto, after trawling through a bunch of links and somehow finding my way to Cookie & Kate's apple cheddar quesadilla. Oh, I miss cheese. Anyway, more things happened and I ended up using apple in a risotto. (I also used apple in a peanut sauce for dinner, which was also delicious, but there are no pictures of that meal - partly because Tom burnt his contribution - so it's like it never existed!)

 Apple Mustard Risotto

(Printable Recipe)
Serves 1

1/2 an onion

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 an apple

1/2 a glass white wine
1 cup rice

400ml stock (roughly)

1 tablespoon mustard

Seasoning

Chop your onion and apple, and fry in butter until softened. Add the rice to the pan and stir to coat the rice in the butter - it should go translucent. Pour the white wine in and allow the mixture to simmer for a few moments.

A very liquidy pan.

Add stock to the pan little by little, waiting until the rice has absorbed the liquid before adding the next 100ml or so. Stir as regularly as possible. Usually I just dump all the stock in in one go because I have better things to do with my life, but you do run the risk of oversaturating the rice that way.

The rice has absorbed more of the stock.

Towards the end of the cooking time, add the mustard - it should need about five minutes in the pan to heat through and allow the rice to absorb some of the flavour without being totally overwhelmed by it.

Season the risotto, and taste - after twenty-five minutes it should be nicely edible. Serve.

Throw some extra apple chunks on to garnish.

Sweet Potato Peanut Stew

My first recipe of the day (yes, there is another to come) began life at Everybody Likes Sandwiches. It's called a "West African Groundnut Stew," but I hesitate to label it that way - I'm British, I got the recipe from a Canadian website, I'm making it with Korean ingredients, and added my own twist based on information found in The Flavour Thesaurus - adding pomegranate juice in homage to Iranian cuisine. My adaptations have, I'm sure, made the dish veer off wildly from its original incarnation, so I would personally feel uncomfortable giving it any label other than 'mine.' Sorry, West Africa.

One thing that's been bothering me for a while is whether it's spelt turmeric or tumeric. According to The Internet, both are valid. So that's that then.

Anyway! The meal was delicious, and took a surprisingly short time to make - from start (peeling potatoes) to end (serving up) took just under an hour of my life. I never thought I'd find a stew that would be suitable to make after work, given that I get home at 9:30 (not that that stopped me from trying, yesterday. Let Tom starve while I create culinary masterpieces!).

Also, a quick word of warning: if you don't have a blender, or the patience to smash two handfuls of peanuts into tiny little bits with your own (no doubt formidable) strength, you may want to skip this recipe. Or just add another spoonful of peanut butter at the ground peanuts stage, or even just not bother grinding the peanuts at all and adding them whole.

Sweet Potato Peanut Stew

(Printable Recipe)
Serves 4

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 green chilli

4 large sweet potatoes

2 chicken breasts

2 handfuls of peanuts

100ml pomegranate squash (or other concentrated fruit juice)

500ml chicken stock

2 tablespoons tomato puree

1 tablespoon turmeric

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ssamjang

Chilli powder

1 head broccoli

1 tablespoon lime juice

2 tablespoons peanut butter

Seasoning

Chop the onion and garlic and put in a cold pan with some oil, to allow the flavours to heat up together. Peel the potatoes and chop both the potatoes and chicken into similarly-sized chunks. Add to the pan. Whizz the peanuts in a food processor to reduce most of them to a fine dust (or see my note, above) and add this to the pan as well. Stir through for a few moments, so that most of the chicken is browned, and add the pomegranate syrup. Allow the mixture to bubble for another couple of minutes before adding 500ml boiling water mixed with stock. (I used six chicken stock ice-cubes) Mix in the tomato puree, turmeric and cinnamon, and leave the mixture on a medium heat for twenty minutes or so.

Simmering stew.

Then add chilli powder and ssamjang to taste, along with the head of broccoli, broken into small florets. Cook for fifteen minutes, then add the lime juice and peanut butter. The stew should be fairly dry by now, so turn the heat down and let it sit for a moment to incorporate the extra peanut and lime. Stir again and serve - I served ours with rice.

Golden Tomato Sauce

Happy New Year!

We've been away! And you can read all about it here. Sadly I have no food information to add to my experience, because we ate sandwiches that we'd brought with us, except for when we ate sweet and sour pork from a Chinese restaurant. I ate almost all of the crescent pastries. Those are definitely on the make-again list. (One thing that isn't in the travel blog, though, is how much time I spent in the car daydreaming about bacon jam. Bacon jam. I can't wait to make bacon jam.)

So we got back and I decided to make tomato sauce from scratch, because we'd bought some mini golden tomatoes on Wednesday and I was too excited to wait any longer. I've made tomato sauce from scratch before and loved it; the recipe from 101 Cookbooks has been calling out to me for a while.

Golden Tomato Sauce

(Printable Recipe)
Makes 2 servings

About 30 golden mini tomatoes

(the package doesn't have a weight label on it!)

2 garlic cloves

1 teaspoon tomato paste

3 teaspoons herbs (optional)

Seasoning

Slice each of the tomatoes in half and run your finger along the inside to get rid of the seeds. Keep the seeds in a small bowl for later.

Seed liquid, halved tomatoes, and more tomatoes waiting to be deseeded.

Either chop your tomatoes and garlic finely, or be a cheat like me and blend them together (in two batches). Transfer the mixture to a pan and heat through on low, adding tomato paste and herbs if desired. I would have left the sauce as it was, but Tom isn't the world's biggest tomato fan, so I added a teaspoon each of basil, oregano and parsley to liven things up a bit for him. Season to taste.

If the mixture gets too thick for your liking, add the seed liquid, one teaspoon at a time. After a few minutes the sauce will be cooked - cook for longer if you want it to be further reduced.