Always thinking of the next meal...
One, two, three, four, …, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen! Antony Worrall Thompson has got to be kidding! Nineteen ingredients to make a straightforward meatballs and sauce dish. It is recipe number 37 in
Antony Worrall Thompson’s Top 100 Beef Recipes. Is it his short stature he’s trying to make up for? What about the step where you have to roll the meat into 1cm (½ inch) diameter balls?
Scouring my recipe collection I found this lovely recipe. I had a few problems though. One, I have never baked a pie or tart in my life. Two, I didn’t have a food mixer to make the dough with. I’ve been yearning for a KitchenAid for a long time, which I’ll hopefully get in the near future. Three, there was no time to experiment with complicated recipes even though I would have loved to make a South African “souttert”. I needed to be successful the first time.
Recently I’ve checked my website statistics (the traffic has skyrocketed by the way) and saw a new site linking to me. Curious as always I went to investigate. Nicole from For the Love of Food decided to make my Chicken Calvados and it was a great success which really delighted me. After reading her site for a while I noticed she has a monthly contest, called Taste & Create. The idea is to cook another blogger’s recipe and give feedback. Nicole will then do a monthly roundup of the results.
The weather here in the UK has turned for the worse. It’s cold, damp and everything is grey. The sun hangs low in the sky, casting a stark yellow light fooling you into thinking it is 5pm in the afternoon when it is actually only noon. The novelty of shopping while it is dark hasn’t worn off (for me) yet, but Britons find it downright depressing. In times like these I can’t help but turn to food for comfort. What’s more consoling than a bowl of meatballs with pasta? Lamb and dill is a rare pairing, but it works!
If you’re not a fan of red meat you can always make these turkey burgers and serve it with the sill sauce.
Pork fillet or tenderloin is very lean, so it can be quite a tricky meat to cook with. With a flick of a finger the once rosy and tender flesh can pale, shrivel and turn as tough as old boots. After a lot of experimentation, I have finally mastered one technique to cook this stubborn cut.
Chicken, leeks, cider, cream and butter. All my favourite ingredients are in this Normandy dish. With these few ingredients it makes a simple and quick, yet delicious, mid-week supper. It’s a refreshing change from Spaghetti Bolognese, don’t you think? Pork can easily be substituted for the chicken. Go ahead and treat yourself.
In today’s rat race there are so many ready-made desserts and sweets on shops’ shelves that the fresh produce section gets automatically shunned when people are choosing a dessert. Yet the possibilities of fruit desserts are endless. This recipe, if you can call it that, is simple and suits every occasion, even a dinner party.
Yams, cassava, rice, peanuts, spinach, plantains and peppers are just a few ingredients that are regularly used in the rich West African cuisine. What surprised me most was the peanut butter in this dish. Curry and peanut butter sure sounds like a strange combination, but in reality it works beautifully. The peanut butter adds depth and nuttiness to the vegetables, but also tempers the cayenne pepper and curry. Who needs meat if a meal can be so filling?
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Homemade smoked salmon pâté is dead easy and quick to prepare. Learn how to make it yourself.
3km walk done. Papaya & seeds for lunch.
