Potato gratin

We like trying a new spin on potatoes every once in a while, and this random discovery was an all-round hit. In some ways it's similar to Duphinoise potatoes, but a lot richer. It does take a lot more preparation though, but if you have the time, the effort is worth it.

Cube and boil potatoes in salted water for a few minutes. They should be slightly tender but not too soft.

Saute a couple of diced shallots and minced garlic in butter until tender.

Stir in a spoonful of flour and cook for a minute, stirring to stop it catching on the pan. Stir in a couple of cups of chicken stock then cream to make a moderately thick sauce. Simmer for a few minutes stirring constantly.

Stir in a generous handful of cheese, a squirt of mustard, and season with salt and pepper. Finally stir in the drained potatoes.

Spread the mixture into a greased baking pan and bake for up to an hour. Sprinkle another handful of grated cheese and chopped chives or green onions on top and either return to bake or put under the grill to brown.

Dauphinoise potatoes

A remarkably quick & easy version if you want a slightly different (and tasty) way to serve potatoes.

Put thinly-sliced potatoes into a baking dish that can go on the stove top as well as in the oven. Add a layer of thinly-sliced red onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and grated Parmesan. Pour on a good slosh of cream and some water. Stir everything together, bring to the boil on the stove top, cover, and cook for 5 or 6 minutes.

Sprinkle on another generous handful of grated Parmesan and put in the oven, uncovered, for about 1/2 hour. It should be brown and bubbling. If necessary, brown it off under the grill

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.

Chicken in port

A tasty treat for a cold evening.

Fry chicken breasts or thighs until browned. Add a cup or two of port and simmer on medium to high until the chicken is cooked and the port is well reduced. Let the pan cool for a bit, then stir in some cream. Bring back to the boil until the liquid thickens.

Serve with potatoes or rice, and vegetables or salad.

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.

Shrimp salad

After enjoying this light and easy meal while we were away camping this summer, we had it again tonight. Just because ...  :)

Mix a good portion of cooked and peeled shrimp into a Marie Rose sauce (equal dollops of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup mixed together.

Serve with a generous mixed salad, and fries or buttered new potatoes.

For a fresher and lighter taste, serve the shrimp without the sauce on top of a mixed or Caesar salad.

Lamb in redcurrant sauce

This used to be a regular favorite, until we found we could no longer find anywhere nearby that stocks jars of redcurrant sauce (the sauce, not the jelly). Oh well, trying this evening with red pepper sauce instead, and cherry sauce also works quite well.

Fry a sliced onion, then brown your lamb - chops, steaks, shanks, whatever takes your fancy. Add a measure of stock and a jar of sauce and simmer long and slow until the meat is tender.

Finish off by thickening the remaining sauce (it will probably have reduced during cooking) with a spoonful of corn starch.

Serve with potatoes and veggies of choice.

Pork & clams

This is an easy dish but needs a generous amount of time to prepare. It's something we enjoyed on a visit to a Portuguese restaurant many years ago, and did our best to reverse-engineer and recreate at home. Not sure how successful we were in recreating that restaurant dish, but nevertheless it's a tasy favorite for special occasions.

The recipe is over here ...

The simple version is as follows:

Fry a chopped onion until golden. Add some cubed pork and fry until browned. Add a couple of chopped tomatoes and saute until they start to mash down. Turn the heat down low, cover and simmer for at least an hour to make sure the pork is tender.

Meanwhile, boil and simmer some cubed potatoes for a few minutes - be careful not to let them go too soft. Drain and saute in oil and butter until golden.

About half an hour before serving, add a generous squirt of tomato ketchup to the pork to thicken the sauce, and stir in a can or two of drained clams. 

Ten minutes before serving, stir in a dash of cream and the fried potatoes.

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.

Fish & chips

A great British tradition. Home-cooked, you can make it as plain or as fancy as you like.

We buy packets of frozen battered fish that you can pop in the oven. Or you can make your own batter. A good alternative is to breadcrumb some cod pieces. Beat a couple of eggs in a shallow bowl, and prepare a bowl or plate each of plain flour, and breadcrumbs. dip the fish pieces in the egg first, then the flour to coat, then the egg again and finally the breadcrumbs. Fry until golden.

Serve with chips - again there's lots of ways to do this. Traditional in a deep pan of oil, or these days we use a shallow fryer that tosses the chips in nothing more than a couple of spoonfuls of oil.

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.

Cajun chicken salad

A tasty spicy treat, especially for summer (which this isn't) or to serve as a starter.

Sprinkle some chicken pieces with Cajun spice mix and fry in olive oil & butter until cooked.

Make up your salad of choice. It's good to include some sweet ingredients such as dried cranberries or diced apple to offset the spice, and some slices of red onion also go well. A cool creamy dressing such as Ranch or Caesar is a good choice.

As a main course, serve with either potatoes - e.g. baked or fries - or rice or couscous.

Roast

Nothing quite beats a traditional Sunday roast. You need time for cooking, but it is a very easy meal to prepare.

Meat of choice - beef, lamb, pork, chicken, or on special occasions - turkey. The basic approach is the same. Place the meat in a roasting dish in about 1/2 inch of water. We use water rather than fat because it's healthier, preserves the flavor of the meat, and keeps it moist. Cover and cook in the oven for roughly 2 hours.

Timing depends on size. If cooking a turkey we use the "1/4 hour per pound plus 1/4 hour" rule of thumb as a rough guide, but nothing beats experience and occasional checks on the roast.

Potatoes: Boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. The outsides should be going soft but nowhere near ready to mash. Drain and place in a baking dish and drizzle a small amount of oil over the top. They should need no more than a spoonful per piece. Cook in the oven for about 1 1/2 hours, until the outsides are crisp and golden.

When the meat is ready to carve, lift from the roasting dish. Keep the liquid for gravy. If your dish can go on the hob you can make gravy right there, otherwise decant into a saucepan. Mix a spoonful each of cornstarch and gravy browning (we use Bisto) with cold water to make a thin paste. Pour slowly into the stock whisking to ensure it doesn't go lumpy. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. If you need more liquid, drain some off from whatever veggies you're cooking alongside.

Vegetables: Whatever you want. For simple meals we boil carrots, beans, peas, corn. They should only cook for a few minutes - nothing ruins a roast more easily than soggy veg!

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.

Lamb hotpot

A good heartwarming dish for a chilly evening.

Fry a chopped onion. When it starts to soften, add some lamb pieces and fry until browned. Place the lamb and onions into a casserole dish, add some chopped carrots and optionally a drained can of white kidney beans or Romano beans. Add enough gravy to cover the mixture - I use a packet of mushroom gravy mix for flavor. Top with sliced potatoes, cover and bake for an hour or so, until the potatoes are cooked through. Sprinkle with grated cheese and continue cooking with the lid off until the cheese has browned.

With only about 20 minutes preparation time, this dish can also be done in a slow cooker, so you come home to a complete ready-made meal.

Salmon & rice

A really easy and tasty dish.

Place a layer of salmon fillets in a baking dish.
Mix equal measures of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup and spread over the salmon.
Bake at 380F for approx. 1/2 hour, until the salmon is cooked.

Serve with rice (or saute potatoes) and veg or salad.

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.