spices

Moroccan spiced pork belly and bean casserole

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porkbelly

I was expecting five for Sunday dinner and ended up with two, so we had a lot of leftover slow roast pork belly. Finally the pick of the crackling though, after years of listening to stealthy crunching in the kitchen after Bert’s dad offered to carve.

Serves 3-4

1 onion, diced

Splash of olive oil

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tin flageolet beans, drained

Salt to taste

Leftover slow roast pork belly, cut into good chunks – each piece about 2cm cubed

Saute in the onion in the oil in a casserole dish or large saucepan. When it’s translucent add the spices and fry till fragrant. Then add the tinned tomatoes and beans, season and stir through the chunked meat. You could cook this on a simmer for about half an hour, adding the meat in the last 10 minutes, but I took advantage of having a slow oven constantly on in the form of an Aga and brought it to a steady simmer then put in the simmering oven (or very low oven) for a couple of hours. You don’t really notice the spices, they just add a soft, background warmth. It’s a bit like a gentle cassoulet, with butter-soft meat and small, tender beans.

It has the added benefit of making your toddler fart in the bath and laugh like a drain. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not in John-the-small-fabric-rabbit’s shoes tonight.

Yoghurt marinated lamb kebabs

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lambkebab

Served 3

500g lamb steaks, cut into chunks

1 red pepper, cut into chunks

2 red onions or large shallots, cut into chunks

2 tablespoons plain yoghurt

1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds crushed with 1 clove of garlic and salt to taste

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon turmeric

Mix the yoghurt with the spices and marinate the lamb in it for about an hour. With a yoghurt marinade, you don’t want to marinate too long or the lamb gets tough. (I think the marinade is originally a Nigel Slater recipe.) Thread onto skewers with the veg and cook on a high heat – in a hot pan or under a hot grill – for 10-15 minutes. In a very tradition division of labour, Bert’s dad barbequed them while I made some flat breads and Bert moved water from one container to another.

We had it ours with salad. Bert looked at a salad leaf with the kind of horrified morbid curiosity most of us reserve for a road accident. Have I read somewhere that babies are programmed to avoid greens in case they’re poisonous? Bert is in no danger of being poisoned by greens.

Fragrant lamb tagine

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tagine

Bert’s dad described this and the nectarine and almond cake as my ‘most competent meal’ in a while. Make of that what you will.

Served 2.5 though could happily have served 3.5

Glug olive oil

1 red onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

500g diced lamb

3-4 carrots, chopped into chunks

1 courgette, chopped into chunks

1 tin chopped tomatoes and half the empty tin of boiled water

1 low salt stock cube

1 dessert spoon tomato puree

1 dessert spoon honey

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon tumeric

1 teaspoon ground ginger

Pinch saffron

1/2 stick of cinnamon

Handful of dried apricots (the soft, dark brown ones), chopped

In a perfect world, you’d brown the veg and meat separately and in batches, but I don’t think it makes enough difference to the taste to be worth it, and means the whole prep here takes about 10 minutes. More time to hide remote controls and phones, and fish computer mice and batteries out of the dishwasher.

Brown the onion, garlic and lamb in the oil and then add the rest of the veg. Stir through the spices, apricots, tinned tomatoes, stock cube and water, tomato puree and honey, and season. Bring to a fast simmer then cook in a slow oven for 2-3 hours. (Mine was in the bottom of the Aga for 3 hours.) We had ours with buttered couscous and a dollop of yoghurt. Bert was initially suspicious and then chinned it. He did not eat any courgette.

Gently spiced crunchy chicken couscous

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couscous3

Last night we got back from the holiday that made us all realise that holidays were no longer holidays. This morning Bert greeted Ray (our long-suffering dog) with rapturous delight and offered him a dummy and a soft teddy bear. We all greeted stair gates and child locks with relief and pleasure. And we cooked chicken couscous.

This is an adapted Leon recipe.

Serves 2.5-3

3-4 chicken breasts

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon mild curry powder

1/2 teaspoon garam masala

Splash olive oil

1/2 packet of couscous

Another splash of olive oil

1/2 dessert spoon butter

4-6 tomatoes

4 cloves garlic, crushed, and combined with a tablespoon of olive oil

To garnish adult portions – chopped coriander, chopped mint, toasted pinenuts

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, put in an oven proof dish and coat with the spices and oil. Meanwhile, put the couscous in a bowl, stir through a splash of oil till all the grains are coated and cover with boiling water. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and give it five minutes for the water to absorb before stiring it through the chicken. Dot the butter on top and bake in a hot oven (200 degrees or near the top of an Aga roasting oven) for 25 minutes.

Chop the tomatoes into generous pieces, coat in the garlic and oil and put on the next shelf down in the oven for 20 minutes. (If you combine the garlic with the oil first, it won’t burn.)

If your baby is a better baby than mine, try him or her on the tomatoes.

If your baby is an even better baby, try them on the herb garnish.

Pulled pork soft rolls with sweet apple slaw

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pulled pork

Normally, pulled pork is a whole joint and, to be honest, the reason I’m using diced pork is because we keep getting sent it in our meat delivery. This recipe takes a long time but is very low maintenance.

Even at the time of writing (as it’s in the oven at lunchtime), I have very low expectations of Bert with the slaw, but you never know and my theory is keep offering till they say yes. (In any other context that approach is a little stalker-y.) He will definitely demolish the meat and the bread and there’s always still-frozen peas as a mysteriously fail-safe veg.

Served 2.5

500g diced pork

Dash olive oil

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

Handful of sage leaves, snipped into shreds

A little salt

A good grind of black pepper

Soft white rolls (I normally serve wholemeal but I feel this recipe needs white)

For the slaw:

2 carrots, thickly grated

1 apple, thickly grated

1 red onion, thickly grated

A couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise

1 teaspoon horseradish sauce

Briefly fry the spices in the oil, then add the meat and brown it. Season, put a lid on and transfer it all to a very low oven for about 5 hours.

Combine all the ingredients for the slaw, split and butter the rolls and pull the cooked pork apart with a couple of forks and you’re good to go.

Kofta meatballs and yoghurt dip

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kofta

Served 2.5

For the meatballs:

500g minced lamb

1-2 teaspoons of sumac or the grated zest of half a lemon

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 a small packet of pistachios, crushed (I blitzed them in the Nutribullet)

For the yoghurt dip:

1/3 of a cucumber, grated

4 dessert spoons plain yoghurt

1/2 garlic clove, crushed

Dash each of red wine vinegar and olive oil – say 1/3 to half a dessert spoon

Salt and pepper

Combine all the meatball ingredients and form into small balls. I think ‘walnut sized’ is the standard measurement but mine tend to be a bit bigger than that. I got 21 meatballs from this mixture. Pop on a baking sheet at 180 degrees (or the middle of the Aga roasting oven) for about 20 minutes.

Combine all the other ingredients to make the dip while your baby explores the garden with Daddy and a spaniel that has Woody Allen’s manic neurosis but not his wit. Kiss the baby through the window a couple of times and the meatballs should be done.

We had ours with rice and salad – it would be great with flatbreads but for some reason flatbreads are on Bert’s (very short) black list. Not that Bert ate the salad of course, but it’s good to show him a leaf every now and then.

Creamy chicken curry

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creamychicken

This is a version of an absolutely delicious Nigel Slater recipe. I can’t honestly claim it’s better than the original, but it is a bit more toddler friendly.

Served 2.5. Bert ate so much we’re worried we’ll wither away as he swells to giant proportions.

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

The seeds from 10 cardamom pods

1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes

1 tablespoon sunflower oil

2 small onions, diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

400g diced chicken

1 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

6 diced tomatoes

4 tablespoons plain yoghurt

Juice of half a lemon

1 tablespoon creme fraiche

Small bunch of coriander, finely chopped.

Crush the teaspoon of cumin seeds with the cardamom seeds, combine with the sunflower oil and chilli flakes and then toss the chicken in the oily spice. Fry the onion, garlic and turmeric in a bit more oil, then add the rest of the cumin seeds, the chicken, the tomatoes and the yoghurt. Bring to a fast simmer then turn the heat down and cook for about 30 minutes.

Remove the chicken, add the lemon juice and turn the heat right up, reducing the yellow sauce down to a thick sludge. Then return the chicken and stir through the creme fraiche and coriander. We had ours with rice and spicy cauliflower.

Bert’s hair was a beautiful, crisp, pale yellow by the end of this meal.

Granola

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granola

This isn’t my recipe, but we eat it all the time.

This lasts us a week, but I think it’s already clear that we’re very, very greedy

250g porridge oats

150g mixed seeds

100g dried fruit

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of honey, melted together

Spread the oats out onto a tray and toast in the oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes. (In the Aga, it seems to burn easily so I do it on the lowest rung for 7 minutes.) Add the seeds and toast for another 5 minutes in theory, 3 minutes in our Aga. Mix together with the fruit, spice and melted butter and honey and spread out to cool.

We have it with yoghurt and fruit. Amazed that Bert eats it, but he does. (He doesn’t yet know what a cocopop is.)

Chicken tikka masala and spiced cauliflower

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curry

Serves 2.5

For the chicken:

2 chicken legs (breasts would do just as nicely, I just had legs in the fridge)

A thumb of ginger, grated

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

2 teaspoons of garam masala

4 dessert spoons plain yoghurt

For the sauce:

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

Glug of sunflower oil

1 tin of tomatoes

1/2 tin coconut milk

2/3 cup ground almonds

For the cauliflower:

1 cauliflower in small florets

1 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 teaspoon turmeric

Good couple of glugs of sunflower oil

This looks like a lot of ingredients but all the steps are pretty easy. For the chicken, combine all the marinade ingredients, coat the chicken in it and leave it in the fridge under cling film for about 3-4 hours. (Overnight would probably be even better but I’m not that well organised – I did it while Bert was napping and dreaming about chocolate buttons, blueberries and grabbing the soft fur of put-upon spaniels.)

For the masala sauce, fry the onion and garlic, add the liquids and almonds and simmer for around 15-20 minutes. Blitz to a smooth sauce before serving.

Put your chicken in a hot oven (200-220 degrees or near the top of the Aga roasting oven) for about 40 minutes. At the same time, toss the cauliflower in the spices and oil and cook in a moderate oven (180 degrees or the middle of the Aga roasting oven) for 30 minutes. The cauliflower’s a Leon recipe so I can’t take credit but it is bloody delicious.

We had ours with rice.

Baked chicken sag aloo and easy coconut naan

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gobi

Serves 1.5; probably more, but I was greedy

For the naans:

100g self raising flour

75ml water

1 teaspoon melted butter

25g dessicated coconut

For the curry:

1/2 an onion

2cm fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves

1 dessert spoon garam masala

Tablespoon sunflower or vegetable oil

1-2 chicken breasts in bite sized pieces

2 or 3 small potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

2 large handfuls spinach, chopped

200ml passata

Half a can of coconut milk

Mix the ingredients for the bread into a dough and knead for a couple of minutes till smooth.

Boil the potatoes till tender. Blitz the onions, garlic and ginger in a food processor and fry in the oil with the spices till the onion’s translucent and the spices are warmly fragrant. Add the chicken and brown, then add the liquid and bring to a fast simmer. Put the spinach and potatoes into an oven proof dish, pour over the chicken and sauce mixture and pop in the oven at 180 degrees (or the middle of an Aga roasting oven) for half an hour.

Cut the dough in half and roll out to two teardrop shaped pieces about 1cm thick. Don’t worry too much about the shape unless you have a particularly critical baby. Put them under a hot grill for 7-10 minutes, keeping an eye on them. You want them to be soft and pillowy, not crisp.

As you can see, Bert had his with a side of snot.

The curry’s warm and spicy but not hot. It would be nice without the chicken, too.