Hoisin Pork with Pancakes

This is an alternative to chinese crispy duck pancakes , delicious from Chinese restaurants but a pain to cook at home , I’ve done it but burnt fingers from stripping boiling duck really aren’t worth it . In this a pulled pork version the pork fall apart on cooking.

Chinese Pancakes with Shredded Crispy Hoisin Pork

Serves 4

1.5kg of pork shoulder, remove any rind but leave on the fat this will render down

4 cloves of garlic peeled
200ml of hoisin sauce

To serve

100ml of hoisin sauce
Half a cucumber cut into thin batons
6 spring onions finely shredded
40 Chinese pancakes

Mix the pork with the hoisin sauce.

Oven Version

Rub the pork shoulder all over with the ingredients above
Place it in a large lidded cast iron pot and put in the oven at 150degC for 3 hours.
Finally place the pork in a deep roasting tray with the juices and place in a hot oven 190degC for 25 minutes
Remove the pork once the outside is caramalised the sauces will reduce.

Slow Cooker

Place all the ingredients in the slow cooker on LOW for 6 hours
Pull apart the pork mix through with the juices place under a hot grill for 15minutes or a hot oven 190degC for 25 minutes. Stir halfway through.

Pressure Cooker

Rub the pork with the ingredients above
Place in the pressure cooker on a trivet and cook on HIGH for 1 hr
Remove from the pressure cooker.Pull apart the pork mix through with the juices place under a hot grill for 15minutes or a hot oven 190degC for 25 minutes. Stir halfway through.

How to serve

To serve heat the pancakes in batches ( 30secs on high in the microwave ) as required.
Allow guests to make up their own pancakes with a tablespoon of pork, shredded cucumber , spring onion and a drizzle of hoisin sauce.
Roll and eat .

Kale and Smoked Mackerel Kedgeree.

I was saying yesterday , I hate cooking. The thing that used to be my relaxation has rapidly become a miserable depressing chore. Done whilst a child wines or cries. Shopping done on sterile online shopping. And worst since I got pregnant with Isobel ( who is now 3 months old and lovely) , I am actually happiest with a sandwich and a packet of crisps. Is it hormonal , I don’t know all I do know is I need to beat this because it isn’t me and I owe them better

So once a week a new lovely blogged dish, first a kedgeree packed full of goodness tastes amazing.

Kale and Mackerel Kedgeree

For two people

150g of brown rice
2 eggs
200g of smoked mackerel
4 handfuls of chopped curly kale
1 medium red onion
1 tbsp garam masala
1 TSP nigella seeds
1 TSP tumeric
4 tbsp sunflower oil.
Handful of chopped coriander
Half a lemon – zest and juice.

For 2 people

Cook the rice according to the packet instructions , put the eggs in the pan for the last 10 minutes to hardboil  ( I pressure cook my brown rice , 5 mins on 2 you can out the eggs in too)
Fry the onions , kale in the spices and oil til softened
Add the rice and cook for a further 10 minutes stirring well
Add the mackerel and lemon zest and juice
Stir through the coriander and serve with the eggs cut into quarters

Everything All In Soup

Em is 3 years old now and eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new baby. The optimist in me hopes she will continue to be a good helper . As she is at the age where she wants to do everything herself, I try to get her involved in things around the house but only recently have I mastered getting her to do some cookery. Chopping vegetables , pouring and mixing are definitely in her favourite things.

Being a sadly practical Mum , it’s not sparkly fairy cakes in this house, recently she has been helping with the weekend meals , this a kind use up everything soup is a staple in our house. Any mix of vegetables , with pasta or beans, all in a pan or in our house the pressure cooker for 10 minutes. Em gets on with some very slow chopping and mixing.  She is very focused and you can’t interfere , teaches me a lot of patience.

Everything All In Soup

1 tin of tomatoes
1 onion finely chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp dried mixed herbs
Assorted veg , celery , carrots , peas , runner beans , leeks.
2 handfuls of dried pasta or  one tin of beans , haricot , butter or cannellini

1. Place all the ingredients in a pressure cooker
2. Seal , cook for 10 mins on highest pressure.
3. Serve with crusty bread and grated cheese.

If you don’t have a pressure cooker a gentle simmer for 25 mins will work.

Chocolate and Banana Gruffalo Cake – Emily’s 3rd Birthday

This is the first year Emily has been big enough to be able to ask what kind of cake she wanted. The answer was an instant “Gruffalo” . After some googling a 3D cake seemed rather out of my skill-set and with rather a lot on my plate this year I did consider buying some handy cake toppers from eBay   really taking the pain out of cake decorating.

But the first Google link was this little fellow with a soft buttercream icing , eminently preferable over a hard royal icing in my book.

I changed the recipe slightly , banana rather than chocolate cake and milk rather than dark chocolate icing. I also used by 175g recipe  because it never fails to produce a light moist cake.

The most terrifying bits were cutting the cake shape and modelling, the rest was pretty easy and  I made the cake over 2 days , actually one night and a very early morning.

The relief  I felt when Em correctly identified it as a Gruffalo cannot be expressed loudly enough.  It was intended to go to Nursery with her that morning but they are a bit overwhelmed with 10 birthdays in July and some very over-sugared children so it was a grandparent only affair, incredibly patient she waited two days to blow out the candles. A massive improvement over previous years when the singing of happy birthday has resulted in bafflement or tears. Time is going very fast … so it’s really important to mark these moment

 

 

 

 

Banana and Chocolate Gruffalo Cake 

Ingredients for the cake:

• 350g of self raising flour
• 350ml of sunflower oil
• 350g of  caster suhgar
• 1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
• 2 bananas
• 5 eggs

For the butter cream

• 150g of butter
• 100g of icing sugar
• 150g of milk chocolate
• 2-3 tbsps hot water

For the decoration

• 100g of ready made royal icing
• Food colouring orange , green, purple and black
• 1 fruit roll-up or liquorice strings

 1 day before

Make the cake sponge

1. Blend together the oil and sugar and bananas
2. Mix in the eggs
3. Mix the flour with the  bicarbonate of soda
4. Add the flour and sugar
5. Divide the mix into 2 lined square cake tins each 30x30cm
6. Bake at 175degC for 40 minutes until golden and firm to touch.
7. Turn out from the tins and leave to cool

Make the Chocolate Buttercream

1. Melt the chocolate until liquid but don’t let it bubble
2. Mix together the butter and icing sugar
3. Add to the chocolate
4. Mix well and leave to cool ( if you refridgerate , you will need to take it out of the fridge a few hours before use to let it soften)

Die the royal icing enough to make

• Purple prickles
• Two eyes of orange , with a small dot of black colouring to make the pupil
• Small green poisonous wart
• Keep enough white to make whiskers , tusks , teeth and horns
• For the mouth and eyebrows you could die royal icing black but I found it impossible to get it dark enough ending up with a lot of soggy grey icing. Instead  an unrolled dark fruit roll-up or liquorice lace works well

Leave wrapped in clingfilm to prevent the icing drying out

Day 2

Assemble the cake

1. Sandwich the two cake layers with buttercream
2. Cut into a Grufallo shape using the offcuts to form ears
3. Cover with buttercream and fork

Shape the features  once they are all completely shaped lay them onto the cake.

Pasta with Nduja and Green Vegetables

Poor poor neglected blog it’s like that pet that you have before you have a child and then completely ignore. Except my blog doesn’t start scratching the furniture and weeing in my shoes, it just sits their forlornly with occasional requests coming to my inbox for updates.

The thing is I still cook so much I just never manage to take a picture of anything and I’m pregnant with number two so that seems the ideal time to try and restart.

Here is dinner from a few days ago, delicious asparagus, broad beans ( from the freezer but fresh will be available soon) and star ingredient Ndjua . I was actually sent some of this a long time ago use the whole lot in one go and have spent years trying to find it again.

Tracked this person down a food festival delicibo   though they have a stall in Chesterfield Market

Made from guanciale (pig cheek) and pancetta (bacon), dried Calabrian red chilli and salt. It is a little like a drier sobrasada one of my favourite Majorcan ingredients. A little goes a long way and it keeps forever in the fridge so worth an investment

There days I quite like pasta to  be half and half with some vegetables struggling to get that 5 a day ( or is it 7 now) , you could use any green vegetables in season so kale or  purple sprouting broccoli would work.

Pasta with Nduja and Green Vegetables

For two people

• 100g of linguini or spaghetti
• 4 handfuls of broad beans
• ½ bunch of asparagus ( 6 spears)  – finely sliced lengthways
• 1 heaped tablespoon of Nduja
• 1 handfuls of toasted breadcrumbs

 

1. Boil the pasta with the broad beans for 10 minutes
2. Steam the asparagus over the top for a few minutes , it should still snap
3. Once cooked mostly drain the pasta, but leave a couple of tablespoons of water ,add the nduja  and stir over the heat , this will melt the nduja and allow it to the coat the pasta and beans
4. Stir in the asparagus.
5. Serve and top with the breadcrumbs

Beef Brisket with Carrot and Peanut Sauce

Two years ago some new things came into my life. A slow cooker ,  a pressure cooker and a baby. The first two have definitely made it easier coping with the latter.

A pressure cooker cooks things very fast when you have forgotten to do anything , the slow cooker does what it says on the box and cooks things very slow , so when you have a millisecond in the morning before running off to work  you can throw ingredients into the slow cooker.  I have learnt it’s best to keep ingredients large if you want to leave them all day, particularly with joints of meat cooked whole they are  easier to use  as leftovers  in another dish.

This dish is sweet and rich but the shredded veg gives spikey crunch, it would work with pork shoulder or chicken joints.

Beef Brisket with Spicy Carrot and Peanut Sauce

750g roll of brisket
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp of chilli paste
4 whole carrots
1onion
1 clove of garlic.
1 spring onion

1. Place in the slow cooker on low for 8 hours
2. Mash the carrots and onions to make a sauce
3. Slice the brisket to serve.
4. Pour over the sauce and sprinkle with chopped spring onion.

If you don’t have a slow cooler , chop the carrots and place everything in the oven  at 180degC for 2 hours.

Serve with shredded cabbage , carrot and sliced cucumber dressed with rice wine vinegar and fish sauce.

Mutton Tagine

More magic from the slow-cooker, so easy  I don’t even sear the meat, never needed to, all the ingredients  thrown in  first thing in the morning  and after even the worst day a delicious meal.

I really love Lamb but mutton really has that denseness to it, perfect with some sweetness and spice

Mutton Tagine

1kg of mutton shoulder or leg in a whole piece.
Handful of dried apricots
1 tbsp of ras Al hanout
1 tbsp of dried red chillis
1 large onion roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic
1 handful of black olives
1 lemon chopped into quartets
2 tbsp of dried mint

Put all the ingredients in the slow cooker , leave on low for 6 hours.
To serve pull the mutton into chunks and mix together .

Red Thai Curry Spiced Beef Ribs

It’s got very cold, so the slow cooker is on overdrive. No soggy brown stews here, I need stickiness and spice. Beef ribs are something you never see in supermarkets so you need to visit a butcher. I hit the market on Friday morning, a very welcome day off and these sat in the cooker from lunchtime to the evening.

I get the ribs cut into three it’s easier to serve portions, the meat after slow cooking is super-tender and they have a layer of fat that makes amazing sweet gravy.

You could serve this with some rice but I like the contrast of some crunchy shredded raw savoy cabbage (in season now) dressed with a little rice wine vinegar.

Red Thai Curry Spiced Beef Ribs

Enough for 4 hungry people

3 beef ribs cut into three
3 large handfuls of chestnut mushrooms
3 tbsp of dried coconut powder or coconut cream.
2 tbsp of soy sauce

Red Thai Curry Paste

2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander seeds
4 red bird’s eye chillies,
1 tbsp paprika
3 tbsp of lemongrass stalks
4cm piece ginger, chopped
zest of 1 lime
1 large onion chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
Handful of coriander stalks
2 tbsp each fish sauce

1.Process together the ingredients for the paste
2.Add the paste and the ribs to the slow cooker, no need to sear.
3.Leave in low for 6 hours.
4. An hour before the 6 hours is up, add the mushrooms , coconut powder and a dash of soy.

If you don’t have a slow cooker then 150deg in the oven for 3 hours should do it but you may need to a add a dash of water.

A dirty kebab

I managed to write two blog posts last year. Truly pathetic and when I look at what other people have accomplished pretty shaming.

But work has been busy, so busy I have failed to take even half my annual leave allowance. So I am going to manage some days off in the Spring, spend some time with Em and cook a new dish every week.

I started on New Years’ Eve, Nick was keen to have kebabs and I happily obliged , this was my version though a very long and slow cooked spiced lamb shoulder, crunchy kebab salad you can’t really mess with a classic and creamy crunchy mint yogurt.

Spice Mix

1 tbsp of whole coriander seeds
1 tbsp of garlic powder
1 tbsp of chilli flakes
1 tbsp of paprika
1 tbsp of sumac
1/2 preserved lemon finely chopped
2 tbsp of pomegranate molasses

Main

1 large lamb shoulder
2 large onions roughly chopped

Method

1. Toast all the dry spices
2. Mix with the preserved lemon and pomegranate molasses
3. Rub all over the lamb shoulder
4. Leave in the fridge overnight

Place in slow cooker on low for 8 hours you can leave it as long as 12 hours
Turn the lamb over halfway through.

You can pull the lamb apart with a fork, the onions will have practically dissolved into the juices.

Perfect for filling a warmed pitta bread, stuffed with kebab salad ( Shredded white cabbage mixed with shredded white onion, chopped tomato and dressed with lemon juice.) , topped with yogurt mixed with mint sauce and finely chopped cucumber.

Slow cooker Fennel Roasted Pork Ribs & a vote for Green Spaces.

Poor neglected blog. The truth is working full time and trying to cram in time with Toddler Em, cook food to eat and try to say more than 3 words a day to Nick, something had to give.

But I really do miss having a blog and a couple of things have conspired this week to make me want to blog again.

Firstly I work at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, and this week Michelin starred chef Sat Bains observed a surgical op at the invitation of the surgeon who had previously visited his kitchen to . Both aimed to learn lessons about team working Obviously I was nowhere near the theatre at the time – operating theatres being even harder to get close to than Michelin starred restaurants.

Reading about the visit reminded me how writing the blog so different from my work I had always found writing the blog somehow helped to round me out.

Then desperate to escape the heat this weekend. Toddler Em and I hit our local community gardens, just a few minutes walk from the house. Arkwright Community Gardens is a gorgeous space perfect for the urban toddler to get in touch with a greener world. Chickens, a greenhouse with peaches and bananas, the tandoor oven is lit once a week with cookery and gardening clubs in an area. The volunteers there are always helpful and smiling. It was heaven when Em was really tiny letting her crawl in the mud.

The Meadows is Nottingham that does not enjoy the best reputation plagued by dodgy 70s planning decisions .The gardens are just over a decade old , they sell affordable organic produce in season and a steady stream of locals drop by for bags of salad and veg. No soft fruit this week as someone had jumped the fence and helped themselves – probably just as well as Em can make short work of a patch of strawberries.

Last weekend during our visit we bought some massive bulbs of fennel,bulbs were larger than Em’s head and the fronds towered over her. It got me enthusiastic about cooking as only fresh food can do.

I cooked the fennel bulbs in the slow cooker along with with a rack of pork ribs, they meant for the BBQ but your just cannot get the weather , just lightly seasoned with salt and pepper cooked as a rack in the slow-cooker on low for 4 hours til the bones lift out of the meat. Served with a fresh fennel and carrot salad , fennel finely sliced and carrot grated with just a dash of white wine vinegar.

I am still working through the fennel leaves so far in a fish stew and bean salads.

If you could spare a vote for the Community Gardens they have put themselves for a Lottery Good Causes Award. It will only take a quick click here