Curry Paste...sort of

I love curry but I always seem to end up buying ready made curry paste even though I have a cupboard full of many many spices. To be fair you can buy very good authentic Thai curry paste but Ive never fond a good Indian one and I would never buy a jar of curry sauce as it's against my religion!!
I made a kind of curry paste this evening but It's hard to do when one does not have the correct tools that one needs to make a 'paste' so I just improvised and carried on regardless. The main problem is that my blender sadly broke a few days ago when I was making soup and I seem to have misplaced my pestle and mortar which has confused me greatly, how the hell do you loose a bloody great pestle and mortar?!

Curry 'Paste' Ingredients.

Groundnut oil and a knob of butter
3 crushed garlic cloves
A small piece of fresh ginger
a small red chilli
toasted cumin seeds
toasted Fenugreek seeds
garam masala
hot chilli powder
crushed pepper corns
Tomato Paste



Creamy Chicken curry Ingredients

Home Made Curry paste
Mix of chicken thighs and fillets
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Bag of baby leaf spinach
2 Onions
Natural Yogurt
Cream
Flaked almonds



I just dry roasted the seeds and mashed the other ingredients together with a fork before frying the paste in some clarified butter adding 2 large chopped onions and a mix of chicken thighs and breast. I fried it all for around 6-7 Min's before adding chopped tomatoes and let it reduce by half which took around 40 Min's. I removed all the meat from the thighs before adding them back into the sauce and put a dollop of Greek yogurt in, a bit of double cream and some flaked almonds.
You may have noticed I didn't mention adding the spinach but that's because mine had gone a bit slimy so I had to leave it out of the recipe but It does go very nicely so if anyone out there does actually make this you should put the spinach in!

Christmas Treats

I have started to make a few lovely things to eat over the Christmas period including these mini caramelised cheese and onion tarts which are the easiest thing in the world to make, just caramelised some onions in butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar, make an egg custard with cream and an egg, throw in lot's of good quality mature cheddar cheese, add the onions and mix together. I just used shop bought puff pastry because that's how I role, put it into Yorkshire pudding trays, put a blob of my cheese and onion mix into each one and put it in the oven for 25 mins and voila!!!



I also made some chicken liver paté by trimming any yucky or green bits off the livers, sauté some onions in butter the add the livers and a good slug of brandy making sure you burn the alcohol off and as it's Christmas I put a dash of double cream in and then seasoned. To finish it off pour clarified butter over the paté and put it in the fridge to set and you are done.
And to celebrate my culinary achievements I'm going to have several drinks of the mulled variety!

Christmas Shopping list....Done!

I am cooking Christmas dinner for the first time this year as it would usually be my Mum but she is currently living in Portugal on a foodie adventure so I am cooking for Mercer's family and there are 12 of them.
I'm sure it will be fine as I am one of life's obsessive list writers and have had everything planned for around a month, Ive got my Christmas and boxing day menus written down with corresponding shopping list's (don't laugh) and have already made my mincemeat for my mince pies and enough sausage rolls to feed a small country.
This year I am planning to do a rib of beef and goose, normally it would just be the goose but as there are 12 of us it's not really feasible, and of course a glazed ham on Boxing day!
I'm also going to attempt a salt caramel cheesecake, chocolate roulade, damson trifle and some Bompass and Par style jellies for the munchkins!!!
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope all your culinary dreams come true!xx

Lamb and Red Wine Stew with Roasted New Potatoes

I was talking to my brother the other day about food like we always do as we have a shared passion for all things edible and he told me of a rather impressive amount of meat he had in his freezer, and for a young man of 23 with little cash I thought how was this possible? Well it turns out that my brother has taken to going to his local Sainsburys just before closing time and buying all the highly reduced produce on the meat and fish counters and got some ridiculously good bargains!! Well I thought I must have a go myself and so I did and got a huge slab of pork belly for £2.20, two fillet steaks for £1.80 and 8 pieces of organic lamb stewing steak for 30p a piece....I was very pleased to say the least!
I made a very tasty stew out of the lamb by frying the meat and sealing it before covering in flour and sauteing onions and carrots with the meat and then pouring half a bottle of red over it and then adding bay leaves, beef stock, peppercorns and tomato puree and letting in simmer for around an hour and 45 mins.
I am a bit of a mash addict and would never even think of having stew with anything but buttery mash potato's but I felt like this lamb stew would benefit with some new potato's roasted in olive oil, rosemary and garlic so that's what I did and they went together perfectly along with some brussle sprouts and mashed root veg (needed something that was mashed!)

A few of my favourite things....Cauliflower Cheese

Personally I love the snow because it makes me all festive and happy and gives everyone the perfect excuses to eat lot's of hot, scrummy, fatty things that make you feel all warm inside and what better to give you a snugly culinary hug than home-made cauliflower cheese.Cauliflower cheese is most definitely one of my favourite things to eat so any excuses really. I always make my cheese sauce from scratch starting with a roux, I am known for putting criminal amounts of cheese in it and also for eating most of the sauce before the cauliflower even see's it, but somehow my sauce to cauliflower ratio always favours heavily on the sauce side so it's more like eating cheese sauce with a bit of cauliflower in it.




I just make my roux with butter and flour and begin to slowly pour in full fat milk little by little whilst stirring with my trusty wooden spoon and then when the sauce is the right kind of consistency I start to add big handfuls of grated mature cheddar, pepper and sometimes a bit of nutmeg to! When the sauce is ready I add the cauliflower to it, put it in a baking dish, put more cheese on top and chuck it in the oven until the top is crisp and bubbling.
I had mine with gammon staeks and brussle sprouts and I could not have been happier.

Chicken, Bacon and Leek Pie

It's the time of year again when you need to eat pie. I love pie more than I could merely express in words on this blog, any kind of pie and I am happy whether it be sweet or savoury.
I had a whole chicken than I bought from the butcher and decided to roast it to make several meals over the next few days, the first being a delicious and comforting pie. Chicken, bacon and leek pie is so easy to make and takes no time at all.
When the chicken was roasted and rested I stripped enough of the meat off for my pie and started on making the filling by sauteing a whole leek I had cut into thin strips in butter with 4 slices of smoked streaky bacon. I then added the cooked chicken, some fresh chicken stock made from last weeks roast, white wine, some double cream and seasoning, that's it.
It was horrible weather yesterday so I didn't want to walk to the shop to buy pastry so I made some using a basic recipe of flour, butter and water, I have to admit the pastry was not great but it all tasted amazing and that's the main thing! Sorry the pictures are not the greatest but I was in a rush as the camera was running out of battery fast. I have just had to add in that three of my photo's of the fillings and other exciting things have been deleted by mistake so now you just have pictures of pastry, I am sorry but the show must go on so here is my pastry.



I couldn't find my rolling pin so had to use a role of tin foil, it worked quite well though!





My pie was a little burnt around the edges and sunk slightly in the middle but it was delicious served with buttery mash and savoy cabbage and I don't care what you lot think anyway so there ( I do really).
For lunch the next day I made the leftovers into a pie version of bubble squeak with some extra cabbage and bacon, I highly recommend you do the same.

Portuguese Baked Pork and Orange Ribs with Butter Rice

I took this recipe from a beautiful cookbook called 'Piri Piri Starfish:Portugal Found' and it worked so well. Gorgeous sticky ribs with an amazing orange flavour as well as the roasted peppers that I tucked under the ribs when they were cooking. I served this with butter rice and salad.

1KG of pork short ribs
125ML olive oil
1 Red and one yellow pepper (optional)
2 bay leaves
125ml white whine
juice of 1 orange plus 2 oranges quartered
1 large onion chopped
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of passata or tinned diced tomatoes
a pinch of piri piri (optional)

First of all brown off your ribs in half the olive oil and in a separate pan saute the chopped onion, next add the crushed garlic and after a few minutes add the passata and piri piri if your using it. Place the orange segments and sliced peppers onto a roasting tin before placing the ribs on top and then pour over the sauce and bake for around 40mins. I made some butter rice to serve alongside this by just frying onion and garlic in oil and butter and the adding the rice to it and frying for a few moments before adding water to boil. In the original recipe peppers are not included but I think they go really well and you can also add more passata for more sauce to eat with your rice.
It's quite possibly one of the messiest meals to eat so have lot's of napkins ready, Mercer managed to get sauce in his ear and he's 27....