dinner

Halloween pasta

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

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The night before last I woke up in the middle of the night to hear Bert calling for me. I went into his room and he pointed sadly at some sick on his bed and said, ‘poor old Bert.’ As I gathered up his bedding, blanket, Rex the dinosaur and John the rabbit to be washed he shouted, ‘no, not John! Not the dryer for John!’ It was like Sophie’s Choice on a tiny scale.

(Spoiler: John was fine.)

There are good parenting days. And there are days when I’m constantly infuriated at dinosaurs being smashed onto tables, wee accidents less than a minute after he’s refused to try for a wee, denials of the need to nap and sulks at the end of Dinosaur Train – alongside teetering washing baskets, sinks and dishwashers both full of washing up and clients that promise work then disappear. And then I see a serious little face with round cheeks and I apologise, again, for being grumpy.

Today I mostly feel like this picture. Poor old Bert.

Serves 2-3

200g pureed pumpkin (the scrapings from our T-Rex pumpkin – what, you can’t see it? – blitzed in the blender till smooth)

4 rashers streaky bacon, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 teaspoons chopped or dried rosemary

1/2 bag of spiral pasta

50g grated mozzerella

100g mixed grated Cheddar and Parmesan

Fry the bacon with the garlic and rosemary till it’s starting to crisp. At the same time, boil the pasta till it’s just done. Drain the pasta, put it back in the pan and combine it with the bacon mix and pumpkin, stirring till the pasta’s well coated with pumpkin and the bacon’s evenly distributed. Stir the mozzeralla through more roughly so there are pockets of it melting into the pasta and tip the lot into an overproof dish. Top with the Cheddar and Parmesan and cook at gas mark 4/ 180 for half an hour, till the top’s golden and bubbling.

The other 364 days of the year you could subsitute any other squash for the pumpkin.

We’re having ours with broccoli.

 

Marmite and pancetta pasta

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How can something so wrong feel so right?

Serves 2

200 diced pancetta

Splash of oil for frying

Pasta

Knob of butter

50g grated cheddar cheese

2 teaspoons marmite

Grated parmesan

Me and Bert have just got back from a lovely couple of days in Brighton. All very relaxing except driving on a busy M25 with a back seat passenger shouting ‘CRASH!!!!’ at random intervals.

I think this is a BBC Good Food recipe. If you use the quick cook pasta, the whole thing takes five minutes. Ideal for after a 3 hour drive that’s commentated on as if it’s a Lego Juniors iPad game.

Cook the pasta, scooping out about half a cup of the cooking water towards the end of the cooking time.

Meanwhile fry the pancetta in oil till it’s starting to crisp.

Return the cooked, drained pasta to the pan and quickly add the cheese, butter and marmite, stirring through till melted, and a splash or two of the pasta water – enough to make a silky sauce to coat the pasta. Add the pancetta and serve with grated parmesan.

Chicken skewers, veg fritters and potato croquettes

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A one tray in the oven meal, using leftovers, but you could use fresh veg. As I handed it to Bert he said, ‘mmm, Bert like – very nice. Thank you Mummy!’ What an angel. He didn’t eat the fritters but I knew that was pushing it since the veg were a. visible and b. not raw or frozen.

Eaten on the sofa under a duvet because I thought he was ill, but he ate all of his (except the fritters of course), stole some of mine then had 3 portions of strawberry yoghurt. I think I’ve been had.

The fritters recipe is based on a recipe in the fantastic Fast Days and Feast Days by Ellie Pear.

Served 2

For the fritters:

1 small carrot, grated

Mixed leftover veg – we had peas and savoy cabbage – chopped if not already in smallish pieces

1/2 block of haloumi (100g), grated

1 egg

2 dessert spoons plain flour

Salt

A few leaves of fresh mint, finely chopped

For the croquettes:

Leftover mash

1 egg, beaten

Flour to dust

Storecupboard golden breadcrumbs

For the chicken skewers:

1 chicken breast, cubed

2 teaspoons dried rosemary

dessert spoon olive oil

dessert spoon lemon juice

2 large cloves garlic, crushed

Combine all the ingredients for the fritters, form into four patties and put on a large baking tray.

Form the mash into little barrel shapes, dush in flour, roll in egg and then coat in breadcrumbs. Put them on the same baking tray and put the tray in the fridge for an hour or two.

Combine the chicken in a dish with the rest of the marinade ingredients and pop in the fridge for an hour or two. Preheat the oven to 200/ gas mark 7, then thread the marinated chicken onto skewers and put on the same baking tray as the veg.

Put everything in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning everything once halfway through. Ketchup for dipping if you’re a small boy.

The ‘best Ben’s ever had’ roast belly pork and crackling

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The title says it all. Back of the net.

Some days all I think about is pork crackling.

This was a small piece that served three, but the method applies whatever the size of the meat, and works with shoulder of pork too.

1 piece of belly pork, skin scored

Sea salt, liberal quantities (about a dessert spoon)

I onion

Take the pork out of the fridge first thing in the morning. Boil a kettle, run the hot water over the pork skin, then take the pork out of the sink and wrap the whole thing in kitchen towel to dry it and get it to room temperature. The skin needs to be completely dry and the meat needs to be at room temperature before you start.

When you’re ready to cook, pre heat the oven to 220/ gas mark 8. Pat the skin completely dry and sprinkle on the salt, rubbing it into the skin scores as much as you can. Slice the onion, skin still on, into 1cm slices and place on a baking sheet as a platform for the pork. The pork goes on top and into the hot oven for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes turn the oven down as low as it will go (gas mark 1/130), tip a glass of water in the roasting pan (or cider of you have it), cover with foil and cook for 5-6 hours. Then turn the oven back up to full for 20 minutes, getting the grill hot at the same time. Put the pork under the grill till the crackling puffs up, watching it very closely as it goes very quickly and will catch and burn if you’re not careful. The pork can rest while you finish up but it doesn’t need to because it’s been cooked so slowly.

The crackling will be crisp and crunchy with soft, tasty, chewy bits underneath, and the pork will be melting.

Make the gravy with the onion still in the tin. You’ll have to sieve the gravy at the end, but it gives the gravy a brilliantly deep colour and taste.

Doughballs

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I met Bert’s stepbrother, Ben, nine years ago when he was seven. I’ve cooked him birthday cakes, created special, birthday evening versions of his favourite dinner (sausage and mash), come up with our regular Christmas Eve tradition of baked ham and Dauphinois potatoes followed by sticky toffee pudding, handed him warm pancakes while he was playing FIFA or killing zombies, made pizza, self-saucing pudding and roast pork with crackling… I’ve been cooking for Bert since he was born, if you count producing breastmilk as cooking, coming up with all kinds of combinations of pureed veg, introducing him to curry, showing him how to make biscuits, threading meat onto tiny skewers, cooking veg perfectly and also hiding it in sauces to hit it from both angles. I’ve made him warm banana pancakes, fruit bread and peach and honey cake.

They’ve refused things politely (‘Too nice’ – Bert, ‘No thank you, thank you’ – Ben), eaten them happily, offered them to Ray and thrown them across the room (Bert, at least). But they’ve largely just accepted warm, home made food as something that happens. (I wouldn’t really want it any other way.)

But I hand them both a plate of doughballs (zero imagination, 5 mins active prep, 10 mins cooking time) and they practically stand up in unison and start singing Hallelujah while saluting me.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere, I just don’t know what it is.

Makes about 25

150ml warm water

7g dried yeast

225g strong bread flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

Mix everything together and kneed for about eight minutes. I do the lot in a mixer. Cover and leave to rise for an hour. Then form the dough into small balls, about 2cm diameter, place on a baking tray, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise for about another hour. Your hands need to be dry and not sticky when you roll them, so it’s worth keeping a bowl of water and a tea towel next to you.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180/ gas mark 4 (gas mark 5 in our oven, which is a bit cool). Cook for 8-10 minutes, till just starting to turn pale golden brown. Accept that praise isn’t always proportionate to effort. Serve with little pots of garlic butter or plain butter to dip into.

Bert ate maybe eight or nine. Then a bowl of pasta bake. Then a chocolate and secret-beetroot brownie.

Slow-cooked lamb ragu

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

Here’s Bert in his autumn knitwear, no doubt thinking about dinosaurs. At the moment I have to dance like a dinosaur every night before bed. ‘Are you a dinosaur rex? Then dance!’ I don’t feel that I’m allowed to answer, ‘no. No, I’m not.’

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Serves 4-6 (or 2 with leftovers for a pasta bake)

Splash of olive oil

2 carrots, grated

1 leek, sliced

5 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon dried oregano or finely chopped leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary or finely chopped leaves

Finely grated zest half a lemon

1 tin plum tomatoes

1 dessert spoon tomato puree

Salt and pepper

500g of a lamb leg, ideally whole with bone in; if not, diced

Pasta and parmesan to serve

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 2 (140-150).

Fry the carrots, leek and garlic gently in the olive oil till they soften. Add the herbs, puree and lemon zest then nestle the lamb in the middle and tip over the tinned tomatoes. Season, bring to a fast simmer/ slow boil and cover with a lid. Put in the oven and slow cook for 4-6 hours, by which time the lamb should fall apart and the veg should have dissolved into the tomatoes. Pull the meat off the bone with a fork and stir into the sauce. If it’s slightly watery you might want to reduce it a little on the hob before serving.

Stir the sauce through hot pasta and add grated parmesan at the table. Bert had red pepper batons on the side, I had buttered, wilted spinach.

Bert’s latest thing when I serve him dinner is to push it away complaining that it’s ‘too nice’. This wasn’t too nice. I’m so confused – should I be pleased or offended?

Anyway, we’re going to have a pasta bake with the leftovers stirred into pasta and topped with bechemal sauce and then mozzeralla, and baked in the oven for 30 minutes. It’s really no wonder I need to be on the 5|2 diet – it’s Friday and I’m already thinking about Monday’s dinner.

Afterwards we had warm, homemade chocolate (and beetroot) brownies and cream, with chocolate oozing out into pools on the plate and the beetroot undetectable, just giving a bit of extra richness and depth. They were definitely not ‘too nice’ to eat.

Mini schnitzel

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If you’re in that precise frame of mind that combines a delight in violence with the enjoyment of repetitive tasks, I highly recommend you cook this. Luckily I’m in that frame of mind most of the time.

I had some diced pork in and thought I’d make tiny pork schnitzels, the size of chicken nuggets. Insane? Maybe.

I experimented with an oatcake crumb coating too, since we seem to eat so much white flour.

Serves 2

About 150g of diced pork – I’m on a 5/2 day (too much toddler group cake) so I didn’t make much for myself

4 oatcakes, blitzed to a fine crumb

Zest of half a lemon, finely grated

Teaspoon of dried sage

Whole milk

Bash each piece of pork with a rolling pin till it’s thin, then tip the lot into a bowl and cover with whole milk. Leave to further tenderize for an hour or two. Combine the crumbs, lemon zest and sage.

Take the pork out of the milk and coat in the crumb mixture. Lay on a baking tray and bake in a hot oven for 20 minutes, turning over halfway through.

We had ours with home made oven chips and green veg. Serve with redcurrent jelly for Austrian authenticity.

 

Rum-marinated steaks

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Here’s Bert, seemingly caught in the act of playing tiddly winks with a knife. And in other bad parenting news he’s been watching Dinosaur Train on Netflix with the dedication with which the rest of us are getting through Stranger Things. It’s basically Breaking Bad for todders.

Oh, and eating rum marinated meat.

Enough marinade to serve 4-6

80ml white rum or vodka

60ml olive oil

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried rosemary

Loads and loads of grated black pepper – grate till it seems like a lot then grate some more

Teaspoon of sea salt (or a sprinkling of table salt)

Minute beef steaks or lamb steaks

Mix all the marinade ingredients together and add the meat. Cover and marinate for at least three hours at room temperature or for a day or two in the fridge.

Remove from the marinade, oil a hot pan and cook the minute steaks for a minute or so on each side (lamb steaks or thicker steaks will take from 6 to 8 minutes depending on how thick they are).

I then cut Bert’s into smaller pieces and threaded it onto a skewer – a beef lollipop marinated in rum and threaded onto a sharp stick, what could possibly go wrong here?

As I carried it in, he said ‘wow’. Cheers Bert!

We had ours with home made oven chips and roast squash, red onion and green leaf salad. Bert had chips and still-frozen peas.

Best macaroni cheese

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Oh yes, today was a bit like this. Furious that I had the phone at the dinner table (fair enough). Furious that when I suggested we paint a picture and I agreed to do all the painting, I didn’t do it right (fair enough). Furious that I let the water out of the bath before he’d done his ‘bear city’ (= Bare Necessities) back stroke in the shallow water (fair enough). Furious that I didn’t let him stay in the car while I went to Sainsbury’s. Not fair enough. I explained that this is illegal and we proceeded on the promise of a plastic dinosaur.

On the plus side, we had our first totally dry nappy free day, and macaroni cheese for dinner. High five.

Serves 4

250g (1/2 a bag) of macaroni

160g pancetta cubes (two of the little conjoined tubs)

Dash of olive oil for frying pancetta

1 dessert spoon plain flour

1 dessert spoon butter

300ml whole milk

150g cheese – a mix of grated mozzerella, crumbled feta and grated parmesan (the mix of cheese is what makes it good) (oh, and the salty, crisp pancetta) (and the breadcrumbs)

Black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons of toasted breadcrumbs

Put the pasta on to boil, cooking it for a minute or two short of the suggested cooking time. Meanwhile fry the pancetta cubes till they start to crisp.

Melt the butter and stir in the flour, cooking briefly on a low heat to make a roux. Gradually add the milk, stirring well to avoid lumps. Cook on a low heat for about five minutes to thicken then stir in the cheese and black pepper. Combine with the drained pasta and pancetta and tip the lot into an oven proof dish. Top with the breadcrumbs and bake at 180 or gas mark 4 for 30 minutes.

Leave out the pancetta and substitute parboiled (5-7 minutes) cauliflower florets for the pasta, and this is our best ever cauli cheese recipe too. For both you want the cheese sauce a little thicker than usual (my mum’s tip). You could switch the pancetta for chunks of roast squash for a vege version.

This is the first time in 3 days that Bert hasn’t glanced at his evening meal, said ‘bleurgh’ and walked off.

 

Buttery tomato pasta sauce

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I didn’t make this, Bert’s dad did. Me and Bert created masterpieces from dinosaur stickers while alarming and intriguing phases like ‘it’s taken a whole pat of butter!!’ floated through from the kitchen. I imagine he’s setting up a rival blog as we speak.

It’s a much softer, mellower tomato sauce than the usual. It was delicious.

Enough sauce to serve 6-8 people

2 tins of plum tomatoes and their juice

5 TABLESPOONS OF BUTTER!!!

1 onion, peeled and halved

Pinch of salt

A few torn basil leaves and grated Parmesan to serve

The tomatoes, butter and onion go in a saucepan with a little salt. Bring to a simmer and stir now and then to break up the tomatoes. Cook gently for 45 minutes – the sauce should be reduced and the tomatoes a thick pulp. Remove the onion.

Stir enough through cooked pasta to coat it thickly but not drown it. Top with a few torn basil leaves and a sprinkling of Parmesan.

Bert took a mouthful then stared dreamily into space. I asked him what he was thinking about – green, roaring dinosaurs of course!