Category: stuff

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Roasting Squash

Over the last few weeks I have had a lot of success with cooking (well roasting) different varieties of squash.

In the past I have tried cooking butternut squash with little success. Generally it lacks flavour or just doesn’t do have anything special about it.

I have been buying in my local supermarkets various types of squash, and roasting them in the oven and to be honest they have been really really nice.

They are quite tough to cut up, but once they are cut up, the seeds removed, the skin taken off, cut into chunks and roasted in a hot oven with a little olive oil, you can really appreciate the flavour.

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Garnish

Whenever I do a big roast I do like a nice garnish of stuffing and sausages. The stuffing is described in this recipe, and the sausages are either plain or wrapped in pancetta jackets.

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Go on, surprise me…

I mentioned last week how I was disappointed with the fish and chips I had had at the Sainsbury’s Café. One of the reasons I do go there (as well as convenience) is that you can be surprised.

Earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised with a meal I had at the café.

It was chargrilled tuna on a bed of steamed vegetables with a tomato sauce. It was certainly one of the best meals I have ever had in the Sainsbury’s Café.

The vegetables were not over cooked and still had some crunch. The tomato sauce was certainly better than most I have had, even the tuna was very nice, if a little overcooked.

A pity it was a special and not a regular item on the menu.

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Stuffed Duck Legs

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.

We did try the Stuffed Duck Legs, which were part-boned duck legs with a fruity pork stuffing.

Easy to cook, the instructions did seem to indicate to cook them for an extraordinarily long time

They were quite tasty, though a little dry, I think that was even though I cooked them for a shorter time than in the instructions.

I do like duck and this concept sounded good, however the end result was not as good as I hoped.

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Fish and Chips

In the past I have enjoyed fish and chips from Sainsburys, it has been a nice piece of fish, freshly cooked and served with chips and peas. So when I was in there recently and saw it was on special, only £3.79 rather than the regular £4.79 I decided that I would have that for my lunch.

When it arrived it did look quite nice.

The fish was smaller than usual, so I was slightly disappointed.

When I cut into the fish I was even more disappointed, the batter didn’t appear to be “fresh” in other words this was not freshly battered fillets of fish, but pre-battered fish (the kind you buy off the shelf or from the freezer and put in the oven) that the café had then deep fried themselves.

As a result the fish looked and tasted over-cooked.

The chips were okay as were the peas, but I was disappointed with the fish and the meal as a whole.

Now I could also go on about the service on the day. Despite having lots of staff in the café it seemed to take both ages to place an order and then for the food to arrive. Part of the issue was only one till was working.

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Biscuits

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.

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Wrapped Stuffing

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.

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Putting Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals to the test

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.

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Bento Box

I do quite like the idea of a Japanese Bento Box, however here in the UK (outside London) we don’t get many Japanese takeaways.

If you exclude Indian, most Asian takeaways in this country “pretend” to be Chinese takeaways. Serving fast wok fried food in sticky sugary sauces.

This Bento Box was from a Japanese takeaway in New Zealand and was quite nice and very reasonably priced. It makes me wonder why we can’t in this country do something similar. Well actually from experience we can in London, but outside the big cities, no we have to suffer sticky faux-Chinese sauces…