Cooking for 4 days in 1 night

I had a really busy night last night. I'm heading off to Youth Ministry Summer School today and decided to help hubby out by cooking a few things in advance that he can reheat the next few nights while I'm not here.

So firstly I made bolognese in a very straightforward quick way - brown mince beef, add sauce from jar, cook for 10 minutes, fry chopped bacon, mix into mince and separate into containers. Seeing as he isn't keen on spaghetti/pasta and loves mashed potato with bolognese, i boiled some potatoes that he can reheat and mash when he needs it.

After this I made some Irish Stew, which is a great dish and handy for nights when I'm working at home because you really just throw everything into a casserole dish and leave it to cook for a couple of hours. It really looks more complicated and longer than it actually is.

Then after this made sweet and sour chicken - cook chicken til golden, add chopped green bell peppers, stir in sweet and sour stir fry sauce and add chopped pineapple - ready in 10 minutes and delicious!


IRISH STEW

Serves 4

Ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
500g casserole beef steak pieces/lamb pieces
5 medium sized potatoes
2 large carrots
3 medium sized onions
400ml beef/lamb stock
Worcestershire sauce
Salt
Pepper
1.5 tbsp butter
1.5 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp chopped spring onions

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 190C.
2. Heat oil in a pan and add the meat. Brown for 5 minutes then add to a casserole dish.
3. Chop the potatoes, onions and carrots into chunky pieces. Add the carrots, onions and potatoes (in that order) to the casserole dish.

4. Add a few splashes of worcestershire sauce, season with salt and pepper then pour in the stock.
5. Cover and place in the oven and leave for 1 hour 45 minutes
6. Melt the butter in a pot, then stir in the flour: this mixture is called a "roux". Pour the sauce in the casserole into the roux and mix. When it comes to the boil pour it back into the casserole dish.
7. Add the spring onions.
8. Mix the casserole, mashing up the potatoes slightly as you do.
9. Cover and place back in the oven for 15 minutes.
10. Remove and serve.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Rob and I love Indian food! In fact one of our very first dates was to an Indian restaurant and we would have returned very often (and still do!) Before we met I never really had much Indian food or curries so Rob introduced me to the wonderful world of indian. So here's my recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala (which has moved on leaps and bounds from fry chicken, add sauce).

Serves 2

Ingredients
1 tbsp veg. oil
1 medium sized onion, diced
2.5 tbsp Tikka Masala curry paste
250g Diced chicken breast
400g of fresh or canned chopped tomato
1 tsp fresh chopped coriander leaf
100ml plain yogurt
100ml water

Recipe
1. Heat oil in the pan and add onions. Gently fry until golden
2. Stir in the tikka masala paste, add the chicken and fry until the paste seals with the chicken.
3. Add the tomatoes and water. Mix and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Stir in yogurt and garnish with coriander.

Serve with pilau rice (made by boiling basmati rice with pilau seasoning) and naan bread. However Rob prefers at home to have his with mashed potato and naan.

So simple and so delicious!

Interesting challenge.

A friend, who has started reading his blog, has made me an interesting proposal of a challenge/night in. The plan is to each bring 5 ingredients to give to the other and then for each of us to come up with recipes from those ingredients and cook them for our evening meal! When she emailed about it, I got incredibly excited. I used to watch Ready Steady Cook all the time, almost everyday while we had our family dinner. As I watched I had always wanted to be able to just look at some ingredients and come up with a recipe, so this is kind of a little challenge that I've always wanted to take.

Can't wait!!!!!

Spaghetti Carbonara

We had some leftover cottage pie from last night so my husband said he'd finish it for dinner today which allowed me to indulge in some pasta on my own seeing as he doesn't like it.

I made some spaghetti carbonara as follows:

Serves 2

Ingredients
170g/6oz spaghetti
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 red onion, diced
75g/ 2.5oz bacon
2 garlic cloves, crushed
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 egg yolk
150ml/5.25 fl oz double cream
handful of shredded cheddar cheese
5 medium sized button mushrooms

Recipe
1. Cook the spaghetti according to the packet instructions
2. Heat the oil in the pan and fry the onion for 1-2 mins
3. Add bacon, garlic and mushrooms fry until the bacon is cooked. Season with plenty of salt and pepper.
4. In a bowl, whisk together the double cream, egg yolk and cheese.
5. Stir the mix into the pan with the bacon and cook for 1 minute.
6. Add the cooked spaghetti and mix.
7. Serve immediately.

Minced beef cooking last night

Well last night's chilli worked out good, granted i used a jar of chilli sauce but it was delicious. Had spiced up the rice a little with some cumin and ground coriander which worked well and complimented the chilli.

After dinner last night I prepared a cottage pie to use up some more of the mince and it went as follows:

Cottage Pie

Serves 4

Ingredients
6 or 7 medium sized potatoes
500g minced beef
1 large onion, diced
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1 satchet of cottage pie sauce mix
100ml water

1. Boil 6/7 medium size potatoes for 25 minuntes (my husband likes his mash with the skins so I left them on)
2. Brown 500g of mince beef with 1 large onion (diced) - i was going to add in the carrots at this point however my husband came into the kitchen and due to his hatred of veg stopped me from adding them, so i plan to have them served separately for myself.
3. I cheated with the sauce and used a satchet of mix for cottage pie that you then mix with 100ml of water and add to the beef.
4. Bring to the boil then add to an oven dish.
5. Drain and mash the potatoes.
6. Spread the mash over the meat.

The oven dish was covered in cling film and put in the fridge once it had cooled.
The plan is to take it out tonight, put a little cheese on what will be my part of the pie and cook in the oven at 200ºC for 35 minutes and serve with carrots and peas for myself, and just peas for hubby, along with some wheaten bread. Yum!

Starting out....

I added the following post to my ruth E babes blog recently:

I love the thought of being a good creative cook quite naturally. I'd love to be able to make all sorts of things using the bare ingredients. I'd also love to be given 5 ingredients and then come up with lots of different ideas of what to do with it all.

I do experiment in the kitchen a little but I'd really love to be more adventurous and unafraid of the results.

My husband can be quite picky about food which reduces the options on what i can cook.... no veg, no cheese, no pasta, no noodles... etc etc etc

However I'd still love to be able to cook without relying on a jar of sauce.

So the thought is that by starting and trying to keep this blog regular that I'll experiment a bit more and try new things.

This week cooking will include a lot of mince/ground beef as I bought a lot during my weekly shop. Recipes will include bolognese, chilli, cottage pie....... most of which will be cooked then frozen for future meals. Will also cook some sweet and sour chicken at some point too.