Salad is always healthy

God, I'm so bad at this blogging thing. I keep cooking things, and thinking about blogging them, but then I realise that all the cooking I've done is open a few tins and use a packet of cheese, and everyone thinks it's great. When really that's because it's full of cheese. Which is great, obviously, but doesn't exactly take much skill.

The last few days I haven't been feeling too great. I've had a bit of a cold, and haven't been sleeping too well, and in general not been able to enjoy the sunshine as much as I'd like to. Normally when feeling like this I'd settle down with cheese on toast and chips in a sandwich, but I'm attending a wedding on Saturday in a dress that is Very Tight. This Very Tight dress basically means that my carb consumption has to go way down (I only ate 4 pitta breads yesterday, for example, because I have enormous self control). So I felt like eating something comforting, nourishing, but also delicious and very easy. This salad is basically just a variation on something I often do when lazy, throw a load of vegetables in the oven, cover with cheese, and enjoy. This time I added bacon too.

I am excellent at dieting.

Butternut Squash Salad

1 large buttnut squash
1/2 garlic bulb
2 red chillis, chopped and de-seeded (or not, I never de-seed, I'm an animal)
1 red onion, finely sliced
4 rashers bacon
1 packet of feta (you should probably use less than a whole packet. Whatevs. See above)
Some mixed leaves (I just used an Italian style thing that was in the fridge. This would also work really well with rocket or baby spinach).
Some olive oil
 A squidge of honey
A teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
Some sunflower seeds

Preheat the oven to 180. Chop the squash into bite-size pieces. Place in an oven dish with the chilli scatter the whole garlic cloves. Drizzle over some oil and season. Roast for 40 minutes, or until the squash is tender.
Meanwhile, heat some oil in a pan and cook the bacon on a low heat. This takes about 15 minutes, or longer. If you paid attention to my previous blog, I like to cook things slowly. It'll be nicer if you do, trust me.
Mix your dressing. This is just a dressing I like to throw on everything. At the moment it's olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, salt and pepper.
Cut the feta you're using into chunks.
Cut the bacon into pieces
When everything is cooked, mix all your ingredients, including the onion and leaves, and sprinkle the seeds on top.

Have it in the sun with a glass of wine.

Now you'll have to excuse me, and the shoddy nature of this post, I have to spend the next 12 hours panicking about being in an airport.

Bangers and mash

Excuse the terrible quality of this picture. This tumblr has certainly struck a nerve. I wasn't intending on blogging this very simple meal, but I enjoyed it so much that I felt I had to. That's how I roll. I'm not a professional you know.

Quanities are very approximate. Most people know how many sausages and potatoes are required per person. I don't, but I'm terrible at that sort of thing. Most of the ingredients were just what I had in the house, feel free to omit or subsitute at your leisure. It's sausages and mash like, it's not rocket science, or baking.

I divided this up into sections, instead of doing it in the order I cooked it, because it was easier and less confusing. There you go.

Bangers and mash with honey mustard roasted parsnips and onion gravy for 2 with leftovers

Olive oil
4 large parsnips
A squeeze of honey
1tablespoon of wholegrain mustard
3-4 sausages per person
1 large brown onion (I threw in 2 shallots too, don't bother unless you have them to hand)
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon of flour
400ml stock (I used beef this time, it's good and meaty)
About 4 large potatoes
1/3 of a mug of warmed milk
1 tablespoon creme fraiche
2 chopped spring onions
Plenty of black pepper

Parsnips
Firstly, chop the parsnips. You can parboil them for a couple of minutes if you like, I wouldn't bother. Put them in an oven dish large enough so they're not on top of each other. Drizzle with some oil, the honey and the mustard, and roast at 190 degrees for 45 minutes (less if you bothered par-boiling, even though I told you not to)
Sausages
 IMMEDIATELY after this, heat some oil in a frying pan, and fry the sausages at THE VERY LOWEST HEAT your hob will allow. This will take forever. However long you think it will take, triple it. I like my sausages cooked for, at the very least, 40 minutes. This makes them sticky and renders the fat nicely. If you're cooking with fat sausages, it'll take even longer. Fat sausages are not approved of in our household, however, so I can't comment on cooking times. Towards the end, if everything else is getting cold, you can turn it up to a medium heat, but only to brown them so you don't pass out from hunger. This is the most important thing I will probably ever tell you.
Gravy
Chop the onion, and fry at in a saucepan at a very low heat with the garlic until it's tender and translucent. Coat with the flour and stir for a couple of minutes. Add the stock, and continue to cook at a low heat until it's reduced to a thick gravy.
Mash
Peel and boil your potatoes until they're tender. Drain, and then place back on the heat for a minute to dry them out a bit. Pour in the warm milk and creme fraiche, and start to mash. Mash and mash and mash until your arm falls off, it's totally worth it. Mix the chopped spring onions with the mash. Season if you want.

Pile everything on top of each other. Enjoy. Lovely on a cold winter night. Obviously I'm publishing this now that it's gotten warm again, but don't be fooled. You'll be shivering in a fortnight, and wishing you had this in front of you. But you won't because everyone's already running around London in SHORTS, and TFL are posting this sort of nonsense, so everyone has probably already died of hypothermia.

Teasing

I'm sure all three of you that read this (and the Russian spammers - Здравствуйте!) don't actually read for the recipes, but for the hilarious insights into my frequently shambolic life. Well don't worry, there'll be plenty more of that soon, as I am always looking into new ways to mess up traditional recipes to suit what the Cooperative dictates I can buy and the limitations of having no kitchen equipment. Until then, here's a picture of a delicious snack I made today before BAKING some bread. I haven't tasted the bread yet, so I can't claim that it was a success, but this was one. It's basically just ryvita with salsa, sliced avocado, jalepenos, low fat creme fraiche and some coriander. It was a taste of relatively healthy Mexico, and it got me through 15 minutes of painful kneading. I enjoyed it loads.
And yes, I have already taken a bite. I am terribly greedy, remember.

Passive aggressive pie

I don't consider myself a particularly mean or nasty person. I frequently write pithy and cutting tweets, only to delete them 30 seconds later, for fear of offending someone. No matter how much someone has annoyed me, I find it difficult not to respond when they text me. Even when something is seriously bothering me, I'm willing to let it go in  the short term in order to have an easier life. Some may call it passive, or avoidant, I just like everything to be nice. However, I must have been feeling particularly vindictive when I decided to make this pie. Granted, things hadn't exactly been going to plan. I had spent close to 3 hours navigating the streets of London trying to get home from a friend's house the previous night, thanks to disappearing buses. My sensible, quiet night in with X Factor turned into a cross-London epic; I had to tackle Oxford Street at 3am on a day England had won a football match. It was less than pleasant. The plan the  next day was to spend my day slow-cooking some pork belly and red cabbage, after a leisurely brunch with friends. I slept through brunch, the butcher was closed, there was no red cabbage in the shops. Obviously, I snapped. I cooked the most passive aggressive dinner I could: one of the people I was cooking for doesn't like mushrooms, the other isn't a fan of stews or pies. I can't really eat Stilton as it hurts my stomach. But I soldiered on. I subconsciously wanted to ruin everyone else's weekend by making this. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and the pie was a success. So much so, that when my boyfriend arrived home from work there was far less left than I had expected. Ho hum. I was only saving him from the mushrooms, honestly.

I would definitely serve this with mashed potato and gravy were I to make it again. Again, it's adapted from something I found on BBC Good Food. Some day I'll use proper cookbooks. The Stilton flavour isn't at all strong; it just adds an interesting layer of savoury-ness to the pastry. I used prepackaged puff pastry, but I saw Mary Berry use it on the telly the other day so it must be OK.
Feel free to leave the chili out. I only used it as they are the only really successful thing in our garden this year, and I use them in everything. I think it gave a slight hit of heat, which some people mightn't like, but I enjoyed.
Like everything I ever make, it's ridiculously easy.

Beef and ale pie with a Stilton crust.

Ingredients
500g stewing beef
2 rashers of smoked bacon
200g pack of mushrooms
A heaped teaspoon of plain flour
500ml dark brown ale
1 teaspoon of English mustard
a splash of Worcestershire sauce
1 chopped chili, seeds removed if you're weak.
salt and pepper
1 packet of ready made puff pastry
50g (about the size of a matchbox) Stilton
1 egg, beaten

 Brown the beef. I did this in two batches, and added the bacon in the second batch. Remove, the beef but leave the bacon, add the onion, mushrooms, chili and brown.
Put the beef back in, sprinkle over the flour, and cook for two minutes. Apparently this gets rid of the floury taste. I don't know.
Add about 2/3 of the ale, the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and season liberally. Bring to the boil, put a lid on it, and simmer for about 2 hours. At this point you could wash up after yourself, do some other housework, or work on your novel. I poured a glass of wine and watched Labyrinth, because I am very productive.
It's important to keep an eye on it, because if your pots are anywhere as useless as mine, it's going to stick. Keep stirring, and once it begins to get a bit dry, add some more ale until it's not dry anymore.
Put your oven on however long before it's finished so that it heats up to 200 degrees.
When it's pretty much reduced and thick, roll out your pastry until it's about half the width it was. Dot the Stilton on the pastry, then fold it over and roll again so that the cheese becomes part of the pastry (I thought this was dead clever)
Pour the beef mixture into a pie dish, cover with the cheese pastry, and bake for about 1/2 an hour until golden.

And there you go. Hopefully if one of you make this, you'll hate it, and my passive-aggression won't have gone entirely to waste.

Here's a terrible picture of the pie. Yes, that's a smiley face on top. I'm a kook at heart. I forgot to take a cross section because I was watching X Factor, and One Direction were on. Soz.

 To make up for that frankly terrifying sight, here are some pretty pictures of Salzburg. All I ate was meat and dumplings and beer for a week. They're not the most photogenic of foods.

Contemplating Meat Free Mondays

When I was a teenager, I went through a vegetarian phase. I think most people do at some point in their lives. I told myself it was a moral thing, but really I thought it would help me lose weight, and most of my friends were doing it. I'm dead principled, me. The weight thing might have worked, had I any idea what a vegetarian diet actually entailed. Instead, I ate frozen vegetable lasagne all the time. It was by far my favourite food (after chips, obviously). I still hold quite a flame for vegetable lasagne, and to me it's up there with all the great comfort foods. And, because it's made of vegetables, it's very healthy (yes yes I know it's made of cheese and pasta). I've been toying with the idea of meat free Mondays for a while, partially to assuage the terrible guilt I inevitably feel after a weekend of booze, chicken cottage and pizza (every weekend), and partially because I think it's a Good Thing, health wise. Also, it's nice and forces me to be creative. Some may not agree, but I do the cooking, so boo urns to you.

So recently I made a vegetable lasagne, the recipe for which I got from BBC Good Food, obviously. The best thing about this lasagne is that it was incredibly simple, and there was no faffing about making white sauce, I just used more cheese. There are no pictures, because my phone was charging when I made it, but come on, everyone knows what a lasagne looks like. It's a lovely, easy, and most of all comforting, Monday night meal.

The recipe called for 700g grated courgettes, but I got tired of grating halfway through, and so grated one and sliced one. This made the texture nicer though, in my opinion.

Also, my local Co-op, being the worst supermarket in the world, didn't have the recommended ricotta, so I used marscapone. I'm sure this is a terrible sin, but whatevs, it's hardly the most authentic recipe I've ever seen anyway. AND courgettes in a packet were over twice the price of the loose courgettes sitting right beside them. Plastic must be very expensive. Buy loose courgettes everyone.

Creamy courgette lasagne  

(Serves 4, but I recommend only serving to  two and eating the leftovers because I love leftovers)

9 lasagne sheets (I used egg and didn't boil them first, it was fine)

Oil

A large onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 big huge courgettes (or maybe 5 small ones) Grated and chopped

A red pepper

A handful of spinach

A tub of marscapone

100g grated cheddar (recipe said 50g but I love cheese)

Tub of fresh tomato sauce from the supermarket (or make your own, if you're so inclined)

Pop the oven on to 220 degrees. Heat the oil and fry the onion for a couple of minutes. Add the courgettes and cook until the courgettes are soften and a slightly worrying bright green colour.

Heat the sauce in the microwave for about 2 minutes.

Stir in 2/3rds of the two cheeses and season. This cheesey mush is delicious (to me, it's probably actually disgusting) so resist the urge to eat it.

Spread a layer of the mush (so appetising) at the bottom of a baking dish, then a layer of pasta, then a layer of tomato sauce, then repeat. 

Blob the rest of the marscapone on top, and then all the grated cheddar you have left. 

Heat in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Serve with a salad, if you feel like it.

So that's what I had for dinner last Monday. Hardly inspired, but I enjoyed it plenty. I'm off home this weekend (for a wedding and a 90th birthday party and exhaustion) and then on holidays (SALZBURG) the following week, so I probably won't be cooking. But if I see anything exciting, I'll be sure to take a picture, mean to blog about it, and forget.

Porkie Pies

Did you watch The Great British Bake Off? It was amazing, and one of my favourite things on television. I'm not overly excited by some other cooking competition TV (notably Masterchef - so much shouting, so tense!), but this is wonderful. There is the right amount of tension, and everyone is so lovely and British and nice. Janet is (was) my favourite. Oh Janet! So sweet. And so unlike the others. Like me, Janet is no stranger to the 'a couple of grams more or less won't make a difference either way' method of cooking. Janet, if by chance you see this, come teach me how to bake, please.

Although I haven't had a chance to watch the final yet, I do know who won, and I am aware of the squirrel star of the show, which is an Internet meme waiting to happen (view it here at your own risk).
 
A couple of weeks ago they made pork pies. Having never had a pork pie, I was intrigued by the idea. The results look suitably delicious, but terribly difficult to achieve. Leaving them over night, using jelly, inserting an egg in the middle. All an awful lot of work. Last Saturday however, I had the urge to bake something. Having originally planned to roast a pork belly, I soon decided that as it was 30 degrees outside I'd rather make something easy I could have on a picnic. I found this recipe, for cheats pork pies, on Donal Skehan's website, and decided to give it a go. I altered it slightly to my tastes. To be fair, they are basically just glorified sausage rolls. Calling these pork pies would be telling pork pies (I have been working on making that less laboured all week, there is no way), but they were delicious and I would definitely have them on a picnic again, in 10 months time (sob). You probably don't need all the 'splashes' I recommend, I just used what was in front of me.

Easy Pork Pies (makes 12 miniature pies)

Ingredients

3 rashers of bacon
400g sausage meat (the butcher didn't have any, so he kindly just split open a load of sausages for me. I'm sure this would be very easy to do yourself)
2 onions, sliced finely
2 small cloves of garlic, sliced finely
Salt and pepper
Mixed herbs
A splash of Worcester sauce
A tiny splash of Tabasco
2 sheets of shortcrust pastry (this means two packets, incidentally. I'm sure most people know this, but I did not, and it resulted in a rushed second journey to the shop. Which I didn't enjoy)
1 beaten egg to glaze the tops

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees/gas 6
Fry the bacon on a medium heat until it's crispy and golden.
Fry the onion and garlic in the bacon fat on a low heat until they're soft. While this is going on, cut the bacon into small pieces and place in a bowl.
When the onions are done, mix them with the sausage meat and bacon in the bowl. Use your hands for this, it's fun.
Cut 12 circular disks from the pastry to fit the muffin tray, and then 12 smaller ones for the lids. For this I used a mug for the big ones, and a small glass for the little ones. You probably have special cutters for this though.
Place the larger disks into the muffin tin, and fill each with about 1 tablespoon of pork mixture.
Top with the smaller disks, making sure to seal.
Brush the tops with the beaten egg (I used the back of a teaspoon, because a pastry brush is very low down on my list of things to buy at the moment)
Pop in the oven for 20 minutes
Allow to cool (I ate one warm which was lovely too)
Enjoy. I served mine with just a few cornichons and some English mustard, but a nice crisp carrot salad would have been lovely with this, I think. The butcher I went to also sold Tayto crisps and Club Orange, which made for a delicious and nostalgic picnic.

A poor workman blames his tools, this one blames her greed

I'm no food photographer, as you'll soon be able to tell. In preparing to write this, I scoured the Internet for advice about how to have the most exciting, interesting and inspiring food blog possible. This is none of those things, and for that I am profoundly sorry. One thing that is completely out of the realm of my ability, however, is to take pretty pictures of food, or, indeed, have any success in food styling whatsoever. I could try to pass on the blame here, and claim it's because I don't have a decent camera (at the moment I'm using my iPhone) or that the light in my kitchen is rubbish, or that I don't have any attractive props. The reality is, though, that after cooking a delicious (if I do say so myself) meal, and having tasted and smelt it all through that time, all I really want to do is get down and eat it as quickly as possible. I don't have the presence of mind to arrange a sprinkling of herbs, or angle the meat precisely. I've been cooking, I'm hungry!

This recipe is one I had my eye on for a while. It's adapted from BBC Good Food, which is my go to place for easy weekday recipes, as well as instructions on how to make more basic things, such as steak and chips (I'm a nervous cook). It's really quick, and rather tasty, perfect for a weekday night. However, I used Blue Dragon Thai Red Curry paste, which was a mistake. They seem to have changed their pastes recently, and they are much wetter, and less... paste-y. When I opened this one it smelt worryingly like a cheap jar of red pesto, and the flavour was similar, with barely a a kick of heat at the end. More of a tap, really. I had to add a lot of spices to make this interesting. I'm sure what I used wasn't particularly authentic, but it did the job. If I were to make it again, I'd definitely try to source a decent Thai paste, or, perhaps in the future when I'm more confident, attempt to make it myself. Also, I'd use full fat coconut milk next time. ANYWAY enough self defence and complaining, here's what I did.

The recipe calls for 500g salmon, but salmon is expensive, and I was only cooking for two, so I used 220g and bulked it up with veg. There was plenty, with enough leftovers for a small post-pub snack and lunch the next day. I think broccoli would work with this as well, and would add even more iron, which can only be a good thing.

Red Thai Salmon Curry

Ingredients:

Thai red curry paste(I had to use about 4 desert spoons, because it was so bland, but I also have a high tolerance for heat)
1 sliced onion (I also threw in 1/4 red onion that was sitting forlornly in my fridge)
1 red pepper
1 tin of (reduced fat, if you like) coconut milk
The juice of 1 lime
A splash of fish sauce
Cumin powder
Garam masala
Coriander powder (as much spices as you feel like, keep tasting. I used just under a teaspoon of each, I'd say, though I wasn't particularly precise)
A 300g packet of green beans
2 salmon fillets
2 large handfuls of spinach
A few cherry tomatoes

Cooking away

Heat a little bit of oil in the pan (I'm not sure how necessary the oil was, but I used it anyway) and then add the paste and fry for a couple of minutes. 

Add the onion and the pepper and cook over a low heat until they're softened. 

Pour in the coconut milk, lime juice, spices, mix and bring to the boil for a minute.

At this point in the recipe, I was still waiting for my companion to arrive, so I left it on a low heat until he did, so as not to over cook the fish. I don't think this did any harm, and it allowed the flavours to develop nicely.

Add the salmon, the green beans and the tomatoes, and cook for five minutes, until the salmon is nice and flake-y.

Throw in the spinach leaves, mixing until they wilt.

Sprinkle some decorative coriander (or basil, like me) on top

Serve with rice that is far less overcooked than mine.

And that's it! My first (albeit simple) recipe done. I hope I haven't bored you to tears/made you retch/outraged you somehow.

A brief history

I never learned to cook. I did Home Economics for a while in school, but generally used the time to doodle the name of my crush in the margins of my books. During my Junior Cert exam, I managed to set a tea towel on fire. The examiner came to investigate, but I blamed some construction work outside, and got away with it. Imagine failing Junior Cert Home Economics? I'd be humiliated. I didn't progress to Leaving Cert level.

It's not that I avoided cooking after that, I just never took an interest. I could make a rasher sandwich, I could scramble some eggs, and I lived with my parents. Why bother?

I moved out at the age of 22, armed with two student cookbooks and a new, hungry, boyfriend I was eager to impress. It was then that I discovered that food could be made more delicious by adding lots of spices, and lots of fats. I became adept at making simple dishes that contained lots of cheese, curries and chili con carne.

Three years later, I'm still not particularly skilled, but I do my best. My kitchen equipment consists of some cheap pots and pans, one decent knife, a chopping board and, my pride and joy, the cast iron griddle pan. This represents the first piece of 'real' cookware I have owned, and using it is a treat (although cleaning it isn't).

Isn't it beautiful?

I enjoy cooking an awful lot these days, and am determined to get better at it. I don't expect to be rustling up gourmet meals this time next week, but it would be nice to be able to do something more impressive than bangers and mash (though I am quite good at that, and it will most likely feature soon).