Beef Stew With Dumplings

The weather lately has been so could, that nothing beets a nice warm hearty stew to warm you up, especially if you have been out in the cold all day. Nothing better for your man to return to then a nice hot stew.

Beef Stew

Ingredients

500 g of diced organic beef

Olive oil

Butter

Seasoning

1 onion

2 celery sticks

6 bacon rashers

3 garlic cloves

Chopped butter nut squash 300g

200g of sweet potato diced

4 sun-dried tomatoes

25 g plain flour

A few porcini mushrooms dried

2 bay leave

Some fresh thyme

Dried oregano

A good splash of Worcestershire sauce

2 cubes beef stock, dissolved in 500ml of hot water

A glass of port or red wine

1 tsp powder English mustard

1 tbsp tomato purée 

A pinch of sugar

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 3 hours

Serves: 4

Level : Easy

Method

Drizzle some oil in a lidded pot. Add the onion , garlic, and celery and soften a little. In the meantime while this is cooking, Spread your meat on a chopping board, season , sprinkle with the English mustard and plain flour . Set aside for a while. Crisp the bacon in a frying pan and set aside .

Add the meat to the pot and brown all over.

Add the sun dried tomatoes and the porcini mushrooms to the pan with the onion. Add some Tomato purée .

Add the herbs and the bacon. Add the Worcestershire sauce and cook for a minute , before adding the wine. Cook the wine for another two minutes and add the warm stock. Add a pinch of sugar to the stew. 

Bring everything to a boil and cover. Leave to cook for an hour 30 minutes.

In the meantime you can start the dumplings, and clear the kitchen. 

Time to add the butter nut squash and sweet potato to the pan . Make sure these are cut in chunk as they are vegetables that cook so quickly. You will need to avoid stirring the stew as you might break all the vegetables , and it will look like a mashed up soup.  Cover and leave to cook for another hour. 

The last 30 minutes before serving add the dumplings to the stew, leave them on top and only half submerge and cover with a lid. Remove the bay leaves before serving. Serve with some bread.

Dumplings

Ingredinets

250 g self raising flour

125 g cold butter

Seasoning

A splash of water

Method

Get a mixing bowl and add the flour and season.

With a cheese grater, grate your butter. This is why it need to be cold, as you won't find it easy to grate if it's half melted. 

Get your hands in the mixture and work the butter into the flour, it will look a little like bread crumbs.

Add a splash of water, only a little , you don't want to end up with a dough. Start shaping the dumplings into balls. If not using straight away , leave in the fridge. Take them out 10 minutes before using.

 

Stuffed Roasted Butter nut Squash

This is such a good vegetable, it's nutty flavour is just fantastic. So many things you can do with it. This meal works great for vegetarians without the bacon.

Roasted Butter Nut Squash

Ingredients

1 butter nut squash halved lengthwise 

Olive oil

Seasoning

1/2 cup rice

1/2 cube chicken stock

1 Spring onion

2 rashers of bacon

Parsley

1 garlic clove

Feta cheese

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Cooking Time: About an hour

Serves : 2

Level: Easy

Method

Cut you butter nut squash , de seed. Pre heat the oven on 180 degrees. Brush the butter nut squash with olive oil and fresh pepper. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

I din't use a whole butter nut squash as it was too big. I saved the top bit for another time. I'm sure I will find a way to use it. 

In the meantime. Ad some hot water to the rice and crumble in the chicken stock. 

Fry the bacon until nice and crisp and set aside.

Prepare the crushed garlic , spring onion and parsley to use as soon as the rice is ready. 

When the rice is ready mix it with everything else , the bacon, onion , garlic and parsley

Get the squash out of the oven and fill with your mixture, crumble some feta cheese on top and return in the oven for another 10 minutes. 

 

Cauliflower soufle'

This is something I came across this week, I normally follow my diary and prepare dinners for the week ahead. But my man decide to come home with two juicy steaks and I need to come up with something to serve with the steaks. I had a quick look in my fridge to see what I can find that needs to be used. So I found cauliflower, cheese and double cream. They work miracles together.

Cauliflower   Soufle'

Ingredients

1/2 cauliflower

150 ml of milk

25 g butter

25g plain flour

1 tsp Dijon mustard

2 egg yolks

2 egg whites

Some double cream

Cheddar

A pinch of nutmeg

Seasoning

Olive oil

Level: medium

Serves: 6

Method

Grease six ramekins with some butter and line them with baking paper. To help the baking paper sit better, try wetting it and scrunching it first before you line the ramekins. Preheat the oven on 180 degrees.

Boil some water and add the cauliflower florets to it. Cook until soft enough to be mashed. 

Melt the butter in a pan with some oil. Add the flour and combine. Take off the heat and add the milk little at a time, and stir well. Back on a low heat. Add the mashed cauliflower to the mixture. Make sure the mixture is hot and thick enough. Add the Dijon mustard, a pinch of nutmeg, cheese and season. 

Separate the eggs. Add the yolk to you cauliflower mixture . Returning to the egg whites, whisk until you obtain stiff peaks.

Fold little by little in the cauliflower mixture.

Fill the ramekins , and put in the oven for 20 minutes. Remember not to open the oven while this is cooking, or you won't have the result you are looking for. 

Take out the oven , leave to cool for a few minutes before taking them out of the ramekins. 

Place on a baking tray, sprinkle with the cheese and a little double cream, put back n the oven for 10 minutes and serve.

Yummy Pork Steaks

Very simple, meal . Anyone could cook this. The other day I bought a lovely waga mama sauce and that's what I'm using with recipe to give the pork a little bit of a different flavour. If you don't have this sauce or can't get your hands on one, just use any good marinade you can find in the supermarket to brush over the meat before cooking, Or maybe just sprinkle some chilli flakes on top. That should do the trick.

Pork Steaks

Ingredients 

5 pork steaks

Olive oil

Seasoning

Fresh tarragon

Waga Mama sauce

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time:  15 minutes

Serves: 3

Level : Easy

Method

Place the pork steaks on a chopping board. Remember always to use a separate chopping board for raw meat and vegetables, this avoids salmonella and any other bacteria from raw meat to contaminate your vegetables.

Rub the pork with some oil, the sauce , season and chop some tarragon and sprinkle over. 

fry in a non stick pan, 1 minute on each side on high heat. Then lower the heat to medium and cook for a further 6 minutes on each side.

Rest the meat for a couple of minutes before serving. Sprinkle some more tarragon over .

Serve with some mash and any steamed greens

Minestrone

Minestrone, this is a type of soup. The only difference is that it's not liquidized . Good healthy and very nutritions , low calorie dinner. Plus it's filling and warm , brilliant for these cold days. I flavoured it a little adding bacon and chicken to it. You could do it with just the veggies. But I was using it as a main dish for dinner, so I needed something else to it to make it more filling.

Minestrone

Ingredients

4 rashers of bacon
Olive oil
Chopper rosemary
2 carrots
2 celery sticks
1 onion
2 ripe tomatoes
1/2 broccoli
1/2 cauliflower
Tomato paste
Dried oregano
Dried mixed herbs
2 bay leaves
2 chicken stock cubes
200 g baby spinach
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup frozen broad beans
A handful of rice
A handful of small pasta ( I used bows)
Chicken breast ( halved lengthwise to make it thinner and cook quicker)
Parmesan
Seasoning

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 1 hour
Serves : 5
Level : Medium

Method

Fry the finely sliced bacon until crisp. Set aside for later. Get all the sliced/ diced vegetables, apart from the broccoli, tomatoes and spinach. Heat up a little oil in the pot, and fry the vegetables until a little soft. Season , and put the bay leaves in. Add the tomato paste. Crumble the stock cubes,add the dried herbs and cover with hot water. Cover the pot  with a lid and leave to cook for 15 minutes.

Now it's time to add the chicken breast. They will poach in the liquid of the minestrone. Cover and leave to cook for a further 20 minutes. 

Add the tomatoes, rice and the little pasta. Cook for a further 15 minutes, before adding the broccoli, peas and broad beans . Cover for a further 5 minutes and add then add the spinach . Cover and turn the heat off, leave the spinach to wilt for a couple of minutes.

Serve the minestrone topped with chicken , sprinkle over some bacon from earlier and parmesan shavings.

Zebra Cake

So I was home and bored, didn't what to do and kill the time. When I thought Baking kills the time , I like doing it and I haven't baked any cake for this new year 2013. So I decided to go in the kitchen and have a quick look at what I have in my cupboards that I could use. So I found I had all the basics to get started. Firstly it was meant to be a marble cake, but on second thought , zebra cake sounds better and looks prettier . So here we go . It's really good cake for kids and adults, especially good tea time cake. Enjoy baking .

Zebra Cake

Ingredients

230g of self raising flour

225g of softened unsalted butter

4 eggs

225g caster sugar

100 ml of milk

25g of cocoa pwder

1 tsp vanilla extract

Zest of an orange

4 tbsp of sunflower oil

Method

Pre heat the oven on 170 degrees. Get all the things ready and measured. In a mixing bowl , sift the sugar and add the softened butter. I put the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften quickly and easier to beat then. Beat well with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one by one and beat well, it might look a little bit curdled to start with , it's not a bad thing.  Sift the flour in and fold it in, it will be very thick at this point the cake mix.Add the baking powder. Add the milk and beat again. The mixture will be a little bit smoother , but it will still be quite thick. 

Now the best thing to do at this point before mixing anything else . Divide the cake mix in two. One of them need to have a little bit more weight in. 

Mine were as follows: VANILLA MIX:- 430 g

                                : COCOA MIX   :- 510 g

You don't need to follow exactly my guide lines for measures, but I found it worked really well for me.

So I then put the vanilla extract in the vanilla mix with two table spoons of sunflower oil to make it a bit smoother. Then add the cocoa powder, orange zest and another 2 table spoons of sunflower oil in the cocoa mix.

Time to start assembling your cake. Line your cake tin with some sunflower oil. Start with any flavour mix you like, I started with the cocoa one,as I had more of it. Put a blob in the middle of the tin in the shape of a circle  Then add another blob a little bigger this time with the cocoa mix which will completely cover the other blob, and keep repeating this until you finish the batter and fill your cake tin. 

Bake in the pre heated oven for 30/35 minutes. To check the cake insert a toothpick in the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean the cake is ready.            

Left: Cake from top

Right : Cake from bottom.

I decided to decorate my cake with some buttercrream . You could leave like this works really well with tea.

Buttercream

Ingredients

200g icing sugar

200g softened unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method 

Beat all three ingredients together and then spread on your cake, allow cake to cool before decorating. 

Peri Peri Sauce For Roast Chicken And Gravy

What a good way for a quick and yummy roast dinner, different from the usual roast. It's Mediterranean based flavours . We have enjoyed eating it and I have no doubt you will. So easy to prepare. You will be left with a lot of spare time to do what ever you want. Watch some telly maybe or even read a nice book. I done the sauce with the food processor which was even quicker and easier to do. If you don't have one it doesn't matter you can still do . Just takes a little longer and a bit of chopping. This will be a great meal, especially when having people over for dinner and you need to impress, and not spend all day in the kitchen but with your guests

For the Peri Peri Sauce

Ingredients

2 red chillies (de-seeded if you want)

2cm ginger

5 garlic cloves

50 ml olive oil

25ml red wine vinegar

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp smoked paprika

3 tsp oregano

A pinch of sugar

1 lime, juice and zest

2 tbsp Tabasco sauce

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Method

Get all the ingredients above. Put everything in the food processor and give it a good whip. Pour in a bowl and set aside for later. You can also prepare this a day in advance and leave in the fridge.

Preparing You Chicken

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (2 kilos)

Olive oil

Seasoning

New potatoes

1 red onion

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time : Over 2 hours

Serves: 4

Level : Easy

Method

Score your chicken with a sharp knife, so that the flavours will suck in it better.Transfer your chicken in baking dish, it need to be big enough , so later on you can put the potatoes in with the chicken. Like this they will soak up the peri peri flavour  Cover the chicken with olive oil and season well. Cover loosely with some foil , and put in a preheated oven 190 degrees for an hour.

After an hour, take the chicken out of the oven, remove the foil. I didn't throw mine away , I will use it again later to cover the chicken when it's resting. Get the peri peri sauce and pour over the chicken, and help it a bit with a brush so that you get all the parts of the chicken. Do not use all the sauce save a little for later , for making the gravy . You don't need a lot . Tip the potatoes and the red onion in  , (quartered) with the chicken. Leave to cook uncovered this time. For another hour 15 minutes. 

Leave to rest on a chopping board , covered with some foil for 15 minutes before carving. 

 

For The Peri Peri Gravy Sauce

Ingredients

Peri Peri Sauce (recipe above )

1 heaped tbsp plain flour

500 ml of hot chicken stock

Level : Medium

Serves : Four

Method

The baking tray you had the chicken cooking in. Pour all the fat away. The onion and maybe some burnt bits left in the tray. Put on the hob. Add the flour and de glaze the tray. Add the stock little by little, so that the stock is to your preferred consistency . Add the rest of the peri peri sauce. Bring to boil and leave to simmer for a couple of minutes. Serve in a gravy bowl . 

Mediterranean Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients

1 green pepper chopped

1 yellow pepper chopped

1/2 a red onion sliced

1 courgette sliced

2 cloves of galic

2 ripe tomatoes

2 carrots peeled and sliced

Thyme leaves

Dried oregano

Olive oil

Rosemary leaves

Seasoning

Smoked paprika

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time : 1 hour

Serves: 3/4

Level : Easy

Method

Get all your prepared vegetables in a baking tray and toss them . Add the herbs, oil and season. Put in the pre heated oven 190 degrees, bottom shelf for an hour.
Serve along with your peri peri chicken.