food, reviews and of course coffee
One of the things I like to have with a roast are roasted vegetables. I also add cubes of bread towards the end of cooking, these go all tasty and crunchy.
There are different vegetables you can use, this time I was using squash, pepper, mushrooms and onions.
I really do like a nice piece of pork belly, especially when roasted in the oven.
I use to be only be able to buy pork belly in slices, but more recently it has become much easier to buy pork belly in one piece. This makes it much easier to roast whole in the oven, not that it isn’t nice to roast small cubes of pork belly.
I use kitchen towel to dry the pork belly before cooking. Then when cooking, to start in a very hot oven (to ensure you get nice crispy crackling) before turning down to a much lower temperature , say 160℃ for a couple of hours. This way you get a wonderfully crisp crackling, tender moist meat and great flavour.
Now in terms of flavour, I do much prefer using “proper” pork as opposed to the mass produced stuff you can buy. The pork pictured was “outdoor reared” and tasted really good.
I seem to be cooking paella more and more recently.
The key for me is the right kind of rice and saffron. I really do like the way the saffron adds not just colour, but also flavour. Some people I know have used tumeric, however that is most certainly not saffron, and though adds a similar colour, the earthiness of tumeric really can ruin an otherwise decent paella.
After that you can add many different things to make a really nice paella.
The dish above contains in addition to the rice and saffron, the following, chorizo, prawns, onions, pepper, pancetta and a small tin of tomatoes.
There is something about paella, the richness, flavours that I really enjoy.
From BBC News
Counting calories is an addictive pastime for many a dedicated slimmer. Croissant or toast? Curry or pizza? Sandwich or salad?
Food labels help millions of people decide what to buy and what to eat. So it’s important that they are accurate but, according to some experts, the system on which they are based is flawed and misleading.
Sainsburys have recently released a new range, called Easy To Cook Autumn Meals.
We have tried a few and as you might expect some are better than others.
One we did like and have bought again, was the boneless chicken thighs with seasoned pork, sage & thyme stuffing.
Something that is relatively challenging to do yourself and takes a fair bit of time is to bone chicken thighs and stuff them. These already prepared saves a lot of time.
I roasted mine in the oven for 20-30 minutes with chopped onions, mushrooms, pepper and courgettes. I also added cubes of bread with ten minutes to go.
Once cooked, I let them rest for five minutes before slicing them and serving them.
A few months ago I visited the Surf & Turf restaurant in St Ives.
I was looking for a nice meal and having had a look round decided on the Surf & Turf. I went with the signature dish as I do quite like surf and turf.
After a very nice complimentary portion of soup…
…it was onto the main course.
It consisted of half a lobster, a rib eye steak and some giant prawns. Served with salad and new potatoes.
It was all very fresh and did taste good. The steak was cooked to my liking. I did have a hunch that the shellfish wasn’t cooked from raw, which was a pity, but overall a nice dish and reasonably priced at £25.
The surroundings were very pleasant and the staff and service were excellent.
Do you like biscuits?
I do and I don’t.
At this time I have really gone off eating biscuits, especially commercially made biscuits.
When it comes to home made or “crafted” biscuits I am okay, but they are not something I would go out of my way to buy and eat.
Probably just a phase.
The biscuit in the photograph was from the Sky Tower in Auckland in New Zealand. It was rather nice.
Sainsburys have recently released a new range, called Easy To Cook Autumn Meals. They are currently 25% off.
We have tried a few and as you might expect some are better than others.
We tried the Beef & Ale Casserole and were, well, slightly disappointed.
I was pleased initially to see that they used shin for the cut of beef rather than the traditional stewing beef I would expect. The onions and mushrooms that came looked a little disappointing and tired. Rather than provide a sauce, these meals seem to be using a new paste technique to which you add water.
I followed the instructions almost to the letter, just adding some carrots and topping with some dumplings. Though the recipe didn’t call for it, I did brown the shin before placing it in a casserole dish and topping with the sauce made form boiling water and the included sauce paste. At this stage I did add the extra carrots. This was cooked for eighty minutes before adding the onions and mushrooms. This was then cooked for a further forty minutes before I added the dumplings which were cooked for a further twenty minutes.
The beef was very tender, however the whole dish lacked flavour. You certainly couldn’t taste the ale. Overall what I hoped would be a simple dish to cook, was to be honest a disappointment. So much so that if I was going to cook something like this again, I would cook it from scratch using fresh ingredients. The dumplings were great, but then I made those myself!
It cost £3.74, but will be £4.99 after the offer period has ended. I don’t think this is value for money and would rather spend more on some nice beef and a bottle of ale than buy the pack again.
I very rarely buy stuffing, if I do it is only fresh stuffing, I don’t think I have bought a stuffing mix in years. Normally I make my own stuffing.
These were made very simply with diced onions, sausage meat, breadcrumbs, fresh herbs and wrapped up with pancetta bacon. I would then roast them in the oven for about 20-30 minutes.
Quick and easy and certainly just as quick as using a stuffing mix.
I have blogged about Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals, the Guardian decided to put them to the test.
It all looks so easy on the television. But is it really possible to cook Jamie Oliver’s 30-minute recipes in the allotted time – and do they taste any good?
Read more and see the results.
I have to agree that trying to cook what you see in television cookery programmes is always a little fraught and doesn’t always work out exactly how you see on screen. I am always impressed with Ready Steady Cook, even with the pre-heated ovens, pans and boiled kettle, 20 minutes is a very short time to get a meal done. Same with Jamie’s 30 minute meals.
Having said all that, cooking shouldn’t and doesn’t need to take ages and using time as an excuse for not cooking is missing out.