Category: stuff

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Pancakes

Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday Pancake Day and time to get your Pancake Pan out.

Pancake

The Guardian has a nice article on how to get the best out of your pancakes.

Supermarket shelves have sprouted plastic lemons and extra bags of flour in preparation for pancake day tomorrow. Enthusiasm for Lent fasting might have waned, but our love of Shrove Tuesday is still going strong. No wonder. What other food is such fun to cook, is made from such cheap ingredients, and has so many delicious toppings? We asked four top chefs to suggest clever ways to get out of your lemon-and-sugar rut.

Read more.

Photo source.

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Roasted Salmon Fillets

Nice and simple dish.

Take some good quality salmon fillets, remove the skin. You don’t need to remove the skin, but I prefer to do so.

Place in a roasting tray. Add some finely chopped parsley and place a knob of unsalted butter on each fillet.

Roast in a hot oven for about ten minutes.

Serve with steamed new potatoes and a side salad.

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Roasted Duck Breast

Roasted Duck Breast

I do enjoy duck and a simple roasted duck breast is a relatively quick and easy dish to make.

Having taken out the two duck breasts from the fridge, using a fork, prick the skin side of the duck breast.

Duck can be quite fatty and as a result if you simply roast the duck breast it will be too fatty and greasy. So heat a frying pan, but don’t add any oil. Place the duck breasts in the pan skin side down.

Frying the duck breast in this way renders the fat out from the duck and as a result you get nice crispy skin and little fat or greasiness.

The breasts will also shrink slightly as they cook. There is technique that you can use to stop the meat curling up, but I can’t remember what it is! Something about cutting away something. If you know post a comment and let me know.

Once the skin is nice and brown, place the duck breasts skin side up in a roasting pan. Roast in the oven for about ten to twenty minutes (depending on how you like your duck).

Serve with your favourite accompaniments.

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…but I don’t want a panini

Ten years ago no one in the UK knew what panini was. Today the place is awash  with them.

Yes we had toasted sandwiches, anyone for a Breville? However the popularity of the toasted Italian panino has grown considerably over the last few years.

In the main the thrust of this growth has come from the coffee chains of Starbucks and Costa, though now it appears that everyone is selling panini.

And there lies the problem…

It’s all you seem to be able to buy in some places, as every outlet is selling them. If you want something different, tough!

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It’s not all stodge…

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall talks about winter comfort food in the Guardian.

When temperatures drop, it’s only natural to dish up a trusty hot pot or jam roly poly. But thanks to crisp winter veg, comfort food needn’t be all stodge.

Some nice recipes there.

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Curry Webcam

An Indian takeaway in North Staffordshire is offering customers the chance to see their food being cooked online via a webcam in the kitchen.

See the video (UK only).

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Hot Stuff

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his weekly Guardian column plays with hot stuff and does stuff with chillies.

There’s a lot more to chillies than how hot they are – the range and complexity of flavour from pepper to pepper really has to be tried to be believed.

Great article which shows that there is more to chillies then the mouth burning Friday night curry or the green ones available at the supermarket.