cheat | with knife and fork

Cheat Chips

I know its really bad.

Chips are bad aren’t they anyway. And to cheat as well. That’s doubly bad.

Surely I should make my own. But why would I bother when I can have these.

Because they really are very good. Nearly as good as my Grandma used to make and she made amazing chips.

I reckon its the beef dripping.

And all with no boiling oil. Fat fires. Or smelly house. Its genius I tell you. Genius.

Ian’s secret cheaty meatball recipe

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to be treated my husband’s cheaty secret meatball recipe. For some reason when there’s meatballs to be cooked he always takes charge and I’m not allowed near – which is kind of great as I get to sit at the table and watch him work but means he can keep the exact recipe secret.

So how am I going to be able to share it with you? Well careful watching and tasting over many years has lead me to be able to identify the key ingredients (yes, meatballs is one of them) and below I’ve put down some basics that will allow you to create your own secret recipe based on this well tested original.

To start with you are going to need an onion, some tinned tomatoes (chopped or whole take your pick), some meatballs (that’s the big cheaty bit; get some good ready prepared raw meatballs). I’m mostly a Waitrose kind of girl so we have their beef, pork or lamb (all come in organic variants) to pick from – its another chance to make the recipe your own. The beef even come in two sizes, large and mini, the possibilities are becoming boundless.

Start cooking the chopped onion gently in some olive oil so it goes translucent (about 10 minutes) and meantime search in the store cupboard for your seasoning(s) of choice. This is when you can get creative. What meat are you using? Start from that, combined with your thoughts on what takes your fancy taste wise, to select your seasonings. Good options (though possibly not all at the same time) are tomato puree, oregano, thyme, chilli flakes, Tabasco, mushroom ketchup, thai fish sauce (but only a teeny bit).

The onions are looking nice and translucent – well now pop in the meatballs and brown them all over – about 5-10 minutes. Add the tinned tomatoes, seasonings of choice (plus salt and pepper of course) and perhaps a glug of red wine. Get it all simmering away, put on the lid and leave to cook for around 20-30 minutes.

Serve with pasta (spaghetti or tagliatelle) and as much parmesan as you like (proper stuff not the ready grated sawdust please – that’s cheating gone wrong – like so many things in life you have to know when to stop).

Last night we had the larger size of beef meatball (because they are on offer at the moment – 2 packs for £4.50) and I think the seasoning was leaning mainly to the oregano. Excellent as ever.

And there’s still some left for another day.

Almost the end of the chicken

After cooking up a good batch of stock on Friday afternoon it was then time to use up most of the rest of the roast chicken leftovers.

Subconsciously I must have known it was ‘British Pie Week’ (as created by Jus-Rol the makers of ready to roll pastry!) as I’d been thinking creamy chicken pie with mushrooms or leeks for a few days. And to do credit to Jus-Rol it was their pastry I used – there was a half packet near the top of the freezer leftover from a previous pie-making moment that was begging to be put to good use – and so out it came to be defrosted.

Now I know you can say its not exactly home cooking to use ready made pastry and if it had been shortcrust that was needed I might have made my own as I’m finally quite good at it. I used to be rubbish at pastry but I think your hands just get colder as you get older so you get better without trying – at least in relation to making shortcrust pastry ;). But I find that a hot meaty pie needs a puff pastry top because really I love the way it gets all crispy on the top and soggy next to the filling without ending up too heavy or stodgy. Plus we have to remember that sometimes a few quick cheaty bits in the kitchen help to deliver a different dish – if I’d thought I’d have to make puff pastry myself, something not attempted since domestic science at school (such a great name to inspire teenagers to cook –what were they thinking) then there’d have been no pie.

So cheats pastry it was (come on, Delia cheats what can be wrong with it?).

To the pie filling. This was an amalgam of having read many recipes over the years and just thinking through what I wanted. Creamy but not too creamy; so crème fraiche instead of double cream. I wanted the mushrooms to play as big a part as the chicken – well I would they are in my top 5. And that was pretty much were I was coming from.

So chop an onion and sauté in a little butter (for me onion just adds

a nice tangy sweet flavour to any savoury dish – its a staple ingredient). I also added a couple of rashers of bacon chopped up small – because I had some thereto use up. Then add the mushrooms chopped into medium chunks or left whole if they are tiny. I used some big portobello’s and some small chestnut mushrooms to get to different textures – the portobello’s are softer the chestnut ones quite dense. Cook down a bit until the mushrooms start to release their juices. Add the chicken cut into bite sized chunks, a splash of white wine bring to a simmer and add the crème fraiche. Cook it down a little so it’s thickening up. Putit in the pie dish (remember you need a pie funnel if the dish is deep).

Roll out your home made (swot) or cheaty pastry (top marks for thinking ahead) to a good inch larger than the pie dish. Cut off about ½ inch of this extra and use it to create a pastry rim round the dish – even if you don’t need one it means there’ll be some extra crispy crust. Moisten the pastry rim and the lid and apply lid to rim. Pinch together with your fingers then knock up the edges with a knife to help give some extra lift. Cut a slit to allow the steam out. Apply decorative pastry patterns with any remaining pastry. Into the oven it goes – gas 6 (200C/400F) for around 30 minutes to cook the pastry.

Serve with a flourish but hope that it doesn’t collapse like mine did, the filling was a long way below the pastry – still tasted great though.

What I ate last night

I’ve been reading quite a few cookbooks recently that have a seasonal theme to get some new ideas for different winter dishes.

I’ve been particularly enjoying Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s (HFW) ‘The River Cottage Year‘ (this link is to Amazon.co.uk). I’d already tried a couple of the soup recipes and then I spotted the recipe for ‘Smoky cheaty brandade’ (page 49) and I just happened to have some smoked haddock that I’d been planning to use for kedgeree but thought I’d try the brandade instead.

It was fairly simple to make (about 1 hour total from start to sitting down to eat – and of that time about 20 mins was prep the rest was the dish cooking). I made half the quantity in Hugh’s recipe and 2 of us ate half of it so I now have plenty left which I’m planning to fry up as fish cakes later the week. I guess if you had a really big appetite it wouldn’t go this far but with some braised courgette and greens it made a good size main course which we followed with some cheese.

The recipe goes like this – adapted from Hugh (with my comments in brackets):

(per HFW this serves 4 as a main, 8 as a starter or 12 as a canape – but see my comment above):

Ingredients:

500g smoked haddock or cod fillet

whole milk (actually I used semi skimmed and it was fine) – about 400ml

500g mashing potatoes – peeled (floury ones that mash well are king edwards and maris piper)

butter

4 tbsp good olive oil, plus extra

2-3 large garlic cloves

optional – 1-2 tbsp double cream (I didn’t use this)

black pepper

Method:

Poach the fish in the milk for about 5 minutes (the milk should just cover the fish and if the fillet is particularly thick it may take a few minutes extra – its ready when the flakes will separate easily – use a sharp knife to test it). Leave the fish in the milk to cool.
Boil the potatoes in lightly salted water until tender, drain then mash with a generous knob of butter and some of the poaching milk to get a soft but not sloppy mash.
Remove the fish from the milk and flake it off the skin and make sure you pick out any stray bones, discard the skin and bones.
Pour the olive oil into a small pan and add the finely chopped garlic, sweat on a very low heat for 2-3 minutes and don’t let the garlic colour. (I used the full 4 tbsps of olive oil even though I used only half the quantity of fish and potato).
Put the fish into a food processor and pulse to a paste whist adding the olive oil/garlic until the fish is the consistency of mash potato – add more oil or the cream or some of the poaching milk to achieve this.
Mix the fish and mashed potato together – BUT NOT in the food processor or it will go all gluey – and season with black pepper.
Spread in an oven proof dish and bake at gas 5 (190C) for 15-20 mins. (It didn’t go very brown on the top so you might want to crank the oven up for the last few mins or pop it under the grill if this is the effect you are looking for. I imagine it would be pretty tasty with some grated cheese on top).
Serve with toast and/or greens, leek, chicory or other green veg. (We had greens and courgette – tho I admit the latter is not very seasonal).