Sausage Casserole
One of my food-related new year’s resolutions was to perfect the sausage casserole. This was my first attempt and is a long way off what I was hoping for.
This method requires you to fry the sausages and shallots, then add garlic and bacon and fry a little more, then add stock, wine, mustard and cornflour and cook for a further half an hour. It was ok, but the flavours weren’t properly amalgamated in my opinion.
So, the search continues.
G
Battle Of The Baking Trays
Since we began making muffins, we’ve been using small, fairy cake trays. They work ok but not brilliantly. Last week, my mum bought us a silicone muffin tray and a friend bought us a heavy, metal muffin tray.
This morning, Stephen decided to put them both to the test. So far, the silicone is the winner as the flavours seemed more evenly distributed and they were easier to get out.
Chicken and Meringue (not together)
Last night, we had people over for dinner and decided to cook Jamie’s chicken in pastry. After making up a dough of flour and water, the seasoned (garlic, lemon, sage and thyme) chickens are encased in pastry and baked in the oven for an hour. Once they’re ready, the pastry is broken open and discarded to reveal the chickens. The pastry case allows the chickens to steam and they come out really tasty and moist. They don’t look very pretty though.
We served them with braised leeks, crushed new potatoes, winter greens and tenderstem brocolli.
For dessert, we had Nigella’s pomegranate meringues. Meringues, topped with cream and pomegranates. Really pretty and really tasty too.
Pork in Cider Vinegar Sauce
This was from Delia’s Winter, Stephen has been super-keen to make it all week so, on Wednesday night we cooked it ready for last night’s dinner.
The flavours were good, but the meat was quite dry. The sauce is thickened with creme fraiche which I don’t think worked very well. It needed to be thicker.
Chicken Fajitatatatas
We sort of made this up as we went along. Marinated the chicken pieces in some olive oil, lime juice, chilli, coriander, garlic, salt and pepper. Fried it off in the wok, removed to a plate, fried off the red onion and peppers and then served with corn wraps, tomato salsa and sour cream.
Could have done with more chilli but otherwise, very tasty and very quick.
G
Honey and Mustard Salmon
This was my idea and something I used to cook quite a lot, it didn’t come out the same as it used to though. I think it’s because I usually cook fish for twice as long as it actually needs as I’m so scared of fish poisoning. The extra cooking time means the honey goes all sticky and crunchy. Stephen cooked this and it was therefore cooked properly and not all dried out. Next time though we could blowtorch the top of it, that would make the top sticky and crunchy.
We had the salmon with roasted vegetables, crushed new potatoes and spinach. This was Stephen’s plate, mine wouldn’t be all mixed up like that.
G
Mushroom and Thyme Risotto
Tonight, we had planned to have salmon fillets for dinner but we were cold and hungry. Stephen found this Jamie Oliver recipe in The Naked Chef, we had all the ingredients so we left the salmon in the fridge. It was really good.
Cabbage and Bacon Galette
This is a recipe we’ve been wanting to try for ages, from Joanne Harris’ French Kitchen. It uses a sort of batter made from bacon, shallots, garlic, parsley, flour and milk. This is spooned into a dish, topped with steamed savoy cabbage and finished with another layer of the batter; it’s then baked in the over for 35 minutes.
It was sadly quite disappointing. But the pictures came out nicely.
Holiday
Below are some of the food related pictures we took on our recent holiday to Cape Town.
Chicken with mustard and mushroom sauce – the recipe called for salmon-trout but we couldn’t find any so used chicken instead. It turned out well but the sauce would have benefitted from thickening. Stephen used the leftover sauce with pasta which he tells me was good.
Garlic, lemon and olive oil prawns as a starter, followed by Angelfish:
A picnic lunch of Parma ham, hummus, feta with herbs, mozarella, salad, crisps, some kind of bread and Pongrancz sparkling wine:
A seafood platter at Quay Four at the V&A Waterfront, calamari, mussels (in a strange sauce), cheesey dorado (a meaty linefish), prawns (some of the best we ate) and salad. There was also a variety of sauces including a buttery one, garlic and chilli:
Stephen’s fillet steak and my rump steak at Spur, served with chips, onion rings and salad garnish:
Yellowtail (a meaty, game fish) expertly thrown onto the braai by Stephen. We bought this whole at the local supermarket and asked them to clean and butterfly it for us. It was huuuge, it fed eight of us and there was loads left over too:
Potjie, a traditional stew, cooked outside over coals. This version was lamb with butternut, carrot and potatoes:
Peppers Stuffed with Chunky Chilli
Over the weekend we cooked some chunky chilli and froze it to eat this week. We had it tonight, stuffed into peppers and baked in the oven. It was tasty but not mind-blowing. We could have left the peppers in a bit longer but we were worried about drying out the chilli that was in them. The chilli didn’t dry out except for the top few pieces, so if we try it again we’ll keep the lids of the peppers and put them back on to stop the top of the chilli from drying out. We loved the chunky chilli when we had it last time, but I think it would be easier to stuff the peppers with non-chunky filling.
F
