I got an email a couple of weeks ago asking if I was interested in trying some bacon. We get a lot of emails asking us to try things and we mostly say no, mostly the products aren’t that interesting, I don’t like writing reviews and, if I don’t like the product then I feel bad writing about it and potentially upsetting the supplier. I wasn’t going to turn down the offer of free bacon though so replied instantly and said yes. I wasn’t however expecting to receive 40 rashers of the stuff.

We used some in the spaghetti alla vodka we ate earlier in the week but the point of the free bacon was to see how the supermarket product compared to the premium bacon from a butcher. I didn’t have any butcher’s bacon and I wasn’t going to add to the 40 rashers so we just fried some up this morning for breakfast. Well, Stephen did. And here’s what he had to say about it.

Two rashers of each type went into the pan. One of the packs said “no added water” on it and I nodded in approval as I laid it into the frying pan along with the others. When cooking, the “no added water” rashers didn’t get covered in white foam and the others did. I pointed this out to Kerri and she (having read the marketing information) said that they were all supposed to be dry cure and that none of them were supposed to release anything. Hmm. I inspected the other packs and they did indeed say “dry cure” on them. Definite release of water though. I should have taken a picture at the time, but when the picture above was taken I had already turned them over.

Anyway, taste is what counts of course, so on to that. Armed with a rasher of each type, some toast, some fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms and a fried egg, I set to work. Tasting the different bacon on their own first before mixing them with anything else, one particular thing stood out: salt. They were all very salty. The flavour and texture did vary slightly between them: one was more porky and thicker, one tasted more like gammon but was oddly flat in texture and the other was somewhere in between in most respects.

The saltiness did tend to overpower the other flavours when eaten on their own, making it a little difficult to discern interesting differences. When eaten with tomatoes, mushrooms, egg, etc, the saltiness was diluted and it didn’t matter so much and they did complement the rest of the breakfast. I was hoping to be wowed by at least one of them which didn’t happen unfortunately, but all three were better than the lower quality supermarket alternatives or bulk generic catering packs that I’ve had the misfortune to be served in some establishments and I would happily eat them in preference for both taste and also animal welfare considerations.

(The bacon was sent to us by the PR company behind “I Love Real Bacon”, I can’t see a website for them though, just a Facebook page).

We were out all day last Sunday and ended up in the pub in need of something to eat. When this happens I always avoid the Traditional Sunday Roast since I don’t think it’s ever as good as the real home-cooked version. For some reason, last Sunday I broke my golden rule and was rewarded with a plate of food that was edible but by no means remarkable. It gave me a craving for a proper Sunday lunch so this morning, Stephen went off in search of beef while I got on with the accompaniments.

When he returned, he was clutching a large bag which contained a rib of beef, well two ribs actually. We followed Hugh’s instructions again but were taken by surprise at the speed the beef cooked which meant we ended up with meat that was just over the medium-rare we prefer. This was a tasty cut of beef though so the flavour wasn’t affected too much. We really must remember to pay more attention to the meat while it’s cooking though since this is a situation we find ourselves in all too often.

Great Yorkshire pudding (that wasn’t frozen like last week), crunchy roast potatoes, average parsnips and a decent selection of vegetables made for a good lunch. There was plenty of excellent gravy too, another bonus of eating at home and not a pub/restaurant.

The “This Week Last Year” plugin on the sidebar tells me that we ate roast beef exactly a year ago. A further search through the archives reveals that we haven’t had it since. Far too long.

This has been on my “things-to-cook-soon” list for ages. I’m a big fan of slow-roast dishes and thought this might be a good alternative to our favourite slow roast shoulder of lamb. Well, I’m not sure if we did something wrong (seasoned and braised in a couple of pints of stock and wine at 160 degrees for three hours. There were carrots, onions, celery, bay, garlic and some dried herbs in there too) or if we just had a poor piece of meat but we really didn’t like it.

The gravy had plenty of flavour but the beef itself was tasteless and dull. We bought a larger piece of beef than we needed for today’s lunch so that we could use the leftovers tomorrow which I’m hoping will be better. I can’t see us cooking brisket to eat this way again though.

I say this often but one of the very best things about a roast chicken is the amount of leftovers it generates. If you were left with lots of turkey leftovers after Christmas then this may be a bit too soon for chicken leftovers, luckily we managed to avoid that by going on holiday.

We decided to combine the chicken with some leeky, mustardy, beans. I cooked the beans on Sunday while the chicken was cooking so all I had to do tonight was soften some leeks and garlic, add the beans with some oil and mustard (raspberry mustard in this case, if you were wondering what those funny pink specks were) and then stir in the chicken. I added some extra kale for a bitter note to counteract the sweetness of the mustard.

As is tradition, we celebrated arriving home with a roast chicken on Sunday. Not all that interesting to read about (there is some more interesting stuff to come soon) but something we always look forward to after being away.

Is there a patron saint of cooking? I’m not sure and Google was inconclusive. If there is such a thing and indeed, if I believed in such things, then I imagine she (it’s got to be a she, right?) was looking down on us this weekend. After not spending much time in the kitchen recently, we managed to produce the third really good meal in as many days. I don’t think we did anything drastically differently today and yes, I know roast pork isn’t all that difficult but for whatever reason, everything seemed to work brilliantly this time.

The meat (from Waitrose) had lots of flavour and remained juicy with super-crackly crackling. Having said I didn’t do anything differently, I did remember to cook the meat on the highest setting for the first 30 minutes before turning the oven down to 180 degrees which I don’t always remember to do. The potatoes and parsnips were crisp with lots of crunchy edges and fluffy insides (vegetable oil only today instead of a combination of vegetable and olive) and the vegetables were fresh and just interesting enough to compliment the meat without taking over (a dash of fennel seeds in the garlicky greens helped this). Oh, and that’s mashed celeriac in the middle which was wonderfully creamy and smooth.

I had planned to make stuffing but forgot so I guess that patron saint might have got distracted but otherwise, a glorious end to a brilliant weekend.

One of my favourite things about Christmas are the traditions that go alongside the presents and the turkey.  I like a big tree with too-many decorations on it (I get this from my mum, her tree is so overloaded that you can’t really see the branches and it often falls over), I like strings of fairy-lights covering every available surface and I like decorating the house while listening to Christmas music and eating mince pies.  We did that yesterday and baked the first batch of mince pies from the mincemeat we made a couple of weeks ago.  We used the same recipe we use every year but this time, the spicing was a little light and there was too much apple coming through.  Easy enough to rectify though and a good job we checked in advance of the big day.

Hettie Potter’s suet-free Mincemeat
Makes about 2kg

250g soft dark sugar
250ml medium dry cider
1 kg cooking apples, peeled, halved and quartered
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
250g currants
250g raisins
75g glace cherries, roughly chopped
75g blanched almonds, finely chopped
rind and juice of 1/2 lemon
6 tbsp brandy or rum

In large saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the cider over a gentle heat. Add the roughly chopped apples to the saucepan. Add all the ingredients, apart from brandy/rum and simmer for around 30 min until everything has a pulpy consistency. Take off the heat and when it has cooled slightly stir in brandy/rum.

We have had a couple of memorable successes with duck breasts before, particularly with rösti, but recent rösti attempts have been less successful so we decided on sautéed potatoes to accompany these instead.  Armed with a large bag of potatotes and the last two duck breasts from the shelf in Waitrose, we set about preparing.  We served it with a redcurrant and red wine sauce and some sautéed greens of the sort that we ate for seven days in a row a few weeks back.

It turned out very well indeed.  The duck breast was cooked pinkish, just how we wanted it to be, the sauce had (almost) just the right amount of everything in it and the potatoes turned out to be the best ever.  The potatoes were the big revelation from this meal; we have cooked them many times and I think it was the addition of garlic this time round that made a big difference.  Along with letting them crisp up slowly while the sauce and duck cooked.

Duck breasts

Ingredients:
2 duck breasts
salt and pepper

Method:
Score the skin side a few times, this will allow the fat to cook out more easily. Heat a frying pan on medium heat and put the duck breasts in skin side down. Cook for about ten minutes; the fat will render out from under the skin and should leave the skin nice and crispy and you’ll end up with lots of fat in the pan. Then turn them over and cook for another five. Remove and let them rest.

Redcurrant and Juniper Sauce

Ingredients:
3 shallots, finely chopped
glass of red wine
half glass of chicken stock
tablespoon of redcurrant jelly
sprig of thyme
bay leaf
5 juniper berries
salt and pepper
red wine vinegar (1/2 tsp or so)
1 tsp cornflour

Method:
Pour the red wine into a small saucepan along with the stock, thyme, bay, juniper and redcurrant jelly. Bring to the boil and lower the heat to a simmer and leave it for another ten minutes. Taste and add salt, pepper and vinegar to taste as you see fit. Mix the cornflour with a dash of water and then add it to the sauce to thicken it, stirring all the time.

Sautéed Potatoes

Ingredients:
Potatoes (preferably a fairly waxy variety; we used Désirée)
Half a medium to large onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper
olive oil

Method:
Slice the potatoes and boil or steam until almost cooked. Slice into 1cm cubes. While this is happening, heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over low to medium heat. Add the onion and allow to soften for five minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another 5 minutes. Just allow these to soften, not brown – there will be plenty of opportunity for that later! Then add the cubed potatoes, with a little extra oil if it looks like it needs it. Season liberally with salt and pepper and thyme. Cook on a low heat for 20 to 30 minutes, shaking the pan and turning the potatoes frequently to allow them to brown on all sides. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, pepper or herbs as you see fit.

We went to a friend’s place on Saturday night and he cooked beef stew which was lovely. It was particularly lovely as he cooked it outside, over an open fire and we ate it sitting around another, different fire. I’m sure the stew itself would have been just as lovely if we’d eaten it inside but it’s not often you get to eat around a fire (unless you go camping a lot which I don’t) so that made the whole thing even more, well, lovely really.

As happens often when I’ve eaten at someone else’s house, I came home with the urge to cook the same thing myself. Not because I wanted to do it differently or because I thought I could do it better but because I like cooking and miss the process when I’m eating other people’s food. It’s probably also because I tend to be polite when I’m eating elsewhere and not help myself to a second portion so I want to eat more of the same. Having said that, I don’t think I was that polite on Saturday night; in addition to the lovely fires and lovely food there was also lovely mulled wine (cooked on yet another fire) which tends to help (or hinder, depending on your point of view) with the politeness.

Anyway, I wanted to make beef stew (or casserole, I don’t know what the difference is but we always called it casserole when I was growing up so that’s what I call it) and I also wanted to make mustard dumplings so I did. In addition to the mustard in the dumplings, I also put mustard into the casserole itself which I don’t usually do but I thought would work well. I could have done with more mustard in the casserole itself and less in the dumplings (I’ve adjusted the ratios below) but I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. The mustard in the casserole gave a suggestion of warmth while the flavour of the dumplings was fresher and lighter, not something you would usually associate with suet-heavy dough but reflective of the difference in cooking time. I think I’d use Dijon mustard in both next time, instead of the English mustard in the dumplings.

Beef Casserole
Serves Two – generously

500g stewing beef (shin is really good, if you can find it)
Seasoned flour (flour with salt and pepper added)
1 large onion, chopped
2 sticks celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 bay leaves
Large sprig thyme
Half bottle red wine
1 litre beef stock
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 large carrots, chopped
Large handful button mushrooms

Start by tossing the beef in the seasoned flour and then dusting off any excess (don’t do this in advance as the meat will start to absorb the flour and it will become sticky). Add half the meat to a hot pan and fry until dark brown, remove to a plate and then brown the second half. You don’t want to add too much at once or the beef won’t fry but will stew instead defeating the purpose of “browning”. You want the meat to really brown too because that adds flavour and seals the meat ahead of the long cooking time.

If there are any very brown bits stuck to the pan that are likely to burn then (carefully) remove and discard. Add a little more oil, heat and then cook the onions for a couple of minutes over a medium heat. Next add the celery, garlic, bay leaves and thyme and cook for about five minutes – you want the onions to just start browning but not take on so much colour that they begin to caramelise and become too sweet.

Return the meat to the pan and combine with the vegetables. Now add the red wine and bubble for a couple of minutes until the alcohol has burnt off. Stir in the mustard, add the stock, season and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and cook for 3 hours, checking regularly to ensure there is enough liquid to coat the meat. I actually transferred the casserole dish to the oven at this point as our gas feed is high and I can’t always get it low enough to simmer without boiling. It went in at 150 degrees.

After the three hours I turned off the heat, allowed the casserole to cool down and then refrigerated it overnight. The next day, I added a little more water, the carrots and mushrooms, brought it up to a boil and then cooked it for another hour. You could of course do this all in one go though and then serve. Ten minutes before you want to serve, add the dumplings (if you’re using them) and then sprinkle over the parsley before serving.

Mustard and Herb Dumplings

50g self-raising flour
25g suet
Salt and pepper
Handful chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
2.5 tablespoons water

Combine all the ingredients together and form the dough into dumpling shapes. This mixture will make four regular sized (a little larger than a golf ball) dumplings but I made eight smaller ones instead. As mine were smaller, I dropped them into the lidded casserole dish 10 minutes before serving but you would need to increase that to 20 minutes for larger dumplings.

This was supposed to be a celebratory meal, cooked by me, to celebrate Stephen completing the latest module of his wine exams. I chose lamb chops because they’re one of his favourites and I was planning to make sautéed potatoes too but I got stuck at work and Stephen ended up both shopping for and cooking his own celebratory dinner.

There isn’t too much interesting about this since we eat it a lot but the garlicky greens are our new favourite vegetable and something we’ve been eating a lot lately. In fact, we (well, Stephen) cooked up a whole load of these tonight to use through the week. They’re good but they don’t require a recipe as such, just slice up some greens and rinse them. Soften some garlic in a little butter, add the greens, stir and then put a lid on the pan. Cook for about five minutes on a medium heat and then serve. Chilli works well with the garlic too, depending on what else you’re eating.