Sweet, spicy, slow baked beetroot recipe – the perfect accompaniment for roast lamb
Danny’s face fell ten years ago when John Coe stepped proudly into the cottage with a carrier bag bursting with home grown beetroot. Later he admitted that he hated beetroot. He imagined that beetroot had to be transmogrified to that vinegary stuff in jars. I made him beetroot soup and he loved it so much that we overdosed. Many beetroot free years have passed since then. To my surprise and delight D returned last week with a small box of “Sweetfire” beetroot from the “condemned food counter” in our local Tesco. This is wonderful...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: comforting low fat cottage pie recipe
During a cold snap a few weeks ago I had a longing for a really good Cottage Pie. So I made a version of this dish in the slow cooker (crock pot). Adding vegetables from our garden – the cottage kitchen smelt wonderful for hours. The slow cooker is a great way of cutting the fat content of a dish as the meat doesn’t have to be browned in oil, or the onions fried. When the filling was cooked, I strained off the juices and put the bowl in the refrigerator. The fat was easily removed a couple of hours later. The dish was delicious but the...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Low fat Spanish Lamb braised in thyme, garlic and white wine recipe
“Let’s try making the Spanish Lamb in the slow cooker. It will be cheaper than using the oven and it might enhance the flavours even more.” It was better than the oven baked version, with more depth of flavour and the joint remained plump and succulent. This is a great, easy dish for lazy entertaining. Just a few minutes preparation and then you can sit back as it turns into a delicious melt in the mouth lamb. The tantalising sauce tastes as if you have been slaving away for hours. Cooked a day in advance the dish sang. The fat was...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: low fat summer vegetable and bean casserole recipe
So many vegetarian recipes are high in fat with an emphasis on cheese and eggs. These ingredients can pull a flagging recipe round in seconds. We sometimes eat these dishes - the cheese and eggs make tham tasty, I'm cooking for an alpha carnivore foodie after all. Last night I woke at three a.m. and mulled. Surely, with a bit of thought, I could make veggie food that's low fat and delicious. This morning I opened an eye to the promise of thunderstorms. I was suddenly kitchen bound as I'm working on an outside job at the moment. So I decided to...
read moreThe ten minute soup challenge: Low fat spicy tomato and courgette soup recipe
"What do you think galengal tastes like?" My mum shrugged. "I would leave it if I was you." I was examining the spices to add to our ten minute soup. So I put back the galengal and grabbed a small jar of Massaman Thai curry paste. This includes a lot of the ingredients that I use for our soup all in one jar - chilli, lemon grass, tamarind, corrriander and a few others such as shrimp and cumin. Galengal has a small walk on part too. We don't eat soup every day for lunch. Sometimes we still eat a surreptitious sandwich (granary bread Cashel...
read moreHaybox cooking: how to make a haybox and save energy by Huw Woodman
Huw Woodman from the Bushcraft Magazine has been looking at ways to save energy, by using the old-fashioned haybox! Mrs Beeton's famous 19th century cookery book makes reference to a haybox. What's one of those? It's a box full of insulating hay that keeps a stew or other hot dish at sufficient heat so that it cooks without having to keep it in the oven or on the stove for hours. If you think how a conventional stove hot-pot works, you heat the ingredients up to the boil and then you simmer it for a long while whilst it cooks. The pot loses...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Light summery vegetable soup recipe
We should be sylphlike by now. We were gradually shedding the pounds with the new half veggie diet and soup each day for lunch. The dangerous thing about losing weight with little effort is that you can start to take it for granted and assume that whatever you eat will have no effect on your size. Unlike multi national corporations, we didn't want to grow. Gradually we've slithered back to sandwiches for lunch. Chocolate bars, biscuits and the occasional ice cream treat on a hot day have tempted us. "Gosh, you've put on weight! " My mum was...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Vegetarian Comfort Pie recipe
Last week was wet and cold and gloomy. I fancied some winterish flavours and felt inspired to try my hand at creating a new vegetarian dish. I wanted to make something that would avoid the palaver of many veggie dishes. A dish that I could leave bubbling in the slow cooker for hours, that didn't need loads of preparation, required no frying off and wasn't packed with tomatoes, chilli, cheeses and sweet peppers. I wanted the subtleness of deep English wintery flavours. A vegetarian dish that I could imagine being served in an individual pie...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: comes to the rescue. Tasty, easy, low fat leek and potato soup recipe (vichyssoise)
When I pointed out that soup was on offer at Waitrose my mother's reaction was instant. "Who'd want to eat soup at this time of year?" Well, Danny and me for starters. We've stopped eating soup for lunch for the past month or so and now the weighing scales are in danger of collapsing when we step on board. Soup is so easy to make - why does it seem such a palaver? I've been working much nearer home so lunch boxes are no longer planned. I swoop home grab some Boston Baked beans, a chunk of polenta bake or toast with pesto and cheddar...
read moreSunday roast: Melt in the mouth slow baked breast of lamb stuffed with chicken livers, apricots and pine nuts recipe
We have halved our paper bill by cancelling the Sunday paper (we are just weekend readers). We actually read the Saturday paper now rather than glancing at it and turning it into fire briquettes a week later. The one article that I always read is Mark Hix's recipe ideas as we are eating our breakfast and Danny is chortling through the sports section of the paper. This week he had a tempting recipe for slow baked breast of lamb. A pretty brave move as everyone is probably planning to invest in the more expensive cuts of lamb for Easter Day. I...
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