VegBoxBoy

278: Beef Bourgignon

2012-05-22T21:15:00.001+01:00

I bet you all thought I'd left town. I might as well have done for all the cooking I've been doing recently. The people that pay me, are being dashed unreasonable - they are expecting me to work for it! Its dreadful.

However this weekend found me with both time and motivation to cook. Saturday morning I had a trip to the butcher's for beef with which to make some form of stew. Somehow I decided upon Bourgignon, which is something I've not attempted for many years. I seem to remember my previous effort being somewhat below par; and I was keen to make amends.

As ever (despite owning a fair selection of cookbooks) my recipe search started with Google. I used my normal method of combining what I arbitrarily decided were the best bits. Luckily & happily Sainted Delia suggested Boulangere potatoes as an accompanyment; this was good.

Bourgignon ingredients:

1 kilo beef cut into 1 inch cubes (I halved these from the size the but
1 medium onion
250gs or ~1 dozen very small - forkfull sized - onions (there weren't any shallots in the shop)
200gs streaky bacon
500gs chestnut mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
2 table spoons flour
2 x bay leaves, 2 x bouquet garni tea bags
1 x bottle Bordeaux

Method:

Finely slice the onion and slowly fry in a little oil
Chop and add the garlic and continue frying until the onion is nice and soft. Add to a big casserole pot
Cut the streaky bacon and fry until brown and crispy
Steal a couple of bits; this isn't going to be ready for hours yet. Add to the pot
Stir flour and meat together so all the meat is coated. Add to pot
Half mushrooms. Add to pot
Brown then onions, then guess what's going to happen with the onions? - Add to the pot
Add the wine and herbs, give it all a stir (being careful not to break the tea bags)
In the oven for at least 2 hours, preferably longer at 140c. Stirring every time you pass for a cuppa

Some recipes were part and part wine and stock. I chose all wine option as I wanted something a rich sauce rather than a gravy. I wasn't disappointed. The wine I'd had for a little while; all the while deferring drinking it as I thought it might be a bit heavy weather. However for this it was just the job and it was well worth using the good stuff for.

Like Delia I cooked boulangere potatoes (I may blog my version of boulangere's later; but this post has rambled along quite enough already). Well done Delia for that suggestion. Perfect together.

This perfection was only improved upon through the fact I then rounded proceedings off with a rhubarb crumble made from my own rhubarb.

Right that's all folks, it's now time for me to go to the Dordogne for some real french food!

277 Pea and Ham soup

2012-05-02T19:57:00.000+01:00

I wasn't going to blog this, as I've done a pea and gammon soup - and it's this isn't a million miles away. But it was just so nice I thought I'd treat myself. Although, if truth be told I'm scratching for anything else to blog about such is the paucity of my recent cooking efforts.

The other side effect of not planning on blogging this is that I recipe is even more slap dash than normal. Hey-ho. I can but persevere. At least with such half-arsedness I can't be accused of stealing content!

I don't think I'm tight, but I do hate to waste food. So the inspiration from this came from having the remains on an on-the-bone piece of ham. So after both literally and metaphorically butchering the ham (good butties!), there was a bone with quite a lot of small bits of ham on. Clearly a better butcher than I would have removed these without fuss.

Ingredients:

One ham bone
One onion
Two cloves of garlic
Half a bag of marrowfat peas ~500gs
Some water

Method:

Roughly chop the onion and garlic.
Put ham bone, onion and garlic in a pan. Cover with water.
Simmer
Allow to cool, so's not to burn my handies on the next bit
Messy bit this, sieve retaining the liquid and the remove the bone and any gristly bits
Add the ham lumps to the liquid
Add the peas, bubble until cooked, adding extra water if needed
Blitz, taste and add salt to taste

I like my soups thick, so maybe I should have added more water. The combination of the peas and the gelatin(?) coming out of the bone meant that this stuff was solid at room temperature - now that's a thick soup!

Kind of looks like ice-cream doesn't it? Ham ice-cream - not good!

Anyways, once again happy if rather trumpy days.

276: Mushroom and Mead Soup

2012-04-24T19:20:00.000+01:00

This was a masterwork of using up of ingredients,. Even though I say so myself. The ingredients were:

500gs mushrooms
1 red onion
1 1/2 pints chicken stock
100ml clotted cream (I just happened to have this in; it would be tremendously decadent to buy clotted crean just for putting in soup)
50ml mead

Method:

Chop and fry onion, add stock
Roughly chop mushrooms and add
Simmer
Blitz
Add mead simmer a little more to take the sharpness of the alcohol off
Stir through the cream

I've not floured this recipe up. Basically, 'cos its so simple. The booze and cream added a touch of richness to set it apart from just ordinary soup. I like my soup thick* and maybe I should have cut down the amount of stock a little.

Another happy result.

* - I've got a proper thick 'un to blog next

275: Roasted Paprika Chicken and Saffron Vegetable Rice

2012-04-08T09:52:00.002+01:00

Both my cooking and blogging has been rather slack recently, my time being taken up with: work (boo!), running training for the London marathon (boo, it's not gone well) and massages to try to enable to keep on running. Oh and spend far too much time watching Pointless; which I'm enjoying but I'm not sure it's doing either my work or marathon prospects any good.

Finally last weekend I got the required to chance to attempt to cook something new. A roasted chicken is always a good thing. But I didn't wash mash, as sausages and mashages were slated for the next day. So, variety being the spice of life and all I tried for a rice-y roast.

Ingredients:

1 Biggish chicken
Rice
2 medium onions
2 courgettes
3 peppers
Spices: Saffron, garlic, chilli and paprika

Method:

Wipe chicken with olive oil (so the spices stick) and dust with chilli flakes, paprika and salt and pepper. Dusting the cavity also. Into the oven at 180c until cooked ~ 1 hour 3/4s in my case
Have a cup of tea and an episode of Pointless, after which there was about an hour to go for the Chicken
Return: baste the chicken
Stick the peppers on a tray at the bottom of the oven and roast them. Then shortly afterwards add the courgettes.
Chop the onions and set onto a slow fry. Likewise chop the garlic
Getting towards the end now, set the rice on to cook - adding a pinch of Saffron.
Cook a cup full of peas
I wanted both crispy chicken and some colour on the courgettes, so out with the chicken to rest and then vegetables moved up to the top of the oven and the oven up to 220 (only for the last ten minutes or so; otherwise it would all burn to a cinder)
Drain rice, stir through veggies. Serve. Grab myself a leg and a wing.
Happy days

Once again, I'd failed to use enough saffron to make the taste noticeable. I had though used enough garlic, chilli and paprika to give plenty of taste to the chicken.

I enjoyed it hot on the night and it was just as nice the next day having it as a cold rice salad; I think it helped that I'd roasted instead of fried the peppers and courgettes.

Left to my own devices I'd have put mushrooms in this; which I think would have been an improvement. However I was out-voted on the mushroom front 3 v 1. Shame that.

Happy Easter y'all. xxx

274: Chorizo Rice Soup

2012-03-25T08:56:00.001+01:00

My recent lack of bloggering has been caused by holiday preparations, holiday (much joy), and then having nothing much in the house post-holiday. However, this lack of food in the house proved to be the inspiration for this dish. Due to this, both my good lady wife and I found ourselves seperately lunching in Pret A Manger and returning home to discuss the high price and ordinaryness of their soups. (To be fair to Pret, they are only getting a mention here as they are the best soup/sandwich emporium in Leeds.)

Even so, there was a strong focus on our producing ourselves some soup which would suffice for an entire lunch. Two forces combined (1) We had some chorizo in (2) We've always both liked M&S's Chicken and Rice soup. So, there it was, our plan and our lunches to be: Chorizo Rice Soup.

Ingredients:

One Chorizio ring, outer skin peeled and chopped into ~1cm cubes (quartered across wise)
Two Medium onions chopped reasonably small
2 medium carrots diced
3 cloves garlic, again chopped
1 courgette, again chopped into ~1cm cubes
Basmati Rice about a cup full
2-3 Pints stock
Spice: hot paprika

Method:

Fried the chorizo and onions together. I did not add any further oil, as enough would be released from the chorizo
Added the garlic
Added and fried off the courgette to give it a little colour
Added rice and gave it a good coating in all the spicy oil
Added the carrot
Started adding stock and simmering, ladle at a time - risotto style
Once the rice was cooked, we took it off the heat and then decided it was too far along in the direction of sloppy risotto; so we added more stock until we achieved the right consistency.
A taste test showed that it would be improved by additional spice, so some paprika was added (and salt and pepper of course)

The overall effect was much as we'd been after; somewhere between a soup and a risotto in consistency. I think it would've been improved by some chilli; but then I think that about most food stufffs.

From this pan we got 6 portions costing around £3, while Pret soup is likewise around £3 but for each. I wouldn't claim this soup as a masterpiece or any such; but it was every bit as nice as the one I'd bought. So, all in we can consider this to be a pretty good result!

273: Rhubarb Rhubarb

2012-03-18T18:36:00.001Z

Firstly, specially for Dom at Belleau kitchen. Here's my daffodils. Now, I'm not trying to make this into any kind of daffodil off here. Dom's are the clear winners. I just thought I'd take the opportunity to show them.

This is the first time I've planted daffs and they've duly appeared. So, this must count as a good result. Sadly some careless reversing seems to have done for the poor little fella bottom left.

This may, I confess have been me.

Onwards, forwards, backwards to something vaguely cooking and gardening related. I promised in my new year's blog-isutions to cook my deserts. Thus far I far failed to do so, and I was rightly upbraided on this by the lovely - and quite correct - Choclette. And, all I can do is promise to do better. The that end, last year I planted some Rhubarb. Through the summer it looked like a good strong plant; but over winter it disappeared to nothing and I thought I'd blown it. However, it's reappeared. Super yay!

Given it's year two for this plant I believe I'm allowed to reap the (currently meagre, but improving) harvest. I'm very much looking forward to doing this. The first thing I shall be cooking will be a rhubarb crumble. Which is as unimaginative as it is delicious. I cannot wait. Thence forwards to delights I have not yet thought through, but I also have the buds on my apple tree and raspberry plants sprouting all over the place.

272: Spanish Beef Stew

2012-02-13T18:09:00.002Z

I've made plenty of stews before, which are lovely for cold days but somehow I was fancying a nice comforting stew and at the same time something a little new and different. Googling for 'spanish beef stew' - I found this: Estofado-andalusian-beef-stew.html and it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Although it goes without saying that I adjusted the recipe somewhat.

Ingredients:

1,125 grammes stewing beef (I know this is an improbable quantity, but there was some confusion in the butchers), cut into 1/2" cubes
Olive oil for frying
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 medium onion, chopped fine
300gs shallots
1 bulb garlic
8 medium carrots, cut lengthwise and then ascross into bite sized bits
5 medium desiree potatoes, cut into 1" cubes
5 tomatoes - roughly chopped
3 peppers - once again, chopped bite sized
1/3rd bottle of portugeese Mourais red (Nice. And it was the closest I had to spanish)
Spices: 1/3 teaspoon of saffron - more of this later, 1/2 teaspoon cinamon, 2 1/2 teaspoons paprika, 2 bay leaves, salt and pepper

Clearly there are some spanish influences here - tomatoes and peppers in a stew! - Betty would turn in her grave. First up though, was going to purchase the saffron. It took me quite some finding and there was a choice of just one, even though my Tesco's is a super-carbuncle sized one. Here's what I got:

I was prepared for Saffron to be expensive. It is famously so. What I hadn't realised was that for £3.50 I wouldn't even get enough to register on the scales - not even a gramme! Now that's expensive.

Method:

Place garlic into medium oven to roast (I'll come back to this)
Chop onion, slowly fry and add to a big pan
Coat meat in flour and fry on a hot heat until sealed and add to big pan
Fry the shallots also, until coloured a little on the outside, again of course adding to the pan
Into the pot with all the vegetables.
Add wine and then water to cover
By this time (~30 miuntes) the garlic should be soft, squeeze out the garlic from it's skins and mix with the other herbs. Again - add to the pot
Bring to a slow simmer and continue to simmer it for a couple of hours or longer if you've got time

So at the start this looks like:

Now, this was deeply lovely. Really good. Quite the best thing I've cooked in a while (although the competition is not high). It did though taste mostly of stew; with just a little hint of Spain. If I try this again somehow I need to up the spanish-ness of it. Maybe I just need to purchase a whole gramme of Saffron.

And for anyone worrying that I'm a bit poorly and off my dinner - there's not much stew on that plate - do not fret, that was my attempt at taking a pretty photo. Them lumps were quickly sorted and seconds were much enjoyed.

Peace out.

271: Life's a riot with Saag versus Saag

2012-01-24T09:01:00.002Z

My good friend Big Bad Bri would appreciate the post-title Billy Bragg reference. However, given he's a man that considers warming his Ginsters pasty sophisticated he's unlikely to be passing this way again.

In an accident formed by a lack of planning and presence of a bargain, during my shopping I ended up with, a particularly large butternut squash and 4 bags of spinach. I also had a load of spuds. So, using my tried and trusted use-everything-I've-got recipe chosing method, that'll be Chicken, saag, squash and potato curry coming up. A purist would say this is one or two ingredients too many. Tish & piff!

As regular visitors will know, I love a curry. The more attentive may have also spotted that basically I have only the two methods of cooking currys - using water/stock and with tomatoes. As a result of this, the heated debates in the VegBox household have been:

The efficacy of fiscal easing
Just when am I going to put those curtains up?
And getting back to the plot - and the truth - which is best the stock or tomato-ey curry?

So I decided to test it (not fiscal easing, nor my rudimentary DIY skills). Reason being there was too much to fit in to even my largest pan. Cooking both together was a winner, because it seemd a lot quicker than cooking two seperately. Trying to do the recipe in a time-line style:

1) Halve and deseed the butternut squash. Dust with salt, pepper and cumin seeds and in the oven to roast ~@180c
2) Choppped 6 medium onions and slowly fried. Then adding in garlic, chillies, curry powder, garam masala. Split this into two big pans adding extra tumeric for stock curry and ginger and paprika to the tomato-ey curry base
3) Chopped ~12 medium potatoes in to bit sized bits. Par boiled half of them
4) (whole lot-a chopping going off here) Chopped and fried 8 chicken breasts to seal and add a little colour
5) Add enough chicken stock (2-3 pints) to cover and add potatoes and chicken to one pot. Add 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, par-boiled potatoes and a pint of water to the other. Bring to a simmer
6) With any luck the butternut squash should be soft by now. If not have yourself a cuppa. When it is soft, remove the skin, chop and then add to the a-simmering curries. Simmer some more. By now the chicken will be cooked through, so check the taste and adjust with extra spices if needed. Repeat until happy.
7) Add spinach 5-10 miuntes before the end; depending on how much bite you want to it.
8) If you've got one, squeeze a bit of lemon in to the tomato one right at the end

Making myself a rice levee, here are they are. Cooking two curries at once was definately a winner; it seemed to take only 1 1/2 times as long as cooking one curry on its own. Which is a result. You can just about tell from the photo that the spinach went in to the tomato curry earlier than it did in to the stock one.

Somehow in describing this, it looks like I just cooked two curries and them we ate twice as much. I would like to point out that I there ended up being 10 meals in this lot.

So, building this story to it's not so exciting climax *drum roll*.... what was the result, which curry won?

Well, everyone had a favourite - but it came out at two votes each - so looks like both will be repeated alternately going forward.

270: VegBoxBoy: never gonna be a carrot farmer

2012-01-16T17:03:00.001Z

My mate rthat knows about this stuff is always telling me that I should do more google friendly post titles. But really, who out there is going to google for spannering growing carrots?

In line with my oft stated aim to attempt to grow my own Veg Box, back in September I planted myself some Carrots. The type I chose allowed such late planting and said they'd be ready in a speedy 12 weeks. Brilliant I thought; my own Christmas carrots. At this stage of the game, this appeared to be quite a cohesive plan.

However, Mrs VegBox ended up doing the Christmas veggies shopping and forget about the my carrots and bought a bumper bag. No worries thought I, I'll leave mine in the ground a bit longer - they'll just grow a bit more. Or maybe not:

The tops of plants wilting = never a good sign.

So, after seeing this, yesterday became the day to reap my harvest. You may notie a slight white tinge to the soil, which is frost. I hadn't quite realised just how hard the digging would be; even though the carrots are obviously right at the top.

What I realised I'd forgotten though as soon I turned the first forkfull over, what that they were chantenay carrots - which was why they were supposed to grow so quickly in the first place.

Here they are. Some tiddlers. Some chantenay giants. All with lots of little bits of stringy root growing from the sides, which was fiddly to remove.

But where I'd really gone wrong, was that through leaving them too long, the green stalky bit at the top had grown down in to the carrot. So not only are these short carrots to start with; but I've got to take a big slice off.

Now, if only I kept some sort of online diary... maybe I might remember such things and be such a forgetful spanner.

269: Sticky Baby Back Ribs

2012-01-11T18:07:00.000Z

Boomshak-alak, how'd you like these babies?

That's the end of the story. Want the recipe? - boy-oh-boy-oh-boy it's a winner. A little teasy pre-amble first mind...I wasn't sure how many racks of ribs were required. In the end I went for 7 between 4 of us. Which turned out to be 1 too many, for even us when we're hungry. Even so, this was still a pretty cheap dinner at only £6.50 for the whole lot. (and I got to eat the spare the next day, more winningness).

So, I've got some ribs. Next thing is to marinade them. Otherwise they wouldn't be sticky, would they? Marinade ingredients, all of which were are very approximate - I mixed and stirred until it tasted right (hot, sweet and sticky) and I had a bowl full:

2 parts dark soy sauce
2 parts tomato ketchup
1 part honey
5 clovess garlic, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons ginger (again, clearly it was a lazy day) roughly chopped
2 star anise (even this is approximate, as one of them was broken)
A very big squeeze of super hot chilli sauce

For a day, it all looked a bit like this:

Periodically, I'd move the ribs around a bit and re-coat them. The ribs were frozen - despite my buying them from a proper butchers. By the next day when I was ready to cook them the marinade had gone quite runny with the water coming out of the ribs as they defrosted. To cook them, I covered them and cooked @150c for two hours. After this I poured all the sauce off, turned the heat up to 200c and uncovered - in order to make them go good and sticky, which took about another half an hour.

The sauce I (after removing the fat), I reduced down to serve on the side. I've already shown the end result, definately one to be repeated. Possibly very soon.

268: Quick Advocat Ice-Cream

2012-01-01T22:57:00.000Z

As well as my half dozen cook-books, I also got an Ice-Cream maker for Christmas. This is was my first foray in to ice-cream making. For first time out, I took the easy/quick option which is to start with ready made custard.

This recipe is lifted straight from the Andrew James Ice Cream made easy book.Ingredients, I just tried to Christmassy it up by throwing advocat in at the end:

425ml custard
284ml double cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 table spoons caster sugar
50-75ml's advocat (~1 inch's worth out of the bottle), which was my own addition

Method:

Mix the liquids and sift in the sugar

Then pour into the maker, and switch on. 15 minutes later, and lo it was ice-cream

It seems to be done when it's thicken in consistency and increased in volume.

It's still quite sloppy at this stage, so it needs to go in the freezer for 2 - 3 hours. This bit is quite messy, I seemed to end up with ice-cream everywhere.

After this, it's a normal / slightly firm ice-cream texture. The advocat was insufficient to make much difference to the taste, so that was rather a waste. What is different, is that it's super-creamy. It tastes almost more creamy than cream. I realise even as I write that, that this doesn't really seem to make sense. This might be to do with the texture, it's got much less air in it that normal shop bought ice-cream. Which is pretty good; it tastes like super luxury ice-cream. Nice!

Since I've made this, I've been taking every opportunity to eat it - here's some from a hot-choc ice-cream float that rounded off a very soggy New Year's day walk.

267: 2012 Bloggy-isutions.

2012-01-01T09:41:00.003Z

Hap, Hap, Happy New Year. New year, time for new year's resolution, and they are:

Proof read each new post at least once before publishing (hasn't always happened in the past)
Cook something from each of the recipe books I was given for Christmas
Get competent at Ice-cream making, sufficiently to be able to stop buying Ice-Cream
Enter some bloggy/cooky competitions; because I've never done it
Eat more fish (I've not told the wife this yet, I'm still working up to it)
Eat more noodles.
Bake more cake. Good cake is hard to come by. But maybe I should eat less cake. It's not 10 o'clock on New Year's day and I'm already conflicted.
Blog at least weekly
Grow sufficient fruit to get close to jam based self-sufficiency

In other resolutions, what I'm after for 2012 is:

I've got a place in the London marathon. I'd like to get round that in a reasonable time and feel ok at the end.
Go watch Mark Cavendish win
Beyond that, I'm just going to try to be happy and healthy

Here's hoping all your 2012's are happy and healthy too.

266: Mead Mince Pie

2011-12-29T15:47:00.000Z

Merry Christmas.

Here was a little of my Crimble preparations. This is so simple it's not really even a recipe. But... it's not so simple that I didn't make somewhat of a mess of it. Yet another to be filed under Close but no Ceegar. I like a mince pie. I like booze (probably more than mince pies). It's Christmas so normal drinking rules are somewhat relaxed. And so, I thought up mead mince pies.

As the name suggests - it's a mince pie with mead in it. I thought this would be good as mead would add a boozy touch, whilst also being very sweet. And sometimes mince isn't that sweet.

So ingredients:
- 3/4's jar of mince
- 2 table spoons mead
- 1 packet jus-roll puff pastry (see, told you it wasn't a proper recipes)
- 1 egg
- 2 table spoons demerrera sugar
- dab of butter

Method:
- mix mince and mead
- cut out pastry, and slightly smaller lids to appropriate size for your bun tray
- grease baking tray with butter**
- fill with the meady mince-y mix ***
- add lids and squeeze to join to bases with eggy wash glue
- cut steam escape hole in to lid
- eggy wash the top
- dust with demerrera sugar
- in the oven 20-25 minutes at 200c

That nearly went like a proper recipe at the end, there. I'll get back on track with the photo which shows why it was close-no-cigar.

** - be generous here, I didn't grease the tin enough so they got stuck. Although this may have had something to do with:

*** - don't be generous here. Overfill and the lids will explode off the bases and dribble down the side so as to keep everything hard stuck to the tray. Probably didn't help that the mead adds extra runny-ness too.

On the plus side though, the mead did as I thought it would and gave the mince pies a nice lush indulgent feel. The sugar and the eggy wash on top were winners. And best of all fresh pastry - what could be finer?

Happy New Year everyone, all 28 of you! x X x

265: Raspberry & Plum Jam

2011-12-19T20:55:00.002Z

After my hard-disc induced hiatus, I'm long overdue a new proper posting. Instead you'll get something much more typical of me; something a little half-arsed. Throughout the late summer and all of autumn my raspberry canes have continued to produce raspberries in much that same half-arsed manner that I blog.

A couple of times there were enough raspberries to have with ice-cream. But most of the time there wasn't really enough to do anything with - so I froze them. Evenutally ending up with about a kilo. I'd enjoyed making strawberry jam last year and always had in mind to make jam. I had both jam and preserving sugars. The top google recipes all had normal jam. Which I found a bit weird. Possessing presrving sugar, I was not going to be deterred from using it.

So, I just made it up.

Nearly a kilo of raspberries
With nearly a kilo of preserving sugar

This I heated until the sugar all dissolved and I simmered it for 5 minutes. This being raspberries there wasn't really any semblance of fruit left by this stage. What I'd planned to do here was the thing where you see if the jam wrinkles when a dab is placed and smudged on a cold plate. However.... it was about now that Mrs VegBox rang and reminded me we had some stewed plums (bought from Tesco's and had overnight gone from uniped hard to too squidgy overnight). So, a quick weigh (~300gs) and in they went, followed by the same of preserinvg sugar.

Bringing this to a simmer again, getting back to where I'd been 15 minutes earlier. There was a hint of wrinkle so in to the jars.

Here it is. The plum bits floated to the top a little. But don't the lumps always float to the top?

And below on toast, just in case anyone is unsure what to do with jam and bread. Before last year's first attempt at jam, I'd always considered it very much something out of the advanced class and assumed major machinery would be required. I wouldn't claim this would win prizes down the WI - by the time I'd got past half-way down the jar it hadn't set very well at all. But it tasted super fresh, the plum lumps were an enjoyable bonus. Seems to me, you can't go wrong. Every egg a bird!

264: Food Blogger's Unplugged

2011-11-23T09:31:00.001Z

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman as Dolly Parton would have it. I wouldn't know; I'm not even slightly effete. It is though hard to talk about yourself without coming across as a know all, however I shall try. Lovely Dom from Belleau Kitchen nominated me for this; which is lovely for his is a proper blog and he clearly puts an awful lot more effort in to proceedings than I do. I don't read many blogs (as will be obvious at the end), but whenever I do, Dom has invariably already been there and posted some encouraging comment. It's the same story with my other two favourite bloggers: Kath the unordinary cook, and Mrs Choclette.

1: What, or who inspired You to start a blog?
My friend Evil Mik. I stopped working with Mik some years back, but on any given day I could tell you what he had for his lunch and dinner. With the amount we talk about food, he suggested repeatedly that I blog. I enjoy it, but confess I still don't really understand why people read blogs all that much.

2: Who is your foodie inspiration?
I've seen a few of these things filled in and 'my mother' often comes up as an answer. It's this one for me, she'll have a go at anything cooking or eating. And it's that general spirit of adventure that I like. I just try to keep things interesting.

3: Your greasiest, batter splattered Food/drink book is?
Brian Turner's, probably. But I don't tend to use cook books much. I tend to decide what I want to cook and then google until I find the recipe that's got the most chilli in and/or most closely resembles whatever ingredients I've got in.

4: Tell us the best thing you have ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?
BBQ Chicken sandwich Koh Samui, 1991. Cost less than a pound. Freshly cooked chicken pulled off the bone crispy duck style, Thai style salad, proper hot and sweet chilli in warm fresh crusty bread. Eaten with a Singha beer, sat on the beach watching lightning storms over the sea. Oh how I bloody wish I'd followed that up by writing 'The Beach'

5: Another food Blogger's table you'd like to eat at is?
I don't know; I've not met any in the flesh. Pretty much everyone that blogs looks like they can cook; I'd go with whoever was going to be the most fun.

6: What is the kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for?
Gadgets I can - just about - afford. I'd ask Santa for a bigger kitchen which faces the afternoon sun with doors out to the garden. This, I cannot afford. After that, I'd happily enough take care of the booze chiller fridge and whatever else gadget winks at me.

7: Who taught you how to cook?
I can't really remember anyone teaching me, my Mum I saw cooking often but we didn't cook together. But I've always been confident in the kitchen. (probably in excess of my ability).

8: I'm coming to you for dinner what's your signature dish?
Slow roast belly pork if I've got the time. With loads of roasted veg. Don't come if you're dieting.

9: What is your guilty food pleasure?
None. I'll admit to guilty pleasures in music where I've gone from a Smiths loving angsty teen (still love 'em) to really liking Girls Aloud & Katy Perry. I know they're rubbish really; I just like upbeat cheese. Food wise I really love a Greggs's Apple Turnover but I feel in no way guilty. They are a thing of wonder.

10: Reveal Something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn:
My name is Adrian. When I signed up to UKFBA and started blogging I wasn't sure what would happen. I feared the internet heckling so I invented a nom de guerre - Alan Lupton (which my wife thinks sounds like a right sad sack's name. She's right too. Anyone remember what programme this character comes from? - I'll be very impressed). Looking back now this seems very silly; everyone has been so very nice.

And now, thinking I could edit and re-edit this for the rest of the night I'll slightly embarassedly click publish. I thank you all.

263: A Picture is worth a thousand words...

2011-11-19T11:52:00.000Z

And I'm currently struggling to get my photos from my camera to blogger. Which is stopping me off from blogging. Kind of a shame I'd used my camera instead of my phone. And even if I could replace a picture with a thousand words; life's too short to type them on an iPad.

My laptop is banjaxed with a broken hard-drive and I'm currently mid-fight with Tesco to get them to repair/replace it. It's 16 months old and they are acting like they're doing me a big favour. The more they stall, the more determined I am to make them fix it. I've spoken to Consumer Direct who were brilliant and with this confidence, vengeance or at least a new hard-drive will be mine.

In the meantime I've still been cooking and once repaired shall have stories of:
- plum and raspberry jam. A success
- reinventing baked beans. A waste of time
- pot roasted Silverside of beef. Lush

Hopefully back soon. Peace and love, peace and love. X

262: That VegBoxBoy, what a tart. Lyons Fish Ready meals and Total Greek yoghurt

2011-11-05T09:02:00.002Z

Yes, it's true. I am. Here goes a semi-sponsored posting. I'm now up to a mighty 19 followers (Hello!), just think what freebies I could get should I actually have a blog that anyone reads! And just in case.... I am EXPERT, repeat EXPERT at Champagne reviewing.

Firstly, here's some links to Total Yoghurts. I place these on here almost entirely out of guilt. Twice now Total have sent me Yoghurt, which I was supposed to blog about. Unfortunately for Total all I've managed to do, is to eat said Yoghurt. It has had some positive effect for them... I buy the one with honey in when it's on offer. Very nice. Anyways here's their linkies:

I took up an offer to review some Lyons fish ready meals. With a minimum of fuss a box of three of these ready meals arrived. They are priced at £3.99, so that was a whole £11.97's worth of dinners. Cooking each of the dishes takes the same formula: a packet of fish, some vegetables, some sauce adding each in turn taking between 5 and 6 minutes to cook.

First up Thai Sweet Chilli: this for me was the weakest. I like my Chilli to have some heat. Although as regular readers will know, I am fairly obsessed with Chillis. Sweet with heat is ok. But this, like most other things that say Sweet Chilli was all about the sweet. The water chestnuts were nice and crunchy though. All in, I thought this all a bit so-so. We had though, kind of got all these meals wrong, we were thinking the entire meal is in the box. However, to serve two they all need some Carbs adding. This one would go pretty well with either rice of possibly some noodles added in alongside the sauce.

Catalan Fish Stew: Much more my thing - Mussels (always a bonus to get mussels at home), chorizo and even squid. Even the veggies are just my thing, courgettes and big broad beans for texture. The sauce was nice and paprika-y and fairly rich. It says on the box to serve with crusty bread and I think they've called that one just right. Possibly some nice patatas bravas would go too. But bread's so easy why look past it? Also good is that I got extras.... Mrs VegBox isn't so keen of mussels, squid or broad beans. Bonus time!

Prawn Laksha: Lots of big prawns in a nice creamy sauce which has just a bit of heat to it. For a curry that takes 5 minutes to cook, this is really good. Obviously, I should have served this with some rice. But they sauce was so nice and there were sufficient vegetables that it was pretty good anyway.

All in, would I buy any of these again? - yes quite possibly. I don't often eat ready meals for reasons of: health, cost, taste and time. Often I find that by the time all the elements of a ready meal are cooked, I could have cooked something cheaper, healthier and tastier quicker. So on that basis, there's little reason to buy ready meals. However, with these they can be all cooked (with proper accompanyment) in double quick time. I often end up eating fairly late and so these occaisions I might go for the laksha or catalan stew.

Thanks Lyons for sending these through.

261: Chicken, butternut squash pathia

2011-10-25T20:12:00.000+01:00

Well, I say pathia.... but I made this up completely. *smug face forward*, mighty pleased with it.
I was working from home last week and I was really genuinely trying to work, when my laptop gave out the blue-screen-of-doom. A call to IT Support and that was as much as I could do for the day and it wasn't even time for elevenses. So, I set myself to use the plethora of vegetables I'd over-bought with double curry fun. The first I went for was cauliflower with potato. I've blogged this before, and well, frankly I've blogged quite enough things which look like slop-dosh.

To contrast with this, pretty simple affair, I wanted a pathia. When I buy a pathia from my local take-away, it's rich, hot, sweet and sour. Ingredients:

1 kilo chicken breast diced
1 big butternut squash
3 tins tomatoes
2 big onions
4 cloves garlic
1 pepper (random I know, but it was left in the fridge)
5 dried chillies (these are hot, hot, hot)
Spices: 1 tea spoon cumin seeds, lots of curry powder, a shake of paprika
1 lemon

Method:

Quarter and de-seed the butternut squash and dust with cumin, salt and oil and roast in a medium ~180c oven for about an hour until the skin goes crinkly and the flesh is soft
Peel and roughy chop the butternut squash into 1" pieces.
Dice the onion and fry in some oil until soft, then add the chopped garlic and chillies
Add the curry powder and paprika stir thoroughly
Easy this isn't it?
Into a big pan along with the tomatoes and bring to a simmer
Re-heat and re-use the still spicy pan with some more oil and seal the chicken
Into the big pan with the meat and butternut squash
Simmer, until cooked
Just before serving, squeeze some lemon juice in and stir - for the hot sweat and sour flavour

I think proper pathia recipes might have sugar in but butternut squash is very sweet on its own so I think it didn't need any extra. I also kept the spices pretty simple, deliberately - the curry powder had a pretty good mix of spices already.

So, although the day was a dead loss work-wise my dinner (and for the next night) was really most enjoyable!

260: Courgette Linguine, nearly a Silver Spoon recipe

2011-10-15T11:34:00.003+01:00

I'm a dreadful skim reader. Or conversely, I'm a really good skim reader; I'm really fast.... but sometimes there's a downside in terms on accuracy. And here's an example of one, where I set out to faithfully follow a recipe but ended up doing something entirely different. Sufficiently nice though that I'll probably cook it again, like this in any case.

I was having a flick through Silver Spoon, and I saw 'Courgette Spaghetti'; had a quick read of the ingredients - skipping past the celeery - and thought would be a fine fit to the stuff I'd got.

Ingredients (celery, and tinned instead of plum tomatoes apart, faithful to Silver Spoon):

1 tin of tinned tomatoes, roughly chopped, plus a 1/2 a tin of water, rinsed round the tin
1 big onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic finely diced
3 medium courgettes, sliced 1cm across
250gs Linguine
125gs mozzarella, cut in to 1cm cubes
50gs Parmesan, grated
8 small sage leaves, chopped

Method (where I pretty much wnet my own way):

Using a big, big pan slowly fry the onion, adding the garlic
Add the tomatoes & sage and bring to a robust simmer
Add the courgettes, cover and continue to bubble for 15-20 minutes or so until the courgettes feel cooked. Test and salt and pepper as you like it
Meanwhile cook the linguine, drain
Add the linguine to the tomatoes and stir through (which is the reason for using a big pan),
Add the mozarella and stir a bit more - leaving some strings and some lumpy bits
Serve sprinkling parmesan on top

Dead tasty, quick, really easy.

The proper recipe included plum tomatoes & celeery and the onion & sage are are cooked and then removed. Just being used for flavour... but I'd skimmed that bit and already chopped them, so taking them back out wasn't going to happen.

259: Tomato and Roasted Pepper Soup

2011-10-11T20:55:00.000+01:00

As summer came to an end last year, I stripped all the green tomatoes, left them to ripen and then finally made a soup. Very good it was too. This year, my tomatoes haven't done nearly so well - so there was little to strip. The other thing about this year's crop, was that the skins were tough; this can happen through not watering sufficiently but I suspect it was more because they'd just taken so long to grow. All of which left me with a pretty paltry crop - which I've be stowing in the freezer through the summer.

I was thinking maybe it wasn't really going to be worth bothering with. I then though went to the allotments at the office in work (to check progress on my completely failed Cabbages) and there were loads of unloved ripe tomatoes which were falling off and going to waste. Well... there was only one answer here - go get a carrier bag! Across several different allotments, I wandered round and collected the fallen where the skins were still intact. And *naughty confession time*, I then assisted a few more to oh so luckily fall in to my bag. Any allotment that looked well tended, I left alone - I only assisted with ones that were going to go to waste in anyway.

All this got me to starting my soup production with
2.2 Kilos of various tomatoes

1 Pepper

1 big onion

3 (big) cloves garlic

2 pints of beef stock

Method:

Onion and garlic slowly fried in a little olive oil
Tomatoes and pepper on to baking tray with olive oil, salt and pepper in to a medium ovenAfter ~20 minutes, starting to remove any tomatoes which had started to peel - and then completing the peeling and putting the skin aside.
Once all the toms were cooked I then simmered the tomatoes, stock and pepper
Then blitz

Peeling all the tomatoes was something of a faff, and but it certainly improved the texture of the soup. I liked the addition of the pepper; it added a bit of extra depth of flavour. It would've been really nice to put a bit of cream to make it even richer; but I'm trying to be healthy and the soup was plenty tasty as it was.

258 Banana Chocy Chip Cake

2011-09-23T18:03:00.000+01:00

Every now and then, I get invited to an 'American Supper'. You can tell the people doing the inviting are a bit posher than I am: 'Supper, indeed, very Nigel/Nigella. For those not in the know, an American Supper, is where everyone brings something to eat. I've been to a few now and it always just seems to work. One time there was something of a pork pie mountain, but in general and as if magic a pretty decent and varied buffet seems to miraculously appear each time.

Enough pre-amble. Down to business, I decided to take a Banana cake, my main motivations being:

Redemption - at the last of these events I was running late and Tesco's was closed due to flooding, so I had to stop at the garage and the best I could do was some on their sell by date Sausage Rolls. Poor show fo' real.
I had three bananas that were on the turn. Waste not want not and all that.

I've made Banana Cake before, which is a jolly decent cake. At least I like it. However, I was concerned the discerning palates might find banana on its own a bit bland, so I decided to jazz it up a bit with choccy chips. Just for fun, I decided to try a new recipe (Here from - allrecipes.co.uk), (which I adapted slightly, of course).

Ingredients:

250gs Banana's. Which was 2 1/2 narnis
200gs plain flour
125gs Caster sugar
1 egg
120gs unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons milk
80gs milk and plain chocolate chips
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Method, oh how I love the easy stuff:

Mash banana's and mix with everything else
Line a baking tin with greaseproof, greasing the paper too, just to make sure
In to the oven @170c for 40-45 minutes OR until a knife comes out clean (my oven seems to cook pretty slow, taking quite a bit longer than allrecipes said)

Drum roll.......

Because this was still warm when I set off, I transported it in a oh so glamorous carrier bag. The smell from it though was lush. It was still had a nice just-baked-warmth by the time we'd got to the puddings.

Word quickly got round that in an amongst the Cadbury Chocolate rolls and the like there was warm home made cake and it was gone so quickly I only just managed to get a piece myself.

Should have put more Choccy chips in. But other than that a definate success.

Lovely Choclette - this may be my first ever recipe with Chocolate in, I can't think of any others! Quick, quick - can you start a competition that allows bananas based baked chocolate products?

257: Strange Fruit

2011-09-21T19:33:00.001+01:00

My raspberries continue to grow sporadically; mostly just two or three ripe at any one time. The tomatoes are dying a slow death, but are there's still some small ones to be picked. So, off I toddled into the garden to get whatever's there.

I spotted a few weeds in and amongst the strawberry patch:

So allowing myself to be rather too easily distracted from what I should have doing, I pulled a few weeds out. And lo, there were strawberrys; only a couple but ripe big strawberrys.

I'm only too happy about this, but completely confused. Earlier in the year, I had three strawberry plants - which produced very little, but everything they did produce was - as tradition decrees - in time for Wimbledon. The plants have multiplied and the new ones are autmun producers. Strange days indeed.

Whilst down this end of the garden (not that it's a particularly big garden), I stripped my Apple tree. Eight apples. I don't think is too bad for it's first year - although I can't claim any success for my gardening here - it's only been planted two months. I might try an applie pie.

By the time I came in, my harvest looked like this.....

I bet proper gardeners don't get half-filled three crop cereal bowl harvests! At this time of year though, I'm happy for whatever I get.

256: Happy 6th Anniversary

2011-09-13T09:19:00.000+01:00

This isn't a bloggy-versary; although it's quite nice to celebrate not having given up on this yet - but this is my real anniversary. Yay! Married 6 years! Happy days indeed.

The proper presents for 6 years are: Iron, Sugar or Cala Lillies. Well, I thought I might not be married too much longer if I bought her an Iron, or any Iron cookware; which would be far too obviously me buying a present for me (which I'm pretty good at anyway). So, I thought I'd focus in on the Sugar....

So, here's what I got; a cake with lots and lots of icing - soooo much sugar. I changed things round a bit from the picture example of this cake. That had sticks of rock - but I swapped them for a Lilly. The lady was resting her footsies on a crab - and I swapped that for an Iron. Clearly an Iron's got no place on a beach; but it got the trio of 6 year presents in there. I also swapped the lady holding an Ice-Cream for Champers; very much more Mrs VegBox's style.

I'd love to claim that I made this cake; but other than ordering and paying for it, I wasn't involved. Probably a good thing too; it wouldn't have looked anything like this if I'd had a go.

255: Slim Pickings....Courgette Rice....is quite nice

2011-09-06T17:50:00.000+01:00

Courgette production is now dying off. One of the plants has died completely and the other three are just of limping along. The tomatoes likewise continue to look very sorry for themselves. Tiny little pea sized tomatoes are ripening; if I leave them, they don't get any bigger they just split on the plant. Here's the latest batch of tomatoes, courgettes and a mighty 5 raspberries (woo-hoo!)

Sunday found me in no mood to go shopping, as Saturday we'd been at a wedding and foolishly I'd also agreed to follow up this over-exurberance with a morning 10k race. Truly daft. I'm 42, I ought to have learned by now. So, by the time I returned, there was no shifting my rear from the settee.

By the time I was able to move again, the shops were shut and the fresh food in the house amounted to:
- a chicken
- the above tiny courgettes and tomatoes
- the abundant garlic and onion I've previously reaped

Fingers firmly crossed, the Chicken was roasting. Nothing interesting to report there; just plenty of salt of top to ensure a nice cripsy skin. To serve with it though, I needed a filler - which the easiest I could find was rice. And lo, courgette rice was born!

Chopped (fairly fine) and slowly fried two medium onions in olive oil
Added three large choped cloves of garlic (well..... it needs some taste) and plenty of salt and pepper
Cut into 1cm pieces the courgettes and then added these also; turning the heat up so that they gained a bit of colour but only cook for a short amount of time so they retain some crunch
Chopped and added the tomatoes
.....meanwhile I boiled a pan of rice; attempting to time this to be cooked by the time the tomatoes had suitably mushed down into my vegetable mix
Drain the rice; mix
Eat

And here it is. Not the most elegant meal; even by my own inelegant standards. However, with all that garlic, some moistness from the tomato and some bite to the courgette it was all pretty decent. It would even have been healthy too if I hadn't eaten all the lovely lovely chicken skin. Oh well.

254: Got any Garlic?

2011-08-23T12:06:00.000+01:00

My 2nd favourite joke goes like....

A Duck walks in to a bar and says to the Barman "Got any bread?"
Barman "No, sorry"
Duck "Got any bread?"
Barman "No, I told you I haven't"
Duck "Got any bread?"
Barman "No - and if you ask again, I'll nail your beak to the bar"
Duck "Got any nails?"
Barman "No"
Duck "Got any bread?"

I still don't really know why it makes me laugh. But if a Duck were to pop round my house and ask if I have any Garlic, I'd be able to spare him some.

This is the first crop out of my garden. In addition to this, I've also got another dozen bulbs in my work's allotment (at which I'm the only grower - yay!) and some more in a bucket.

They all seem to have come out ok; although the bucket ones are a bit small. I tried drying them outside; but it kept raining, so I've trimmed them and put them in a (big) bowl on the kitchen window. Handy for cooking and surprisingly I've not been told off for this yet.

Maybe next year, I'll develop on to the advanced class of making strings of garlic and onions. Until then, vampires beware!

PS: Just in case you're wondering; my favourite joke is about a man with an orange for a head.