Braised lamb in red wine

A really tasty and heartwarming dish.

Sear a leg of lamb or lamb shanks until browned. Place in a casserole dish.

Saute a chopped onion in butter until golden. Add chopped carrots and garlic. Add tomato paste and stir until the vegetables are coated. Pour in 2 cups of stock, a can of tomatoes, and a cup of red wine. Bring to the boil, then add everything to the casserole dish.

Place in the oven and cook for at least 2 hours. Longer if it's a big piece of meat. This dish can go long and slow for ages until the lamb falls off the bone.

Good with mashed potatoes.

Pork in creamy mushroom sauce

This was an off-the-cuff concoction that worked pretty well. Not our normal light summer fare, but then this is hardly a normal summer :)

In a large frying pan, fry pork loin chops until browned both sides. Add a generous handful of sliced mushrooms - we usually go for the chestnut button mushrooms rather than their white cousins, for extra flavor. Once the mushrooms have browned a bit on a high heat, add a healthy slosh of brandy and let it bubble until most of the liquid has evaporated. Stir and turn things over from time to time to make sure they don't stick. Reduce the heat and add a cup or two of thick cream, then bring back to the boil until the sauce is thick and creamy.

Serve with choice of carbs and healthy stuff. We had this with mash and corn on the cob this evening.

Corned beef hash

This is a simple dish, but remarkably tasty and filling. It uses a can of corned beef - NOT the same thing as Spam!

Fry a finely chopped onion until soft. Add a can of corned beef and break the meat down into smallish chunks with a spoon. Keep frying, stirring to prevent the mix from catching on the pan, until the meat breaks down into a mush. Add a can of baked beans and stir in a generous squirt of tomato ketchup. Keep cooking on low until the mixture thickens up a bit.

Serve with mashed potatoes and veg.

Mince'n'onions

Another filling British dish for the "meat & two veg" brigade :)

This is something we hadn't done for years, thinking the kids would likely turn their noses up at it, but it turned out to be a hit!

Fry a chopped onion until soft. Add ground beef or turkey and cook until browned. Make up a couple of cups of beef stock, laced with good squirts of tomato ketchup and HP sauce and stir into the meat. Leave to simmer until the liquid has reduced to a thick gravy.

Serve with mashed potatoes and assorted veg.

Sausage & chips (or mash)

A simple and filling British staple.

Sausages - either fry or cook in the oven until browned.

Chips - these days we use a fryer that uses only a spoonful of oil. Chipped or diced potatoes come out dry and crispy.

Serve with veg, or baked beans, or salad.

Alternatively do mashed potatoes for that great comfort dish bangers'n'mash. If doing that, it's good to fry the sausages along with a sliced onion, then near the end add stock and gravy mixture to make an onion gravy.

Chicken chasseur

This is our simple take on a famous dish.

Fry a chopped onion until soft, then brown some chicken pieces - breasts or thighs either on or off the bone, whatever takes your fancy. Fry some mushrooms - either whole if they're small, or cut into quarters. Place everything into a casserole dish along with some diced carrots and a drained can of Romano or white kidney beans. Pour in some stock - or we use a sachet of mushroom gravy for added flavor. Cover and put in the oven for an hour or so. This is a dish you can prepare and leave to cook long and slow.

Serve with rice or mashed potatoes.

Fish cakes

There's a bit more preparation for this dish that makes it more suitable for when you have a bit of time and patience, but home-made fish cakes are delicious any time of year.

Quantities (as always) depend on how many people you want to feed, but I reckon on using two small tins of salmon (200g/8oz size) to feed four people. You then want enough potatoes to end up with somewhere between two and three times the amount of potato to salmon.

Boil the potatoes until mashable, and mash with an egg and a knob of butter. You want the mash to be fairly dry at this stage because it will get liquid from the fish, and you don't want it ending up sloppy.

Drain the salmon and remove any bones. Mash into the potatoes.

Where you go from here depends on taste. You can make the cakes plain (just potato and salmon) but we zing it up with the following: A bunch of spring onions (salad onions/green onions), a bunch of coriander (cilantro) and we used to include a couple of red chilis but nowadays found a tablespoon of pickled ginger instead adds a wonderful flavor. Chop everything very finely and mix in.

Form the mixture into patties, flour, and fry until the outside turns golden. This is where you don't want the mixture too moist or the cakes will collapse when you try to turn them in the pan!

Serve with salad and relish.

A richer variation for a special treat, instead of canned salmon use some picked cooked crab meat and shrimp (in roughly equal quantities).

Pork with apple and ginger

This is a dish we haven't done in a while. It used to be a regular before the kids came along, but not so much in recent years. Definitely something to do more often, because this evening it got scarfed down with relish!

Fry a finely-chopped onion. Add in a good measure of grated or finely-chopped ginger (anything up to 1" cubed, depending on how you like your ginger). Once the onion and ginger are softened, add a clove or two of chopped garlic and some pork loin chops. Turn them over until browned. Add a peeled and chopped apple, and enough apple juice to cover the ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer until the meat is tender. A few minutes before serving, thicken the sauce with a little cornstarch.

Serve with rice, fries, or mashed potatoes, and veg or salad.

Cottage pie

One of our regular favorites:

Boil some potatoes until soft enough to mash. Mash them with a knob of butter, an egg, and add enough cream to produce a soft consistency.

Meanwhile, fry a chopped onion and ground meat - either beef, turkey, or lamb. Once the meat is cooked, add a can of baked beans, a couple of finely-diced carrots, and optionally a spoonful of beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, and either brown sauce or tomato ketchup for flavor and body.

Decant the meat sauce into a casserole dish, spread the mashed potatoes over the top, sprinkle with grated cheese and pop under the grill until the cheese is melted and browned.

Fish pie

No list of ingredients today, just directions. This is supposed to be a quick & easy reference, after all.

Make a roux sauce (melt butter, add flour to make a thick paste, cook for a few minutes over a low heat then slowly add milk whisking out any lumps to make a thick sauce). Optionally add a spoonful of chicken stock paste and a pinch of garlic powder to add flavor. Add in diced pieces of white fish, shrimp, and any other seafood you fancy (scallops, squid...) and stir them in to cook.

Boil and mash potatoes with an egg, a knob of butter, and cream or milk.

Pour the fish sauce into a baking dish and spoon the mashed potatoes over the top. The sauce needs to be thick enough to allow you to spread the mash over the top - too thin and dollops of potato will sink and float around like icebergs :)

If you want to get fancy, you can use a fork to make pretty patterns on the top.

Sprinkle grated cheese over the top and pop into the oven until the topping is nicely browned.

Serve with veg or salad, and lashings of chilled white wine.