Lamb jalfrezi

Got a jar of jalfrezi paste in the Asian market a while ago. Here is the lamb curry that I made with it:

Ingredients:
500g of shoulder of lamb pieces
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
2 tbsp Pataks jalfrezi paste
1 onion chopped up
Tin of tomatoes
1 green chilli
2 small dried chillies
Half the tomato tin of water

Method:
Heat the tablespoon of veg oil in a thick bottomed sauce pan. Add the onion and fry for a few minutes to brown it. Keep stirring it and make sure it does not burn. Add the curry paste and fry for another minute. This gets the flavours out. Add the meat and stir it around to brown it for a few minutes. The add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to the boil and then turn down low and put the lid on. It takes about an hour to cook. It's done when the meat is tender.
I served this with some cous cous and a big blob of lime pickle.

Another Laksa

Made laksa again the other night. This is getting to be a favourite. We used to get Asian soups a lot in Cafe and the flavour was great. I could never really figure out what it was until I tried the Laksa from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners.

In this one I did not use tamarind or lemon zest. Think this was a bad idea to leave them out. The tamarind is a bit of a hassle, but it is worth it. This was still very nice. I got the recipe from Ainsley Harriott's Feel Good Cookbook. Some very nice recipes in that one.

Sticky carrot side dish

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe. Decided to do this instead of just steam the carrots.

Peel and chop the carrots and stand them in a pot snugly. Put a big knob of butter on top of them. Season and stuff some bay leaves in between them.
Fill it half way up the side of the carrots with stock or water.

Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer with the lid on. Wait until the carrots are cooked and then remove the lid and reduce the stock until you are just left with the butter sticky at the bottom of the pot. Now you have to wait until the bottom of the carrots caramelises.

A minute too long and they will burn. These look burnt, but they were very tasty.
If I was doing this again I would use less stock and try to keep a bit of bite in the carrots.
That is chicken breast coated with cream cheese and pesto and wrapped in bacon along with some asparagus and masked potatoes.

The aftermath of this looked a lot worse than it was. Soaked the pot over night and the burnt bits just came off.

White yeast bread

Had some friends coming over for lunch on Sunday, so made a beef stew with red wine.
Made this loaf of bread to go along with it. I just followed the instructions on the packet of flour and it came out perfect. So much for yest bread being complicated. I egg washed the top and put some sesame seeds on there too to make it look the part. Improved the flavour too.

Smoked coley chowder

Had some smoked coley in the freezer and fancied this for tea. It was really excellent and I got to use some more of the nice leeks from my garden. Nearing the end of that supply. As usual, when they are all gone I will keep stumbling over leek recipes and will not be able to bring myself to buy any following the spring time glut.

Ingredients:
20g of butter
300g of smoked coley (which is just another name for pollock apparently)- I got this in the fridge compartment at Aldi.
3 large potatoes, peel and dice them to about 1cm
1 pint of whole milk
1 pint of vegetable stock
2 leeks, chopped small - give them a rinse too. They tend to bring the garden with them
1 Onion, chopped small
3 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, chopped up small

Method:
Melt the butter slowly in a thick bottom large pot. Add the leeks, rashers and onion and give it all a good stir. Put the lid on and cook on a low heat for about 5 minutes. Then add the potatoes and stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are done.
While that is cooking you need to cook the fish. Put the milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Be careful not to burn or over boil it as this will spoil the taste. Add the fish and let it simmer gently for about 5 minutes. Check that the fish is done - it should break into flakes easily. Then turn off the heat under the milk and remove the fish to a plate with a fish slice or slatted spoon. Break the fish into flakes and add these to the potato and vegetable mixture. Leave any skin and bones out. Pour the milk into the soup through a sieve (this catches any bones or bits of skin that might have fallen off and also stops the nasty curdled bit that you used to get on your breakfast cereal ending up in your soup). Also sieve in any of the bits from the fish plate so that you don't miss out on any of the flavour.
Simmer the whole lot for about 5 minutes.
Ladle it into large bowls. I put some coriander on top of ours because it was in the fridge, but parsley would be ideal.
I served it with buttermilk scones and butter.

Herb and flower seeds in pots and the first go at tidying the border

I planted a bunch of herbs and flowers in plastic pots today.
The parsley plant that had been doing its thing well for the last couple of years finally gave up to encroaching grass. I lifted the whole tussock out with the fork. Read here that they only last about two years anyway.
Chives went in a nice earthenware pot for the kitchen windowsill. The rest went into old plastic pots, not display stuff really. I will have to get some nicer earthenware pots to cover those ones up before they are allowed into the kitchen.
Did not bother planting rosemary again. It is a waste of time. Read that the best way to propagate this is vegetatively. Just have to find someone who will let me perch a pot of compost beside their rosemary bush for a couple of weeks :-)
The sage bush is still doing fine, so no need to replant there.
The others were basil, sunflowers, coriander and dill.
Next I need to get the tomato, chard and beetroot seeds and get them planted out.
Had great success with tomatoes last year. Chard is something that we tried a couple of years ago on the advice of Jamie Oliver (not direct advice, he was on the telly!) and have not looked back. It grows like wildfire and is very nice in a lot of different dishes. Beetroot is delicious steamed with a horse radish and creme fraiche dressing and some fish. This is also a Jamie Oliver recipe.

French Bread

French bread

Not that French when you make it in Celbridge, but nice all the same. Getting yeast bread right takes quite a bit of practice, but I will try to point out some of the pitfalls.
The main differences between this and a basic white yeast bread are that this has 3 risings and steam is used in the oven to give the characteristic crust of French bread.

Ingredients:

250g Strong white flour

200ml tepid water (use half boiling and half tap and the temperature will be fine)

7g Sachet of dried yeast

Quarter tsp of salt

Method:

Add the yeast to the water and give it a stir. Add this to half of the flour and salt in a large bowl. Give it a good stir. It should be the consistency of very thick pancake batter at this stage. Cover it in cling film and let it stand for about 3 hours at room temperature.

It will have increased in size by about a factor of 3 and started to collapse in on itself. Ready for the second stage. Don't be afraid to leave this for longer than the 3 hours. Yeast bread involves plenty of patience and rushing it will give you a brick loaf. That said, try not to lose heart if you get bad results. Figure out what happened (ask a question here) and try again. It is worth getting this right. Then again your first attempt might be boulangerie stuff.

Next add the rest of the flour. Mix it in and use your hand to roll it into a ball. You may have to add some more flour to make sure that it is workable. Lightly flour a work surface and knead the bread for about 15 minutes. If the mixture gets a little too sticky dust it with some flour, but try not to overdo it. Wetter dough is better. The 15 minute knead is hard work, but very enjoyable. Make sure your hands are clean and sleeves rolled up before you start. I much prefer to do this by hand rather than use a mixer.

Now put the ball of dough back into the bowl you took it from. Cover it with some lightly oiled cling film and put it in a warm place. I use the hot press, but a warm kitchen is fine. Leave it for about 3 hours. You can see why it is so difficult to have this stuff for breakfast and why bakers get up in the middle of the night.

Following that rising the surface of the dough should be smooth and soft. If you press your finger lightly into it the depression should remain after you remove your finger. In the bottom right of this picture you can see the mark of my finger.

Next you need to shape the loaf. This dough will work in pretty much any shape - plaits, mini rolls or baguette shapes. Here are some rolls that I made a few weeks ago using a recipe very similar to this:

You can also use a lightly oiled loaf tin.

If you are doing baguette shapes you will need a clean tea towel and a large baking tray. Fold the towel into 3 pleats on the baking tray. The pleats will act as trenches for your bread to do its final rise in. Without the pleats to constrain the dough it will just all spread out flat. Not very baguette shaped.

Cover the pleats in plenty of flour. Break the ball of dough into 3 roughly equal parts. Roll each one out into a sausage shape. Lift up one end of one of the sausages and fold it into the centre. Press it down hard so that is sticks. Now do this with the other end - pressing it on top of the first finger mark. Lift this folded sausage into one of the pleats in the tea towel. Repeat this for the remaining 2 dough sausages. Finally cover the whole lot in another clean tea towel and leave for its final rising.
Bake for 25 minutes in the centre of a hot oven - about gas mark 8. Steam is used to give the crust to real French baguettes. To simulate this in my humble domestic cooker I put a pot of boiling water on the bottom of the oven. The crusts turned out looking very nice.

French onion soup

French onion soup

This serves 2 people and makes a very nice lunch. There is quite a lot of work in preparing it - lots of stirring, but it is worth the effort once in a while.

Ingredients:
25g of Butter
400g of onions, thinly sliced
600ml of beef stock, a good cube is fine
Some French style bread
25g of emmental cheese, grated

Method:
Melt the butter over a medium heat in a thick based pot. Add the onions and cook with the lid off for about an hour. You will need to stir it a lot during this time to prevent it sticking. Next add the stock and stir well. You want to get any crispy carmelised bits off the base of the pot and into the soup. Bring it to the boil and cook it for about 5 minutes more.
Slice the French bread at an angle and toast it on both sides under the grill. Then pile the cheese up on top of the toast. Melt the cheese under the grill. Pour the soup into warmed bowls and place the croutons on the top.

Brown beef stock

Beef stock
I have wanted to make beef stock from scratch for a while. Unbounded ambition, that's me.

Ingredients:
As much chopped up beef marrow bone as you can get (I used 500g. The rest of my measurements are for that amount. Adjust your recipe if you get more).
One onion roughly chopped
3 carrots sliced length ways - I didn't bother to peel them, just washed
A tsp of peppercorns
A couple of whole cloves if you like
1.5 litres of boiling water
3 cloves of garlic with the skins left on
Whatever herbs you like - I used Sage because I had some in the garden.

Sourcing:

The marrow bones are from Fitzpatrick's butchers in the Tesco shopping centre in Celbridge. Tried most of the other butchers in Celbridge - including Tesco's and this was the first one to produce the goods. I could hear him hack sawing away in the back. He gave me about 500g of marrow bone and did not charge. I bought some shoulder of lamb to make a stew some day so I did not feel too guilty about making him do all that hacking. That's the marrow bones in the picture. Along with my wrecked roasting tray.
Sage was from my garden. The hardiness of this plant never ceases to amaze me. It has plenty of leaves on it now and the weather has been freezing.
The veg are from Aldi.
Peppercorns from Marks and Spencer - no particular reason. I was just there and so were they.

Method:
Roast the bones in a strong roasting tray for about half an hour at gas mark 8. This should brown them a bit. Then add all of the vegetables, but not the garlic, cloves, peppercorns or herbs to the tray and give it another 45 minutes.
Then scrape the whole lot into a large pot and add the boiling water and the rest of the ingredients. Turn the heat on under that one.
Then add a small amount of water - about a cup - to the roasting tray and deglaze it on top of the cooker. Use a wooden spoon to make sure you scrape all the nice crisped up bits into the liquid. Make sure you use an oven glove to hold the roasting dish when you are deglazing. Empty this liquid into the stock pot too. Bring it to the boil. Reduce to the lowest possible heat and allow to simmer for 5 hours. Let the stock cool and then put it in the fridge. The fat will set on the surface. Use a large spoon to skim this off. The stock is ready to use. I am going to make French onion soup with it. I'll post that when I have it finished. Here's a picture of what it looked like bubbling away.

Brown lentil casserole and the first seeds in trays

Brown lentil casserole

Made with loads of vegetables and lentils for protein, this is an excellent main course. It's very tasty and healthy too. The list of ingredients is not hard and fast, this post is more about the general idea of vegetable and lentil based casseroles and how to make them. The list given here is based on what I had in the fridge today. I used the small brown lentils, but the flatter green ones are fine too. This recipe is not ideal for the small orange ones as they tend to dissolve. If you want to use those try this recipe instead. This serves 2 people for dinner.

Ingredients:
3 handfuls of brown lentils
Half a butternut squash(I find that even after halving these keep for ages in the fridge. Same goes for the sweet potato)
A small turnip
3 carrots
Half a sweet potato
3 tsp of marigold vegetable stock powder (you can use regular stock cubes, but you will need to use enough of them for the amount of water that will cover the vegetables. Better to use a measuring jug in this case. Marigold is good stuff with no much in it. Tricky to get though.)
A couple of teaspoons of soy sauce
2 celery sticks
1 Onion
Boiling water to cover
A cup of frozen peas


Sourcing:
The brown lentils are from the health food shop in Liffey Valley shopping centre. You can usually get these in Tesco, when they have them in stock. More often than not our Tesco just has a convenient space on the shelf where they would be if they had any. At least I know to stop looking at that point.
Most of the vegetables were bought in Aldi.
The Marigold stock powder was bought in Sainsbury's in Newry. I normally get it in the health food shop on Liffey Street, but was up north, so picked up a few there instead. Soy sauce is Kikkoman from the Asian Emporium on Abbey street.  They sell it in large bottles there which I then decant into the nicer little serving one. Much cheaper that way.

Method:
Peel and chop all the vegetables into bite sized pieces. Place all of the ingredients except the peas into a large pot. Add the stock powder or cubes and cover with the boiling water. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 25 minutes. The add the frozen peas and continue to simmer for another 5 minutes. Check that the lentils are done to your liking.

The first seeds in trays
Raked over the vegetable patches to get them ready for planting. They are looking pretty good if a bit lumpy. I never get them looking like they do on gardeners world. Might try some 'no dig' next year.

Planted courgettes and leeks in mini pots. The seeds are a good bit out of date, so will keep an eye on them to see if they germinate in the next 2 weeks. If not, it's off to the garden centre. Seeds are cheap, so it's not that, but who likes to throw stuff out?

Next things to do are get the rest of the veg into trays (trying to avoid direct seeding into the patch, it does not work out very well for me) and plant the herb trays for the kitchen. I will try to grow rosemary this year, like every year and will probably fail :-( Great crop of tomatoes last year - we still have chutney - so must get some of them sown indoors ready for planting out.

Garden kickoff, last of the leeks and cheddar scones

First vegetable patch work
I finally got out into the garden today. Dug the vegetable patches and spread the years worth of kitchen compost. It was composted very nicely. I tipped the whole lot out and removed the good stuff. Threw the uncomposted recent stuff back into the now almost empty bin. Next up I have to rake the ground to a fine tilth and get the first of the seeds planted indoors.

The last of the leeks needed to be lifted before I could get working on the patch. There were quite a lot of them. Topped and tailed them all and made this soup with 700 grammes of them. The rest are in the fridge at the moment.

Leek and Potato soup
Ingredients:

700g of leeks - cut up finely and washed
2 onions - chopped finely
900g of potatoes - peeled and shopped small
100g of butter - I got some nice country butter in Tesco
Salt and pepper
1.5 litres of chicken stock - I just used decent cubes, real is of course better

Method:

Melt the butter in a large thick bottomed pot. Add all the vegetables and stir to coat them with the butter. Season with plenty of salt and pepper. Leave the mixture on a medium heat for about 15 minutes until the vegetables have all softened. Check it does not burn every few minutes and give it a good stir. I found that the potatoes stuck a bit, but did not burn.
Then add the hot stock and give the whole lot a stir. Cook this for about 40 minutes on a very low heat. Liquidize and stir the milk in. This recipe makes a lot, but it freezes well.

Cheese and herb scones
These have a lovely chewy texture and are yellow in colour from the buttermilk. Like all scones they are very quick and easy to make, so not worth making in bulk for freezing. Just make them up fresh when you need them. Having nice herbs in the garden makes this possible. You won't spend a fortune buying fresh herbs that go off in the bottom of your fridge.


Ingredients:

220g of plain flour
Half a teaspoon of baking soda, sieved
Handful of sage chopped finely - I had this in the garden, but dried is ok
200ml of buttermilk
25g of cheddar cheese grated

Method:

Mix the flour, baking soda and sage in a bowl. Add the buttermilk a little at a time until you have a dough that you can handle. Should be a bit sticky, but not total gunge. Turn it out onto a floured work surface and shape it into a flat disc about a centimeter thick. Cut it up into triangles, or use a cutter. Use a brush to coat the top surface of each scone in some more butter milk. Dip the scone tops into the grated cheese. Place them on a sheet of grease proof paper on a baking sheet.
Bake at gas mark 8 for about 20 minutes. Hollow when tapped.

These went great with the leek soup and some more of the country butter on them.

Healthy red lentil soup

This is filling enough for a main course. As vary the ingredients according to what is in the fridge. A parsnip, sweet potato or ordinary potato goes well in it too.

Ingredients:
4 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
A teaspoon of ginger - I used paste from a jar, but fresh is better if a bit fiddly
2 sticks of celery, washed and roughly chopped
A tablespoon of sweet chili jam - bought stuff is fine
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of Marigold Swiss Bouillon Vegetable powder - or any other type of stock concentrate
3 handfuls of red lentils - not exactly scientific, but it works
Boiling water to cover

Method:
Add all the ingredients to a pot. Cover with the boiling water. Bring back to the boil and simmer for about 40 minutes.  Couldn't be simpler.

Traffic light system for labeling food

There is a lot of talk about a traffic light system for food labeling so that people who don't understand nutrition can be told that what they thought was healthy is in fact like eating sweets for breakfast. Some food companies and supermarkets have taken the initiative and made up their own traffic lights. Governments tend to like this sort of thing. It takes responsibility from them and reduces the cost of 'regulating' a sector. More importantly perhaps it prevents them having to take on their financial supporters in industry. What politician would want to piss off a big multinational food company for example?
So in the absence of real certified traffic lights whose function is to protect citizens we get watered down corporate ones whose function is to prevent the introduction of the real thing.
Food companies in their search for marketing perfection scour their products to find good stuff that they can promote. This allows them to say that sugary cereals don't have any fat. If you eat them, you will have fat, but that is not the food company's fault. So the reasoning goes. I reckon when we do finally get traffic lights a red light in any of the monitored areas (fat, sugar, salt etc.) should result in a ban on any positive spin marketing claims for the product. Certain products are going to contain bad things, but if we are told this with traffic lights fair enough. A less savvy consumer though may not even turn to the side of the box if is is screaming 'fat free' at them.

Teriyaki chicken with noodles and stir fried vegetables

I was making this up as I went along to be honest. Bit of a panic, but it turned out very nice.

This serves 3 people.

Ingredients:

6 heads of pak choi - chopped bite sized

Half a Chinese cabbage - chopped bite sized

300g of dried egg noodles

3 breasts of chicken

An onion - roughly chopped

A few cloves of garlic

900ml of miso soup

1 Yellow pepper - cut into strips

150 ml of Teriyaki sauce

The miso soup can be bought dried in packets. I got mine in Superquinn. Alternatively you can get soy bean paste in an Asian market and use it along with some soy sauce to make up a broth. Depending on the soy paste you get you may need to experiment with quantities to get this right.

I got the Chinese Cabbage in an Asian market. They keep for weeks in the fridge. Even halved it was fine for a week.

Method:
If you are using home made teriyaki sauce, make it up now and leave aside until you need it. It is better if you can make it in advance, let it cool completely and put it in the fridge. It will thicken up and you can heat it quickly in the microwave when you need it. The thicker it is the better for clinging to the chicken in the finished dish.

Heat a little oil in a non stick pan and fry the chicken breasts. Turn them occasionally to make sure they don't burn and try not to over cook them or they will be a bit dry.

While the chicken is cooking heat a little oil in a wok and add some minced garlic. Add the chopped vegetables to the wok and stir vigorously.

Put the noodles into a pot of boiling water - no need for salt. They should take about 3 minutes to cook, but check the instructions on the packet.

Make up the miso soup with boiling water and leave to stand.

The vegetables should be ready in about 2-3 minutes. Check that they are done to your liking.
Drain the noodles and divide them between the bowls. Divide the vegetables between the bowls. Take the chicken breasts out of the pan and slice them into strips. Place these on top of the veg. Next pour the miso over the whole lot. Finally pour the teriyaki over the chicken.

Nicoise Salad

This recipe is based on the Nicoise Salad recipe from Delia's How to Cook Book Two and the one from Ballymaloe Cookery Course.

The 3 how to cook books from Delia are great, but they look the same and trying to remember which one a recipe is from is a pain. I end up looking through up to 3 indexes, depending on how lucky I get. It would have made sense to include an overall index at the back of volume 3, but not so I'm afraid. Sounds like a contender for Eat Your Books.

If you are looking for value for money in a cookbook then the Ballymaloe one is hard to beat. It probably has more recipes than any other book that I have.

Anyway, this combined recipe is delicious. Have made if a few times now. The list of ingredients is long, but don't let that put you off. They are mostly store cupboard items.

This is enough for a good lunch for 2. Serve it with some crusty bread - the picture shows a white roll that I made the same day.

Ingredients:
A few small new or salad potatoes, cooked, no need to peel
A handful of asparagus.
2 Shallots, or 4 spring onions
A good tin of tuna
2 hard boiled eggs
8 Anchovy fillets
A handful of black olives
A tablespoon of capers

For the dressing:
½ tsp of salt
A clove of garlic chopped finely
A teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1 tbsp of white wine vinegar
6 tbsp of olive oil

To make the dressing just put all of the ingredients into a screw top jar - an old jam jar is fine - and shake hard until the whole lot combines into a nice creamy dressing.

Cook the asparagus until tender and then chop it into bite sized pieces. Cut the eggs into quarters and the cooked potatoes into slices. Break the tuna up into bite sized chunks.
Now just arrange all of the ingredients in 2 bowls and pour the dressing over the whole lot. It looks nice if you arrange the tips of the asparagus on top of the whole lot, but as you can see from the photo, I didn't think of this until I was eating it! The potatoes don't have to be completely cold and will absorb a bit more of the dressing if they are warm.

Notes about ingredients
I got the asparagus in Aldi for € 1.79. Very nice stuff, and normally very expensive - so this was great.
The tuna I used was a jar of Albacore from Aldi again. They don't seem to stock this all the time and it is a lot better than the tinned stuff.
Get black olives with the stones still in and remove them yourself. It's a bit fiddly, but worth the effort. The best ones I have found are 'Greek style'. These are not immersed in brine, but are salted and a bit wrinkly.

Beef stew with red wine and herbs

I got some nice steak pieces in the local butchers and had a fridge full of vegetables, so I wanted to make up something tasty. This is adapted from Jamie's Dinners by Jamie Oliver.

The cooking time is quite long, but other than a bit of peeling and chopping it is very easy to prepare. It can be made the day before and gets better over night. It also freezes well.

Ingredients:
600g of Steak pieces, give them a rinse
2 tbsp of vegetable oil
A small bottle of red wine (I got a 250ml one in Aldi for less than €2)
The following veg peeled and roughly chopped:

• An onion
• 2 large potatoes
• A handful of carrots
• A couple of parsnips
• A small turnip

A few sprigs of rosemary - pull off the leaves and chop them finely

Some fresh sage leaves - chopped finely too
A tablespoon of flour

A small tin of tomato puree
A few cloves of garlic, minced
300ml of stock - veg or beef. I used Marigold vegetable powder

Preheat the oven to gas mark 2.
Heat the oil in a flame proof casserole. One of the cast iron ones is good for this, but anything that you can put on top of the hob and then transfer to the oven.
Add the meat and give it a stir around until it is browned on the outside. Then add the rest of the ingredients to the casserole. Stir them around in the stock and wine mixture to get everything nicely distributed. Bring it to the boil on the hob and then transfer to the oven. Cook for between 3 and 4 hours depending on the type of meat you used. Mine was perfect after 3. Don't stir it around too much when you take it out or you will just end up making it mushy. The spuds in particular will go to bits. It is done when the meat is done. Take a piece out and eat it to see.

The rosemary I used was shop bought, but you could use anything good from your garden in preference (thyme, marjoram, oregano etc.). I would not go for more than 2 herbs in this though as you will just end up not being able to taste any of them.

I had the sage in the garden. This is a very hardy plant. There are edible leaves on it almost all year 'round.

The 2 of us had a large lunch of this with white rolls and there is plenty left for a dinner along with some green vegetables.

750 Words

This is a cool idea for an application. Its a (private) online diary. Lets you type away stream of consciousness style and then tells you stuff about how you did.
750words.com

Ebi chili men

This is ebi chili men. It comes from the Wagamama cookbook.
I got the prawns in Aldi. They were ready cooked and the recipe calls for raw, but they worked out just fine.
One of the best things about this book is the list of sauces at the start. It tells you how to make stuff like proper teriyaki sauce and for this dish: chili sauce. Once you have the sauce made the dishes are largely stir fried vegetables, a protein like chicken with noodles. There are very nice broths made from soy bean paste and miso too. The dishes are very simple and quick. Once you have gotten a few of the staples in from an Asian market, or a decent supermarket you are flying.
I got this book for the library a couple of weeks ago and bought it after making a couple of recipes from it. Its one of our favorites now.

Egg in the hole

When I was a kid we used to get this a lot. It was cooked in lard then and worth the calories to be honest, but here is a healthier version. It uses about a teaspoon of vegetable oil for 2 people, so not that bad at all.

Ingredients

2 slices of wholemeal bread - frozen is fine 

2 eggs

1 tsp of vegetable oil

Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a non stick pan. You don't want it in flames, but if it is too cool the oil just absorbs into the bread straight away and it all gets a bit soggy.
While that is heating up, cut a square out of each slice of bread. The egg is going in there, but the hole just needs to be a bit bigger than the yolk. The white of the egg will spread out over the surface of the bread very nicely.
Put the bread in the pan and let it cook in the oil for about a minute. Pushing it flat if its sticking up. The crack the egg into the hole and season with salt and pepper. Cook like this for about 2 minutes. Then flip it over. Best to use something like a spatula or a fish slice to do this in case the egg leaves the bread while you are flipping it.
Cook for another couple of minutes until the white of the egg is cooked. Served with chutney and some extra toast, this makes a very nice lunch.

Traditional soda bread

This is very simple to make and lighter than the normal brown bread that I make.
No need for a mixer either, just a big bowl and a fork.
This is an ideal recipe to add to your Kan Ban Store Cupboard.

Ingredients

225 g plain flour

225 g wholemeal

Pinch of salt

2 level teaspoons of bread soda

40g of butter

1 teaspoon of sugar

300 ml of buttermilk

Preheat your oven to gas mark 5.
Melt the butter in a microwave or in a pot. It is only about 30 seconds in the microwave.
Put all of the ingredients in a bowl. Mix it up and add more buttermilk or more flour to get it to the consistency that will allow you to turn it out onto a worktop without it gluing there and also is also wet enough to activate the soda and get it to rise. A bit of practice will get this perfect, but a bit off will be no disaster.
Lightly flour a clean work surface. Turn the dough out onto it. With clean hands shape the dough into a flattened round. Cut a cross in the top to allow the loaf to expand in the traditional shape.
Sprinkle some flour on the baking tray. Place the round of dough onto the tray and put it in the top of the oven for 30 minutes. If your oven is fan assisted you may need to adjust this down a bit and even put the loaf on the centre shelf. I have a normal gas oven, so these figures are for that.
The loaf is cooked when it sounds hollow when tapped. Cool it on a wire rack to stop the base getting soggy. Best eaten warm, but keeps well for a few days.

Homemade Teriyaki sauce

This is very easy to make and really tangy and delicious. When I made it it kept for a week in the fridge. Not sure how long it will last if you leave it there, but its very sugary, so probably a while.

Ingredients

100 g sugar

4 tablespoons of soy sauce

2 tablespoons of sake

Put the sugar and the soy sauce in a small pot. Heat it gently until the sugar dissolves. Simmer it for a few minutes to thicken it up a bit. Add the sake and stir in. If you are ready to use it, just go ahead at this stage, otherwise allow it to cool and put it in a seal tight container in the fridge.
Great with Salmon, Tuna, Chicken etc.

Tuna Teriyaki with stir fried vegetables and noodles

I got some frozen Tuna Steaks from Aldi the other day and was looking for something to do with them. If you overcook tuna steaks they are tough and dry, so rare or at worst medium is the way to go. I made a teriyaki salmon last week and had some of the sauce left in the fridge, so this seemed like a winner. I was also in the Oriental Emporium on Abbey Street last week, so the fridge had plenty of nice Chinese greens that needed to be used.


This serves 2 people.
You will need a wok for stir frying the vegetables, a pot to cook the noodles and a pan to cook the tuna. (Ideally a griddle pan to give them the nice lines and not over cook them.)

Ingredients
2 Frozen Tuna Steaks from Aldi (others brands are obviously fine, but not canned)
4-6 heads of Pak Choy
½ a head of Chinese cabbage(Also called Napa Cabbage)
1 Carrot finely chopped
A couple of green chillies chopped small
About 100 ml of teriyaki sauce. You can use bought, but this is better.
Enough noodles for 2 people. About 100-150 g per person should be fine.

Defrost the tuna steaks. I did this out of the fridge for about 10 hours. Make sure they are fully defrosted before you start as the centre will likely be cold as they don't get cooked very much. The microwave will not help here as it will slightly cook the steaks and make them tough. Wash the steaks and dry them with some kitchen paper. Rub a little oil on them. Sunflower is fine or a non-extra virgin olive kind. Extra Virgin will burn when you cook at high temp. Season them with salt and pepper on both sides.

Chop the vegetables up roughly. The Pak Choy and the Chinese Cabbage will wilt a lot, so don't need too much chopping to make them manageable. 
Fill a pot for the noddles with boiling water. Bring this back to the boil.
Heat the teriyaki sauce up. I did this in the microwave and it came out fine.
Heat the wok up very hot until it is almost smoking. Then add the oil to it and throw the chopped chillies in there. Stir fry this for a few seconds to flavour the oil. Then add all of your chopped up vegetables. Try to keep these moving as much as you can.
Put the tuna steaks on the hot pan.
Plunge the noodles into the boiling water.
Don't panic! Each of these things takes about 2½ minutes, so everything should finish at the same time.
Flip the tuna after a minute. Make sure the noodles do not boil over. Keep stirring the vegetables.
As soon as you are happy with the vegetables turn them off. Drain the noodles and divide them up between 2 large bowls. Divide the vegetables up and arrange them on top. Next slice the tuna into strips. This makes it easier to eat with chopsticks and looks nicer too. Pour the teriyaki sauce over the whole lot.
The instructions are quite long, but this is a very easy recipe. Well worth getting the ingredients together for.

The Kan Ban Store Cupboard Method

You know when go to cook one of your regular recipes, but you are missing an ingredient? This is a simple way to avoid this.
Pick one of your regular recipes with mainly store cupboard ingredients. If is is all fresh stuff, there is no point in adding it to this list as you will have to go to the shops anyway. Buy all of the stuff that you will need in enough quantity that you will be able to make the recipe once. Then when you use up an item you write it on your shopping list. This way you never run out of the store cupboard stuff. I keep my shopping list in my phone, so I always have it handy if I get to the shops.
Just add additional recipes to the list and amalgamate the ingredients required. There is no need to double up on stuff that is in both recipes as you will end up with heaps of stuff that you won't use. Just make sure you replace what is used up.
Over time you will end up with a better stocked store cupboard and be able to make some nice recipes.
This technique is called the Kan Ban Store Cupboard Method after the stocking system used in Toyota.