Sweet Potato Bacon Bites

This recipe started out as a way to make almost-vegetarian meatballs. I even served them with spaghetti (unfortunately without tomato sauce, because seconds before I went to make the sauce, I found that we didn't even have any tomato. That's called 'knowing what's in your kitchen like a proper cook'). But I don't think that's what these sweet potato bacon bites were intended for. On hungrily scoffing the cold leftovers the next morning, I think they would be great as snacks or canapes. They take quite a lot of work but the work is neither particularly fiddly nor hard.

Sweet Potato Bacon Bites

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 40 bites

5-6 sweet potatoes

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon milk

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup flour

Herbs, chilli flakes and cinnamon to taste

1 egg

20 rashers bacon

1 tablespoon oil

Seasoning

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

A couple of tips

1. Always flour raw chicken breasts. It makes it unbelievably juicy, whether you're steaming it or roasting it or frying it or braising it or cooking it in a curry.

2. Talking of curry, mashed sweet potatoes is an unconventional but amazing side dish.

Chicken Cacciatore

This dish (which I remembered to photograph!) has a long and obscure history. Before I moved to Korea, I spent quite a lot of time on the BBC Good Food website, and noticed that the chicken cacciatore was always high on their list of chicken dishes. For some reason I never made it, and after I read Niki Segnit's scathing opinion of it, I never really wanted to.

But yesterday at work, I was trying to come up with a dinner. I wanted something simple, something spicy, and would have preferred it to have a name that I could practise writing in shorthard. (I'm just about to start a distance-learning journalism course, with any luck, and I thought I'd give myself a headstart, given that I've got to be able to write 100 words per minute by November.) Cacciatore worked, at least from what I remembered of it (chicken, tomatoes, cream, bake).

The dish was simple and good. I served it with mashed sweet potato and cauliflower.

Chicken Cacciatore

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 large chilli

1 sprig parsley

2 cups tomato sauce

1/2 cup cream

Chilli powder

Seasoning

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.

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.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Red Wine Sauce

Original recipes can be found here and here. They go surprisingly well together!

This could also be an oven-free recipe if you boiled the sweet potato. I chose to roast it for extra flavour.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi
Makes about 50 gnocchi (enough for 4 meals)

4 large sweet potatoes
Oil
Seasoning

1 and 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup cream
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cheesecloth (I used a clean pillowcase)
Or about 100g ricotta cheese

2 eggs
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 cups flour

Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into chunks. Put into a baking dish and toss with salt, pepper and oil. Roast at 180 degrees C for 40-50 minutes. (I layered the sweet potato in a narrow dish and it took about 55 minutes for all of it to cook - if all the potato was at one level it would cook faster.)

In the meantime, make ricotta: mix the milk, cream and lemon juice in a pan and put over a medium heat for five to ten minutes, until the curds and whey have separated. Stir occasionally to minimize any of the milk sticking to the pan. Put your cheesecloth into a colander and drain the ricotta. Leave for two minutes, and then squeeze gently to remove excess whey. Tip the ricotta into a mixing bowl.

Add 2 eggs to the ricotta and beat. Add the brown sugar and grated ginger and stir to combine.

Remove the cooked potato from the oven and mash it, trying to break up any lumps. Spoon the mash into the ricotta-egg mixture and stir everything together. Gradually add the two cups of flour while stirring everything through until you have a slightly sticky dough. With clean hands, pick up about a tablespoon of the dough and roll it into a gnocchi-shaped ball. If the dough sticks to your hands too readily, add some oil and re-mix. (Our potatoes roasted in quite a lot of oil, and I believe this helped the sweet potato dough achieve a texture which made it very easy to work with.)

Make the dough into gnocchi-esque balls - we got fifty exactly from ours. Boil a pan of water and drop some of the gnocchi into it (how many will depend on the size of the pan). Once the gnocchi float (this will take longer for the larger gnocchi, although generally about two to three minutes), remove them from the pan and serve. A regular serving is about thirteen gnocchi balls per adult, I find - although I did eat chocolate afterwards.

If there is any unused gnocchi, do not boil it. This can be refrigerated or frozen. With frozen gnocchi you can boil it exactly the same way as unfrozen gnocchi - it will add no more than a minute to the cooking time.

Red Wine Sauce
Serves 2

1 onion
1 garlic clove
1 cup black raspberry wine (or substitute a slightly sweet red wine)
2 chicken stock cubes
100ml boiling water
1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard
1 teaspoon cream cheese
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon gravy powder
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon thyme
Seasoning

This sauce takes about twenty minutes, so I started mine as the sweet potato came out of the oven and was being mashed; it required very little attention except for the odd taste and stir.

Chop the onion and garlic and fry in oil until soft. Add the red wine and allow the sauce to bubble for two minutes. Add the chicken stock and boiling water and stir. After two minutes, add the mustard and cream cheese. This then simmered for a little over five minutes while I made the gnocchi. In a separate bowl, mix the soy sauce and gravy powder together to form a paste and add this paste to the pan. After five minutes, during which the sauce should have reduced a little, add the balsamic vinegar and thyme. Season to taste. Once the gnocchi is done, this will be ready to serve.

Milk Chicken with Roast Vegetable Mash

I feel like I've not been in the same 'cooking' frame of mind, recently, as I have been for the last... well, year, I suppose. I didn't enjoy the second chilli con carne meal because it felt like a microwave meal, which (it turns out) I am oddly averse to. I've made simple meals, like a carbonara pasta bake, which I didn't post because I've made both carbonaras and pasta bakes in the past. Nothing special.

Last night I was thinking of doing chicken enchiladas, which we've also done before (but which I didn't write up because Tom was the main chef that night - my original enchilada recipe is here, though), when I decided that this slump must end - at least temporarily. I found this recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches, and read it, and all the other recipes it links to, and decided to put it with this recipe from BBC Good Food.

It was good. Not mindblowingly awesome, like so many of these recipes promised - I was disappointed that it wasn't the best chicken either of us had ever tasted, but I suppose it might work better with an entire bird (as intended) than three breasts (as I used). Tom's superior mashing skills played a major role, as always, in making the mashed vegetable mix absolutely delicious. Next time I would try properly roasting the sweet potato in peeled chunks, as suggested by the original recipe, but yesterday I simply didn't want to peel the sweet potatoes. Or cut them. I don't like dealing with raw sweet potato.

Milk Chicken with Roast Vegetable Mash
Serves 2, with extra sauce

3 chicken breasts
Seasoning
1 teaspoon butter
1 heaped teaspoon cinnamon
1 heaped teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon lemon juice/vinegar
2 cups milk

2 large sweet potatoes
3 garlic cloves
4 potatoes
Milk
Seasoning

I pricked the sweet potatoes and put them on a baking tray with the garlic cloves with a little oil. Put them in the oven at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, I sprinkled salt and ground black pepper into a bag with the chicken breasts, and rubbed the chicken through the bag until it was lightly coated in seasoning. Melted the butter on a low heat in a saucepan and fried the chicken on both sides until each breast was white. (I didn't bother draining the fat as there was barely anything to drain.) Added cinnamon, oregano, lemon juice and vinegar (the lemon juice ran out while I was pouring) and the milk, and heated through for a moment. Tipped the chicken and warmed sauce into an oven-proof dish, covered with foil, and put in the oven. By now the potatoes and garlic had been in the oven for twenty minutes - I removed the garlic, and put the chicken and potatoes on at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes.

I peeled the normal potatoes and cooked them in water at a fairly low heat for thirty minutes. After half an hour, the foil came off the chicken and the heat was increased to 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit). Twenty minutes later (at which point the chicken had been cooking for 50 minutes and the sweet potatoes for 70 minutes), I removed the sweet potatoes from the oven. The chicken stayed in. Added broccoli to the boiling potato pan and cooked for ten minutes. Drained the potatoes and broccoli, and removed the broccoli on to the foil, leaving some green broccoli residue in the pan. The garlic cloves were squeezed out of their skin and added to the normal potatoes along with the flesh from the sweet potatoes, and the vegetables were mashed together with milk and seasoning.

The chicken was removed from the oven (after having been in for roughly an hour) and served.

Vegetable Stew/Soup

This morning, after making the stock and filling both of our little ice cube trays, there was probably about 100ml of chicken stock left over. I decided to make a massive vegetable stew for dinner, so I could purée the rest into soup. After having soup a couple of times recently, I've been wanting it more and more, so cooking a meal specifically for the purpose of having leftovers soup doesn't seem too crazy. Does it?

Vegetable Stew
Makes 2 servings with leftovers for 2 or 3 soup meals

1 pumpkin
2 onions
4 garlic cloves
1 large carrot
3 potatoes
2 leeks
100ml concentrated chicken stock
1/2 bottle white wine (I used Korean plum wine)
Herbs and spices: 3 bay leaves, oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil, parsley, cinnamon, and freshly grated ginger
Handful dried cranberries
1/2 head broccoli
Seasoning

Cut the pumpkin in half, drizzle a little oil on top, and put in the oven at 125 degrees C (face up) for about twenty minutes.

In the meantime, cut the onions into eighths, mince the garlic, dice the carrot and put into an oiled pan over a low heat. Peel and chop the carrot and add to the pan. Peel and chop the potatoes into thirds (mine were small anyway), and add to the pan. At this point it's a good idea to boil a kettleful of water.

Chop the leeks into discs and add to the pan. By now the pumpkin should be ready - the point is to enhance some of the flavours and make it easier to chop, rather than actually cooking it. Remove the skin, chop into bite-sized portions, and add to the pan. Stir everything together and add the chicken stock, along with enough boiling water to generously cover all the vegetables. Boil everything for ten minutes before adding the herbs and spices. Allow to simmer for another ten minutes before adding the chopped broccoli and dried cranberries.

Scoop out a couple of cups of the cooked vegetables in the broth and blend. Return to the pan, making the sauce thicker. Cook for a further five minutes and serve with rice, bread, or anything else.

Chicken Stuffing in Pumpkin Bowl

I haven't actually cooked anything properly since Tuesday. Wednesday was the lazy carbonara, Thursday was Tuesday's leftovers; on Friday we spent hours going "no, come on, what shall we make?" and then had frozen dumplings at about midnight; yesterday I made the tortilla pie, which somehow ended up far spicier than anticipated. Oh well.

I blame Christmas. Normally, when my students are writing and I'm waiting for them to finish, I jot down notes and ideas for dinner. This week, I was cutting out snowflakes instead.

So when today came around I was still at a loss for recipe ideas. I had pulled chicken out of the freezer to defrost, and knew there were two pumpkins in the pantry, possibly resenting me for not using them sooner. Suddenly it clicked. I've not really used any recipes for this, except for the pumpkin roasting tips I read before making the pumpkin pie filling, and the stuffing recipe I used at Thanksgiving - which has since been requested twice, and used at least once. I'm very proud. Anyway, both were remembered very roughly, and hence adapted.

This was really good but could have been nicer with more cream cheese, or something similar to give the pumpkin flesh a nicer texture. The chicken could be skipped for a just-as-wonderful meal.

Chicken Stuffing in Pumpkin Bowl
Serves 2

1 pumpkin
1 onion
1 garlic clove
1/2 head of broccoli
2 chicken breasts
2 slices bread
1/2 apple
2 tablespoons cream cheese
1 teaspoon mustard
1 teaspoon each of various herbs: I used basil, parsley, thyme, oregano and rosemary
Seasoning

Cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds (I discarded mine but they could be saved for other purposes), and lay cut-side down in a tray. Add half a cup of water and bake in an oven at 180 degrees C (360 Fahrenheit) for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the onion, garlic and broccoli and fry on a low heat in oil. Slice the chicken (I cut each breast into about eight chunks) and add to the pot. Using a blender, pulse the bread into crumbs and add to the pan, turning the heat off at this point. Pulse the apple through the blender too and add to the pot. Stir through, turn the heat back on, and add the cream cheese, mustard and herbs. This should stay on a low heat for about five minutes.

When the pumpkin is done, turn cut-side up and scoop half of the chicken stuffing mixture into each hole. Bake at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes, sprinkling grated cheese on top in the last ten minutes if wished. Serve and eat however you like.

Sweet Potato Macaroni Cheese

Sweet Potato Macaroni Cheese
Serves 3

250g fusilli pasta
1 onion
1 garlic clove
3 cups mashed sweet potato (leftover from Thanksgiving)
1 cup cream
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tablespoons cream cheese
1 teaspoon mustard
1 tablespoon soju (weak Korean vodka)
1 teaspoon each of basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley and oregano
1 cup grated cheese
3 savoury crackers
Seasoning

1. Put the pasta in boiling water.
2. Chop the onion and garlic finely, and put in a pan on a medium heat with oil.
3. When soft, add the mashed potato and stir for a few moments before adding the cream and milk.
4. Whisk the potato into the liquid to thicken it before adding cream cheese.
5. After five minutes on a low heat, add the mustard, soju and herbs, and allow to simmer for another two minutes.
6. Turn the heat down to the lowest possible setting and add the grated cheese, stirring to melt.
7. Drain the pasta and tip into an oven dish with the sauce. Stir to coat.
8. Sprinkle some more cheese and crushed crackers over the pasta and put in the oven at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for 20 minutes.
9. Stuff your face.

Thanksgiving: The Leftovers

The leftovers have lasted us for three meals so far, with very little sign of running out in the near future. Last night we sliced and fried the roast potatoes and ate them with cold meat; for lunch today I made a leftovers soup; for mid-work-snack there are sandwiches and wraps - and still we have half a tupperware of meat, another one of sweet potato mash, and a couple of the biscuits left.

As I write this I am eating my second portion of leftovers soup - it gets better with age. This soup is actually brilliant, as my usual problem with soup is its thinness. Last week's sweet potato soup was delicious, and I had two servings of it for lunch at 1.30, but by 4.30 I was faint and dizzy with hunger. This soup is much chunkier and feels like you're actually eating something - I was full for hours.

I'm considering using the rest of the sweet potato to make a version of butternut squash macaroni cheese. I've seen about a hundred recipes for that over the last couple of weeks, but this is the only example I can pull up now. So that will make a fourth leftovers meal!

Oh: also, I can now report that persimmon chutney does taste great with poultry.

Thick, Tasty Leftovers Soup
Makes 4 small servings

Note: everything starred (*) was already cooked in my version.

1 onion
2 handfuls broccoli*
2 handfuls chard with garlic chips*
2 cups mashed sweet potato*
1 1/2 cups of Thai chicken soup (from a 'cup a soup' sachet like last time)
1 cup cream
1 glug red wine (I would have used white but the red was open)
1 teaspoon garlic sauce
1 handful of shredded chicken or duck*
Seasoning

If you are not using leftovers, you will have to do this following: boil the broccoli, sauté the chard with garlic chips, boil and roughly mash the sweet potato with some cream, butter and seasoning, and fry, bake or roast some kind of poultry before pulling it to pieces. It'll be worth it.

I chopped the onion and threw it into an oiled pot with the broccoli, chard and garlic to fry for a while. Added the sweet potato and stirred for a minute before adding the stock. Added some cream, wine and garlic sauce and allowed the sauce to simmer for about ten minutes, using the spoon to break up larger clumps of broccoli and sweet potato. Turned off the heat for a minute and then ladled about half of the soup into the blender, in batches, to purée before replacing back in the pan - you could do more or less depending on how chunky you like soup to be. Mine had no large lumps as I'd focused on getting all the broccoli and chard into the blender, so I still had small bites of, for example, garlic and onion. I reheated the soup and added a handful of small pieces of meat from the chicken and duck. Served with buttered bread but was just as brilliant without.

Thanksgiving: The Sides (part 2)

There were a lot of side dishes yesterday. Along with corn and eggplant from our guests, we served roasted white and purple potatoes, baked sweet potato mash, homemade stuffing, homemade biscuits, broccoli, chard with garlic chips, and maybe even something else that I've forgotten since.

Roast Potatoes
Serves 5 with leftovers

10 large potatoes
Seasoning
Duck fat

I peeled and chopped each potato into three good-sized chunks before boiling them in salted water. Once soft (this took longer than necessary as I purposely kept the stove on a low heat), they were drained and Tom 'fluffed' the potatoes by putting them back into the dry cooking pan and shaking them roughly. It's a Delia trick, apparently, and one he swears by. At this point the duck had been removed from its cooking tray, and the potatoes were put into this. The duck fat was spooned over the potatoes and they were roasted for roughly two hours at 160 degrees (320 Fahrenheit).

Baked Sweet Potato Mash
Serves 5 with plenty of leftovers

A huge sack of sweet potatoes
2 tablespoons cream
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoons butter
Seasoning

First of all, regarding the amount of potatoes used: I have no idea. It took me about half an hour to peel all of them. They were of varying size and came in a big heavy bag from the school's bus driver, which I mentioned a few days ago. Sorry.

I peeled the potatoes, boiled them, and mashed them with cream, milk and butter. The mash was spooned into a large baking dish and baked for twenty minutes at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit). The best mash I've ever tasted.

Stuffing
From this recipe
Serves 5 - I don't think there were any leftovers of this

4 slices white bread
4 rashers bacon
1 onion
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 egg
1 handful dried cranberries
Seasoning (every herb in the kitchen)

I tore the bread into chunks and blitzed these chunks in our mini-blender. Meanwhile, I diced the onion and garlic, and tore the bacon into small bits over a hot oiled pan. After a few moments of frying, I added the onion and garlic, turning the heat off a minute later. I left the bacon mixture in the pan to cool for about twenty minutes before adding it, along with the fat, to the breadcrumbs. I added the lemon juice, a ton of seasoning - as mentioned, every herb we own was used liberally, plus salt and pepper - and an egg to solidify everything a bit more. A handful of dried cranberries was later stirred through. The stuffing was left on the side for probably three hours, perhaps longer, before being baked for twenty minutes at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit).

Biscuits
From this recipe
Makes 9 biscuits

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon active dried yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup milk with 1 teaspoon lemon vinegar

I mixed the flour, baking powder, yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl. Melted the butter in the microwave before adding the milk and vinegar to the butter bowl (this makes buttermilk). Stirred the wet ingredients into the dry and left to sit for, again, about three hours before baking for 15 minutes at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit). Drop biscuits like this are brilliant, because all you do is take a spoonful of the dough and drop it straight on to the tray (hence the name). No rolling out dough or anything. They were, however, slightly too salty.

Vegetables: plain broccoli and garlic-chip-chard
Serves 5

2 heads broccoli
2 large handfuls of chard leaves
8 garlic cloves
Seasoning

I chopped up the broccoli, reserving the lower woody part of the stem for another time, and boiled it in salted water. Once cooked, I drained it and kept it warm before serving.
I sliced the garlic cloves into 'chips' and put them in a cold pan with oil. They slowly cooked on a low heat until slightly golden. The chard leaves were then stirred into the pan to sauté. Once wilted, the heat was turned off. This was possibly the least successful part of the meal, but at least it was only a small part. The chard was still slightly wet from having defrosted, and should have been cut into smaller pieces - each leaf is really big!

Thanksgiving: Stuffing and Pumpkin Pie

Prepare for a long week of Thanksgiving-related recipes. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, actually, but as we're in South Korea we will be celebrating it at the weekend. Last night I tried Smitten Kitchen's roasted stuffed onions,  and this morning I forced myself awake to roast a pumpkin and make some kind of pumpkin-whisky puree based on this. After getting up at 7:38 yesterday, and not going to bed until ten to one, I could have slept for hours longer.

As we get home late, I skipped the first part of the onion recipe - roasting the onions with half a cup of water for thirty minutes - and went straight to stuffing the raw onion shells. Removing the insides was something I found incredibly difficult, but luckily I had a Tom on hand to help. The recipe was good, and we enjoyed it, although the chilli I used was a little too spicy for my taste. I can imagine that pre-roasting the onion shells would contribute something as well, sadly. Funnily, the chicken tasted amazing for something that had just been sprinkled with some herbs and shoved carelessly into the oven for half an hour. I was impressed.

Also, note to self: I must never make gravy again.

The pumpkin puree was amazingly easy and amazingly messy. Luckily it's not my turn to wash up! I plan for it to go into a biscuit-crusted pie dish on Saturday, with lots of cream, to balance between a pumpkin pie and a pumpkin cheesecake. Fingers crossed. Also, I mention that I used whisky in the pumpkin dish - this is a complete fabrication. I used the Mystery Liquor in our fridge, which may or may not be whisky.

Stuffed Onions (with Chicken and Gravy)
Serves 2

4 large onions (I also used 1 small one)
3 rashers bacon
Large handful of Swiss chard
2 garlic cloves
1 slice white bread (it's impossible to get brown here)
1 green chilli
1 teaspoon butter
1/2 cup beef stock
Italian herbs
Seasoning

3 chicken breasts
Oil
Seasoning

I chopped the top and a tiny bit of the bottom off each onion, and Tom balled them. I chopped the onion-insides and reserved half of them for other purposes. Tore the bacon rashers into small bits and fried in oil for five minutes, while I chopped the garlic and chilli. Chopped and tore the slice of bread into small bits before putting it in a bowl with the cooked bacon, and adding onion, garlic and chilli to the pan with the leftover bacon fat. Chopped the chard and added it to the stuffing bowl, along with the onion, garlic and chilli once it was cooked. Stirred the stuffing before slowly adding the stock, allowing the bread to soak up the juice for a few minutes, before using a small teaspoon to gently stuff the onion shells.

Arranged the stuffed onions and chicken on a baking tray, covered with oil, and sprinkled with salt, pepper and Italian herb mix. Put in the oven on 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for half an hour. Removed, sprinkled grated cheese on the onions, and returned to the oven for ten minutes.

Then I made a fairly pathetic gravy, by adding one cup of red wine to the bacon pan. It simmered for a few minutes before I added two cups of beef stock and a handful of chopped onion. I left it on the lowest heat possible for ten minutes until the chicken and onions were done, and then poured the drippings from the tray into the gravy pan. Served.

Pumpkin Puree

1 small pumpkin
1 teaspoon and 1 tablespoon of whisky
1 tablespoon cream cheese
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons brown sugar

I used this guide to roasting pumpkins, adding a teaspoon of whisky to the baking pan at step 6, and put it in the oven for fifty minutes at 180 degrees C. At this point the skin was easily pierced with a fork. I left the pan in the oven with the door open for about half an hour to cool (while I showered - told you I got up late!) before scooping the pumpkin flesh into a blender with the remaining whisky, cream cheese and cinnamon. I blended the mixture and tipped it into a tupperware container. On tasting, the puree was slightly bitter, so I added the sugar and stirred it through. This will hopefully be used for a pumpkin pie/cheesecake later in the week.

Sweet Potato Soup

Yesterday, after the rat debacle, we went to the butcher's and spent a while negotiating our way to buying a piece of meat. Sometimes not speaking Korean can be so much fun. We bought a 1.1kg chunk of pork, spit-roasted it on the rotisserie in our new oven (which was wonderful - self-basting!), and had it for dinner with roast potatoes, mashed sweet potato, broccoli, and the gravy from weeks ago jazzed up with roasted onions, garlic, and red wine. It was amazing. And we had a lot of leftovers.

Today I needed something comforting for lunch, and used some of the leftovers along with other ingredients to make a sweet potato soup. When the bus driver - our boss's brother-in-law - came to get rid of the rat yesterday, he brought with him a huge bag of home-grown sweet potatoes that he wanted to get rid of! Brilliant. The garlic sauce from Saturday came into play again in this dish. I don't really know what to say about the soup, except that it was delicious, warming, filling, and just perfect for today. The previous tenant of this flat had left a million cup-a-soup type things in the pantry so I used one of those instead of stock.

Sweet Potato Soup
Makes 4 servings

1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 medium-sized sweet potato
500ml stock (I used a 'spinach and bacon soup' mix)
1 tablespoon garlic sauce
Leftovers: 2 tablespoons of mashed sweet potato, 2 broccoli florets
Seasoning

I peeled and very roughly chopped the onion, garlic and sweet potato, and fried them in hot oil for about five minutes. I added the hot stock and simmered for about ten minutes. I added the leftovers and garlic sauce and kept stirring until the sweet potatoes had gone very soft - perhaps another ten minutes, it didn't seem to take long. I poured the soup carefully, in batches, into the blender and blended until smooth. Returned the soup to the pan and reheated before serving with a slice of bread and butter.

Gallimaufry Pie

I'm quite pleased about this recipe for many, many reasons. It is first on the list of my must-make oven recipes, for one. It was delicious. I get to call it a cool name (my various substitutions and additions would lengthen the original title of Winter Squash and Caramelized Onion Biscuit Pie by quite a bit). And this marks my fiftieth post, which feels like some sort of anniversary worth celebrating.

The pie was brilliant, although slightly dry - I didn't have enough mayonnaise so that's probably why. Nor did we have a proper topping as I was too lazy to roll out the remaining dough because it meant getting not only my hands dirty (again) but getting the counter dirty as well. It took about an hour and a half from start to finish, although I was working at a leisurely pace.

Gallimaufry Pie
Serves 2 hungry people, or 4 with a salad

Filling:
1 small pumpkin
2 large sweet potatoes
7 rashers of bacon
Dried oregano
1 egg

Mayonnaise
1 teaspoon mustard
Lemon juice
Lemon vinegar

1 onion
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Balsamic vinegar


Dough:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon vinegar
Seasoning

I halved the pumpkin and sweet potatoes, sprinkled salt, pepper and oil over the cut sides, and roasted them at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes. In the meantime I mixed the dough ingredients together and used half of them to line the bottom of a round dish. (If you're not stupid, you'll grease the dish first. I didn't, but it meant that we were rewarded with difficult-to-scrape-off delicious crispy bits.)

I made the mayonnaise mixture, which was fairly paltry as we had almost no mayonnaise left, by combining mayonnaise (probably about 2 teaspoons worth), 1 teaspoon mustard, a big squeeze of lemon juice and a couple of drops of lemon vinegar.

Sliced the onion and fried on the lowest possible heat for about ten minutes before adding the brown sugar and a squeeze of balsamic vinegar and stirring that through.

Removed the pumpkin and sweet potato from the oven and scooped the inside of 1 potato and half a pumpkin into the pie dish. Layered with three rashers of bacon, half of the caramelized onion, half of the mayonnaise mixture and a hefty sprinkling of oregano. Repeated, using the remaining pumpkin, sweet potato, bacon, onion and mayonnaise. Seasoned with salt and pepper as well as oregano.

Dolloped the remaining dough on top without bothering to roll it out - it was more like having (American) biscuits on top than a pie crust, although the dough spread and ended up covering most of the pie. Brushed the dough with one beaten egg and put in the oven at 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit) for half an hour.

Happy Hallowe'en!

This food is too good to be eaten only at Hallowe'en. Both came from the BBC Good Food website, and were delicious. The toffee apple wedges were particularly spectacular, and so easy! We have leftover sauce and have frozen it to make into caramel-esque shards. The sticky chicken and pumpkin was going to be served with an attempt at Nigella's rostini (fried gnocchi as quick roast potatoes!) but our substitute had begun to grow mould, so we had it with pasta instead.

Toffee Apple Wedges
Serves 2; from this recipe

Large lump of butter
Lots of brown sugar
250ml cream
1 large apple
Lemon juice
Cinnamon
More sugar

I melted the butter over a low heat and added enough sugar to heavily coat the bottom of the pan. This mixture became quite mud-like but after some stirring on the heat, it starts to get more liquidy. At this point I added the cream and whisked quickly with a fork over high heat for about five minutes so it thickened a bit. The mixture was left to cool. The apple was cut into wedges and tossed in lemon juice, cinnamon and sugar. Once the butterscotch mixture had cooled a little, we dunked the apple wedges and ate them without grilling.

Sticky Chicken and Pumpkin
Serves 2, from this recipe (very much adapted)

2 chicken breasts
1 small pumpkin (ours was green and slightly avocado-esque - very odd)
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 sweet potatoes
Chilli powder and thyme
Between 1/2 and 1 glass of black raspberry wine
Balsamic syrup
Vegetable stock with added gravy powder
Small pack of walnuts
Honey
Seasoning

I chopped the pumpkin into bite-sized pieces, the garlic into teeny bits, the onion into about eight wedges and the potatoes into chunks. Mixed in a pan with the chicken, seasoning, thyme and chilli powder, and fried for just under five minutes. Added the wine and a lot of balsamic syrup. Mixed some dried vegetable stock with gravy powder, added 300ml boiling water, and poured into the pan. Added just enough water to nearly cover the vegetables. Brought to a boil and left to simmer for twenty minutes. Broke the walnuts into pieces and added to the pan, along with some honey. Reduced further until the sauce was thick and sticky and served with pasta.

Beef Pumpkin Stew

On Saturday, my wonderful co-teacher took us out and we went for lunch in a Korean restaurant. Tom was very excited by the fact that we sat on the floor, even though he struggled to get back to his feet at the end of the meal! We had dumplings and galbi. Galbi is amazing. It's a kind of stew, which had various vegetables (carrots, mushrooms, GIANT Korean radishes) and lots of on-the-bone beef, which had clearly been cooked in the stew for ages because it was so tender. I love the whole stove-in-the-table thing which keeps food like this really hot. Anyway, galbi - definitely one to try.

Yesterday I decided to make a beef stew as well. There was just SO much of it in the end. I thought the quantities I used were fairly regular, but we could easily have fed another two people and there was enough sauce that we've frozen enough for another two meals (where meal = meal for two). Lots and lots of food. Yum. We ended up siphoning about half of the sauce off during cooking to allow the stew to be more stew-like than soup-like. This could be served in smaller portions with rice or pasta, or just on its own (which we did).

Beef Pumpkin Stew
Serves 4-6


1 onion
2 garlic cloves
3 potatoes
1/4 small pumpkin
1 400g pack beef
Vegetable stock
Rosemary
Basil
Seasoning
Flour
Oil
Gravy powder/meat stock
Half a can of beer (we used Korean 'Black Beer Stout,' which apparently is the closest thing to ale here)
Water

Chopped the onion and garlic, and the potatoes and pumpkin into bite-sized chunks. (Oh, it's a million times quicker to type that than to do it!) Sliced the meat into large pieces. Mixed the vegetables and meat in a pan with stock (just the powder), rosemary, basil, salt+pepper, and a couple of tablespoons of flour. Oiled and mixed well before putting the heat on medium. Stirred until everything had fried a bit, then added a litre of water mixed with gravy powder. Added the beer and a few glugs of water. Turned the heat down to low and left to simmer for roughly thirty minutes.

Tunisian Chicken

This, from the BBC Good Food website, was really nice. Really nice. A bit too spicy, but you could easily get rid of that by not using the chilli (which was my not-so-brilliant substitute for harissa). Frying the pumpkin chunks along with the chicken allowed the pumpkin to retain its shape later on rather than dissolving mushily into the sauce. When eaten with the lemon risotto the flavours of both completely changed and melded into something wonderful.


Tunisian Chicken
Serves 2

1/4 small pumpkin
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 green chilli
2 chicken breasts
Vegetable stock
Cinnamon
Passata
Seasoning

Other flavourings: chilli powder, honey, milk.

I peeled and chopped the pumpkin into bite-sized chunks (again, with difficulty), chopped the onion and garlic, cut the chicken breasts into roughly eight pieces per breast, and mixed in a dry, cold pan with oil, vegetable stock, cinnamon, a tiny bit of chilli powder, and seasoning. Stirred it all to coat before putting the pan on the heat. Cooked on a medium heat for about five minutes before reducing the heat to low and adding the passata, along with a few tablespoons of water. Simmered for about twenty five minutes, adding other flavourings to taste.

Served with the lemon risotto I made a couple of weeks ago. I didn't add broccoli this time, and used thyme instead of rosemary. Other than that it was exactly the same.

Pumpkin-Broccoli Mash with Mince

Tuesday night's dinner. An oven-free combination of the squash mince bake and a shepherd's pie. I was planning on putting some fruit in the mince but ended up buying walnuts instead and then not using them. True story!

The mash was too creamy - this could easily be solved by baking the dish after assembling it, but you do what you can without an oven. (I need to stop whining about this and actually BUY one.) And there was too much sauce and not enough meat. Other than that, I liked it!


Curried Mince with Pumpkin-Broccoli Mash
Serves 2

1 pack mince
1 onion
1 garlic clove
Curry powder
Chilli powder
Passata
Honey
Lemon juice
Orange juice
Seasoning

1/2 a small pumpkin
Vegetable stock
2 handfuls of broccoli florets
Cinnamon
Butter
Milk
Seasoning

Chopped onion and garlic and fried. Added mince and fried until browned. Added hefty amounts of curry and chilli powders, stirred, and added the passata. Left to simmer on a low heat, adding the other ingredients to taste, for about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, I peeled (with difficulty) the pumpkin and chopped it into bite-sized chunks. Sprinkled vegetable stock over and boiled for ten minutes. Added the broccoli and boiled for a further ten. Drained, added cinnamon, butter, milk and seasoning, and mashed until smooth.
Poured the mince mixture into a bowl and spooned the mash on top. Served.