Being Mrs C

Mushroom & bacon tarts

Whenever I go in a supermarket I'm always on the look out for free recipe cards that they often have available. I'm not so good at actually using said recipe cards when it comes to deciding what to have for dinner.

After being amazed at just how many of these I had collected last week I made a real effort to actually make some meals from the various recipes I had collected and I have to say that so far I have been very impressed with the results. One very simple dinner came from a Waitrose recipe for Mushroom and bacon tarts which are served with creamy goat's cheese.

I have to say that these were incredibly yummy and so easy to make. The only part of the recipe that I had a problem with was when it told me to "lift out the puffed centres of the pastries and discard"! Discard? Throw food away??? Do they not realise we have a credit crunch on at the moment? Needless to say there was no discarding of puffed centres chez C!

Definitely worth trying as a quick after work supper, and with the recipe freely available on the Waitrose website there is really no excuse for not trying it!

St Pancras Farmers' Market

It's been a while since I've been through St Pancras station and there are certainly a few changes since my last visit. One of the most obvious, to me at least, is the Sourced Market that has opened near the Thameslink platforms. A quick look tonight whilst waiting for my train home suggested a nice range of yummy things, including a good selection of fruit and veg. It wasn't exactly cheap, but not as prohibitively priced as I initially feared. It was also good to see some clear labelling as to where things had come from allowing the consumer to keep track of the food miles behind their lunch or evening meal. I'll certainly consider there as a possibility the next time I need to pick up something for dinner on my way home and it certainly makes waiting for a train home somewhat more enjoyable than it used to be!

Herbs and heather

Bearing in mind we only went for some grass seed it was quite a haul that we came home with.

Our planting in the garden is a tad haphazard at the moment in that we just happen to see things that we like, buy them and then try and work out where is best to plant them. One area where I am applying a bit of a theme is around the decking. At one end is the large rosemary that was here when we moved in and around the rest of the deck I'm following it with other herb type plants.

A couple of types of lavender have already been planted, but over the weekend I also added another shade of purple courtesy of a heather (calluna is as much as the label says on this one). 

Towards the rosemary I have included thyme and oregano (Country Cream). I have no idea if these will grow anywhere near the size of the rosemary, but they certainly extend my collection of home grown herbs. I certainly can't provide a whole meal's worth from the garden, but I can at least start by garnishing a meal!

Chilli medusa

A "quick" trip to the garden centre for some grass seed resulted in a few other purchases. I'm sure I'll follow up with another post about the things we bought to actually go in the garden, but this is one of the things that has ended up inside the house - chilli medusa.

From what I've learnt from the internet and the label it apparently is both ornamental and for cooking (surely if it can be used for cooking then it's no longer ornamental by definition is it?) I'm pretty sure Mr C and I will try cooking with it at some point soon - we both like chillies and it would be wrong not to try. Although it does mean that it may take me a bit longer to actually get round to trying to grow chillies from the seeds I bought a couple of weeks ago...

Regardless of how it tastes though, it certainly adds a bit of interest to the windowsill where all my herbs are growing.

Toast - Nigel Slater

  

It's a bit strange, but Nigel Slater is one of those famous chefs that I don't actually know much about. We have one of his cookbooks that Mr C's mum bought him once as a birthday present, but we've not yet made anything from it. I'm not sure why though.

My mother in Law recently lent me a copy of Slater's autobiography, Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger as she initially thought my mum would like it. It turned out that my mum had already read it, so I thought I ought to give it a go.

Toast isn't really an autobiography in the traditional sense, but instead provides a series of vignettes, in chronological order, that illustrate various points of his life that have some sort of food significance. It provides a wonderful insight into his life and childhood in particular and captures the humour and sorrow of his childhood in equal measure.

I'm now just left wondering why I haven't used any of his cookbooks before. It might be time to find the one we do have from the kitchen shelf and choose something to make for dinner next week.

Moroccan chicken

Looking back it's been a while since I posted about some of the food that we've been eating - possibly because we've been so busy that after work known favourites have been cooked for simplicity rather than trying something new.

This Moroccan chicken recipe is certainly one that we've done several times before, but it's so simple and tasty that we keep coming back to it. The mix of all the various spices gives it a great depth of flavour - that possibly doesn't come over in that slightly grey looking photo! The recipe calls for boneless, skinless chicken things, but we find that if you buy thighs on the bone the meat remains much more succulent, and they're cheaper too! Keeping the skin on is another personal choice, but we find it holds different flavours to add another contrast to the dish.

A very simple one pot meal from the well used 101 Cheap Eats book, that is great served with couscous or rice  on the side.

Cooking with herbs and spices

Only a couple of years or so ago I think the only thing on my spice "shelf" was a little jar of mixed herbs. It's grown quite a bit since then. It's strange, but to me the sight of a well stocked herb and spices shelf is the sign of a good cook, yet I"m not sure that I fit into that category yet.

Mr C is the one that has to take most of the credit for helping to expand my taste horizons and consequently my cooking abilities. When we met he was a curry lover, yet I struggled to handle a korma. Chilli was something that I used to back away from frightened.

Over time though I have definitely learnt how to use herbs and spices to transform a dish. Tonight's dinner makes use of four of the little jars from the shelf (ground cumin, ground coriander, chilli powder and ground cinnamon - in case you're interested) and hence turns what could have been a rather bland chicken dish into something very tasty.

One book that I have to admit did help me understand how best to use herbs and spices was Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie. There's a great section at the back of the book where he look at several common herbs and spices in turn and describes each one and the flavours it can add to a dish. This certainly helped me understand how to start experimenting. Of course, reading from a book is fine, but nothing beats actually trying the flavours for yourself.

There's still plenty for me to learn, but I'm just hoping that our new house has a bigger shelf for storing all these on than we do right now!

Italian-style beef stew

Last night's dinner was a perfect meal for a cold winter evening - with a slight Mediterranean edge.

Italian-style beef stew is a recipe that we've used a few times before from another book that we have in the 101 range: 101 Meals for Two. As I really don't like them I leave out the olives, but the mix of beef, yellow pepper and rosemary combined with the feta that we sprinkle on top makes it irresistible. I served it last night with some simple mashed potato (sadly not made as expertly as 21st Century Housewife makes hers) but tasty all the same.

Sunday seems to be much brighter and warmer than this last week or so, so we're planning a wander around one of the parts of St Albans where we viewed a house yesterday. The question we've got to try and answer is whether or not we want to live there. Never an easy one!

Chaos

Ae we really only ten days into 2009? Last weekend I remember feeling so organised for going into the new year; now I'm not too sure. So much seems to have happened in these last ten days that I'm not even sure where to start. Sorry there are no photos to accompany my words - I've just not had time to take my camera out of my handbag all week.

I went back to work on Monday and was expecting a quiet week before starting all the regular meetings etc next week. Someone else obviously thought differently. I feel like I've been on a treadmill that's been getting faster and faster all week - and somehow I'm still on it. Everyone seems to have come back to work with a huge amount of enthusiasm to get things going. That's good in a way, but not when it creates so much more for me to do and needs me to do thinks much more quickly than I had planned. I also ended up having to take an overnight trip to Gloucestershire to meet a new supplier. Only organised the day before, but at least it gave me some train time to read and catch up with my knitting!

Outside of work things at home also seem to have been very busy. Mr C and I have started house hunting again. We've already viewed two houses this year and by the end of this weekend we will have seen a total of six. I've finished two more excellent books since reading The Outcast and reviews will be coming soon. The second sock in the pair that I started last year is also nearing completion and my journey out west allowed me to cast on a scarf for my friend L who's ill at the moment.

Mr C and I also (somehow) found time for a fantastic meal out together. When we're eating in London we tend to always book through toptable who have some fantastic offers. This time we went to the Clerkenwell dining room where there was an offer of 50% off prices on their a la carte menu. It was one of the best meals out I have had in a long time - fantastic food that was very different in style. My starter was scallops with a selection of curry sauces and an aubergine bhaji type thing. It was delicious. My main was slow cooked veal on a bed of saffron risotto. Perfectly cooked so that the veal just fell away and with the level of saffron just right to give it an interesting edge without being overpowering. Even at the full prices I would have been more than happy - with the discount it was even better. Service there was also excellent. We plan to return!

I suppose I'd better stop blogging and start on all the other things that are now on my to do list for the weekend. Hope you enjoy it and manage to stay warm. It's been freezing here in the UK for the last week and now as I type this it's starting to snow very lightly. After no summer there's no doubt that winter has well and truly arrived!

Bacon and Tomato Cobbler

A freezing cold day on which we both went back to work called for a good home cooked meal this evening, and I think that's exactly what we had. 

Once again I called upon one of my favourite, every day, cook books; 101 Cheap Eats. This book, and its partner 101 Simple Suppers, is a key part of after work cooking in our house. Both provide some fantastic simple and tasty recipes that are generally easy enough to do after a day at work and provide us with a good hearty meal.

Tonight's dinner was bacon and tomato cobbler. Incredibly simple, especially using my Kenwood to make the topping (simple self raising flour, butter, mixed herbs and milk) whilst doing some other things around the flat. It tasted delicious and was a lovely warming meal after the bitterly cold walk home from the station.

There was a bit of a laugh in the making of this. I realised last night that I was lacking an onion, so in my lunch break today I popped out to buy an onion and to take some things to the post office. After a 25 minute queue to post my letters and packages (why do they not have more staff on at lunctime?) I was in a bit of rush, so I just went to the market stall in Strutton Ground. I was somewhat amazed with what I was given as the smallest onion that they had.

It weighed in at a whopping 550g and was simply huge! I only needed half of it for tonight's dinner so the other half is wrapped up in the fridge for another meal. A monster onion - I just dare not think where it came from!