Photo: Chicken casserole

The best piece of kitchen equipment that I bought in 2008 was my slow cooker. I found mine in a sale at Tesco and had no idea how much more flavoursome slow cooking can be.

So why did I buy one? I had been seduced by Angela and the thought of slow cooked steak and kidney. Initially I reckoned that I would just use it in the winter but it’s used all year round now and saves us lots of cash as the electricity used to run it is minimal. And most things do taste better when they are slow cooked. Now I’ve got to grips with how to cook with it I use it all the time. I like having it bubbling away on the side.

I found a pack of 7 free range chicken legs and thighs on the Tesco CFC marked down to £1.75 and decided to make a chicken casserole. I bought some fabulous Portobello mushrooms and red bell peppers in the market – I wanted to create a dish full of subtle flavours. If it had been summer I probably would have used button mushrooms but the meatiness of the Portobello mushrooms was a perfect foil for the sweet peppers in a winter casserole. These need to be added right at the end of the cooking time so they still retain some firmness. I added mine the next day when I heated up the casserole.

Not all slow cooking takes hours and hours. In fact this chicken casserole took just a couple of hours. I let it cool overnight for the flavours to develop even more and we guzzled it the night that Danny returned from France. I popped the other half in the freezer for a night when we don’t feel like cooking from scratch. If you let it chill overnight you can easily remove any fat the next day if you are on a low fat diet.

Chicken and red pepper casserole (for 4 people)

Ingredients:

4 chicken legs (rolled in plain flour)
3 chicken thighs (rolled in plain flour)
380g red bell peppers deseeded and diced
2 stalks of celery sliced
8 cherry plum tomatoes halved
Pinch of mace
Half a teaspoonful of mixed herbs
1 tsp of garlic granules
1.5 tbsp of mushroom ketchup
1 tbsp of red wine
850ml of hot stock (made with one chicken and one vegetable stock cube)
Decent dash of ground black pepper just before serving
125g Portobello mushrooms chopped and added ten minutes before serving

4 tsp of corn flour to thicken the sauce at the end

Method:

Prepare the vegetables and put them in the base of the slow cooker.

Roll the chicken legs and thighs in flour and place these on top of the vegetables.

Add the herbs, garlic, mushroom ketchup, mace and red wine.

Add the hot stock – this should just cover the chicken pieces. Put the lid of the slow cooker on and switch to auto.

This should be ready in about two hours.

Skim off some juices and mix with the corn flour and return the paste to the slow cooker and stir well. Add the mushrooms to the simmering casserole ten minutes before serving.

We ate this with red Camargue rice. Delicious.

Photo: Boulangere potatoes

I like to bake food in the oven every now and then. Somehow I think that this releases me to get on with other things rather than keeping me anchored to the sauté pan or grill. So I prepare the dishes, work out the timings and pass responsibility over to a small green portable timer, that has a bleep so irritating that it can’t be ignored.

I decided to make Boulangere potatoes to celebrate Danny’s first full trug of spuds. These are scrummy and low fat. They were to accompany pork chops baked in blackberry and apple jelly and oven braised celery – my alternative to a traditional Sunday roast.

The trick to great Boulangere potatoes is to use just enough stock to leave the top layer of potatoes dry. Then you can sit down to melt in the mouth spuds topped with a crispy top. The other thing to note is to cut your spuds into really thin slices. Most people use a mandolin or the slicing disc in the food processor. This evening I left the skins on Danny’s spuds as they were still quite soft. I didn’t notice the skins in the main dish at all but the layer on the top was extra crisp. I’m going to try leaving the skins on older potatoes when I make it again.

I love the combination of mint and potatoes. Danny isn’t keen but he loved the freshness of the dash of mint in this dish.
“I don’t know what herb this is but it’s delicious.”

This is a great recipe for disguising the fact that you are short on spuds. Like mini roasts, the actual amount of potatoes in the dish is fairly low – our recipe would easily feed four.

Last night I had one helping and The Potato King had three…

Herby Boulangere potatoes recipe (for 3-4) 

Ingredients:

• 725g of potatoes, scrubbed and sliced very fine
• 125g of thinly sliced onions
• 1 large handful of fresh parsley and six large leaves of fresh mint chopped very fine
• 750ml of hot vegetable stock (I added 2 tsp of Marigold stock powder to boiling water)
• A drizzle of olive oil 

Method:

1. In a gratin dish layer the potatoes, then onions, then a scatter of herbs. Finishing with a layer of potatoes.
2. Gently pour over the stock to just below the final layer of potatoes.
3. Drizzle this layer with a small amount of olive oil and bake in a preheated oven for an hour and a half at 200c (180c fan).  Check every now and then that the top layer is not getting too brown, move to a lower shelf if necessary.

Phot: Sheep grazing in spring

I tend not to buy lamb shanks as they usually look so weedy and unappetising. Last week I spotted a half price pack of two lamb shanks on the Tesco condemned food counter. These were quite chunky (just under a kilo) and the original price was pretty stout too.

They had been reduced from £7.95 to £3.50. So naturally they ended up in my trolley. I decided to try just using ingredients that were knocking about in the fridge and larder and devised this dish that would easily feed eight. The combination of carrots, tomatoes and red wine worked well with the lamb. The lentils and barley padded out the meat and added more texture to the dish. It’s really easy to make and tasted as though we’d slaved for hours balancing the soft flavours.

There is no need to fry the onions or the meat, so like so many slow cooker dishes, this recipe is low fat.

We planned to have one meal and freeze the rest in batches but we’ve ended up eating it three nights running. It definitely was best when left to chill completely overnight before reheating the next day.

It was great with herb infused bulgar wheat and a salad of fresh leaves from the garden.  It was also lovely with John Coe’s broad beans and buttery new potatoes.

Low fat summery lamb shanks braised in red wine and tomatoes recipe (for 6-8 hungry people)

Ingredients:

• 150g of chopped onions
• 350g of peeled chopped carrots
• 2 chubby lamb shanks (weighing about a kilo)
• 2 x 440g of tinned tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons of mushroom ketchup
• 1 tsp of finely chopped garlic
• 1 tsp of Provencal herbs
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 4 tablespoons of plain seasoned flour
• 2 small handfuls of large green lentils
• 1 small handful of pearl barley
• Boiling water to cover

Method:

1. Add the chopped onions and carrots to the slow cooker.
2. Roll the lamb shanks in the flour and sprinkle the left over flour through the onions and carrots.
3. Add the tinned tomatoes and stir then through.
4. Place the lamb shanks on the bed of vegetables.
5. Add the wine, garlic, herbs, mushroom ketchup, vegetable stock cube, lentils and pearl barley.  Top up with boiling water to cover everything.
6. Switch the slow cooker to auto (or high until it reaches simmering point and then switch it to low) and let it cook for about five hours. Test after four hours, as slimmer shanks may need less time.
7. When the meat is falling off the bones remove the dish from the slow cooker and chill completely to skim off the fat. Then cut up the meat from the shanks, remove the bones and stir this evenly into the mixture.
8. Reheat gently and serve with bulgar wheet, potatoes or even crunchy fresh bread.