Nice article from The Guardian on different uses of marmalade.
There’s more to marmalade than a topping for toast – Nigel Slater uses his to sharpen a duck casserole, and set off the sweet pastry of an apple tart.
Chocolate Chip Mushroom Muffin
Saw this as a special offer on Tesco.com
Hmm, Chocolate Chip Mushroom Muffin, not so sure about these, no wonder they’re on special!
😉
Pancakes and Maple Syrup
Having got a really nice pancake pan for Christmas and though I have been using it for other stuff, I have also been using it for making pancakes.
I make a simple batter of flour, eggs and milk and then cook using a hot pan.
If I am making scotch pancakes, I will use self-raising flour and make a thicker batter, if I am making crepe style pancakes then I will have a thin batter which I can cover the whole pan with.
I serve them with proper maple syrup. Personally I can’t stand the maple flavoured syrups you can buy, and will only buy the proper stuff. Yes it is expensive, but I would rather have the good stuff now and again rather than the horrible stuff all the time.
Pasta with steak and mushrooms
Though I eat pasta a fair bit, I do like to try different things, though more often then not it is a variation on a theme as is the case with this dish.
I cooked the steak in a hot pan, generally in the same way I cook any steak. Hot pan, no oil in the pan, but oil the steak with a good olive oil and season with black pepper (but no salt, as the pancetta used later has more than enough salt to season the dish).
I cook the steak and leave to rest.
While the steak is cooking, cook the pasta of your choice, I used a specialty air dried pasta from the Taste the Difference range from Sainsburys.
After removing the steak from the pan, add some diced onion and pancetta. When the onion has softened and the pancetta cooked, add some button mushrooms. When the mushrooms have cooked add some freshly chopped parsley, a few spoonfuls of creme frache and the steak which should be sliced.
Place the pasta on the plate and spoon the steak and sauce onto the top of the pasta.
Serve.
Roast Outdoor Reared Pork
Yesterday we had a lovely piece of roast pork. It was a outdoor reared pork roasted on a bed of vegetables (and apple). It was lovely and tender and covered in crispy crackling.
My technique is relatively simple, set oven to the highest temperature. Place the pork on some root vegetables (this time I used carrot and parsnip). I do add some olive oil onto the skin of the pork. Once I have put the pork in the oven, I turn the temperature down to about 160℃.
Cook for about an hour, I then baste the pork and add more chopped vegetables to the pan, onion, carrots, mushrooms and parsnips. Place back in the oven.
When the pork is cooked, allow to sit for a while to rest.
I served the pork with roast potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted parsnips and some steamed green vegetables.
I made a delicious gravy using the cooking juices and beef stock.
Put it on the barbie…
Lovely amusing article on the barbecue in Australia from the BBC.
Scotland has the haggis, Turkey has the donor kebab, England has the Yorkshire pudding and from the land down under I give you… the overdone sausage.
I am being a tad unfair perhaps since multi-cultural Australia boasts some of the most mouth-watering food in the world. But that just makes it all the more intriguing why one of Australia’s great national dishes comes partly incinerated.
Photo source.
How not to cook steak
So there I was with a beautiful piece of 28 day matured rump steak and I ruined it…
Basically I roasted it in the oven (as it hadn’t fully defrosted) and as a result it came out dry and tough.
A silly mistake and next time I will ensure it is properly defrosted.
Normally I use a hot griddle and can tell how well cooked the steak is by the resistance you get, the harder the resistance the more cooked it is. Cooking in the oven, ensured that the steak dried out and was therefore quite tough and chewy.
Roast Beef
Just put a joint of beef into the oven for lunch today.
I turned the oven to its highest setting, placed the beef joint onto a bed of chopped vegetables, once I placed the roasting tray in the oven, I turned the temperature down to about 180℃ .
Next stage is to start to prepare the potatoes and the veg.
Ossau Iraty
Since Christmas I have been trying a few new and different cheeses. One I have particularly liked was Ossau Iraty, a traditional ewes milk cheese from the Basque region of South-West France.
It’s a firm cheese with a sweet, fruity flavour.
New York Restaurant “frees” 140 year old Lobster
One big lobster which was “entertaining” patrons in a New York restaurant has been set free.
The BBC reports
A lobster believed to be some 140 years old is to be freed from the confines of a tank at a New York restaurant.
George the giant lobster, weighing 9kg (20lb), will be returned to the ocean, from where he was caught two weeks ago.
But animal rights group Peta sought the lobster’s release, and will now put it back into the waters off Maine.