Saturday morning, 5:20 am. I have survived my first week in the new job, in fact I more than survived it, I had a great time. I was eased in very gently and it almost felt like a holiday with a minimum number of emails and loads of time to read up on background material, a luxury I know I won't have later. But one thing that has been a bit of a struggle has been the early mornings. So I was looking forward to sleeping in today. But as fate will have it, I have come down with a bit of a cold, so I have been waking up for most of the night with a cough, aching sinuses and having to blow my nose a lot. So I thought I might as well get up instead of tossing and turning and constantly waking the poor Culinary Consultant. So I am sitting here in my crafting lair listening to a choir of birds sing outside welcoming the dawn, and sipping a cup of mint tea with honey, made from dried mint from my very own garden. I was really hoping I had managed to avoid the cold, I felt a bit crappy on Wednesday and Thursday with a sore throat, but I went to sleep really early on Thursday night and felt much better on Friday morning so I though I got away easily. Clearly not. But like the model employee I am, of course I got sick on the night between Friday and Saturday so that I can spend all weekend poorly and then be ready to go back to work on Monday morning. But at least I have an excuse to huddle up in bed under the covers for most of the day, and spend the rest of it crafting and blogging.
Based on the contents of my RSS feed and all the green food that has cropped up over the last few weeks, you can't miss that St Patrick's day is just around the corner (for those of you like me who had no idea when it is, it is in fact on Monday the 17th). So I thought why not, I'll contribute a little something as well. I just pretty much made a regular meat stew as we usually make them, but threw in some Guinness for good measure.
Beef and Guinness stew (feeds 6-8, or 2 people for the better part of a week):
1 onion
1 stalk of celery
2 tbsp oil
800 g beef, diced
salt and pepper
3 giant carrots (probably corresponding to 4-5 regular carrots)
3 large potatoes
3 small parsnips
4-5 large mushrooms (this was what I happened to have in the fridge, you can omit or add more if you want to)
1 can of Guinness
dried thyme
salt and pepper
enough beef stock to cover the veg and meat
4 bay leaves
The howto:
Finely chop the onion and celery. Heat up a large frying pan and add 2 tbsp of oil. Add the celery and onion and let cook for a few minutes. Add half of the beef. Cook until beef is nicely browned on the surface, season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl. Add the other tbsp of oil to the pan and fry the second half of the beef, and transfer to the side as well. If there is a lot of brown goodness stuck to the pan, add a bit of water and let bubble away until the stuff from the bottom of the pan has dissolved into the water.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Peel and thinly slice the carrots, spuds and parsnips. Slice the mushrooms. In a large lidded ovenproof casserole, add layers of potatoes, parsnips, carrots and meat adding in the mushrooms at some point as well. About halfway through, add two of the bay leaves, and sprinkle with black pepper and some dried thyme. Once everything is layered in the casserole, finish by sprinkling with thyme and black pepper and add two bay leaves. Pour enough Guinness and beef stock to cover everything in the casserole, and cook with the lid on for about 2 hours and 20 minutes. Then take off the lid to allow some of the liquid to evaporate and cook for another 40 minutes. Serve with mash or sweet potato fries.
The verdict:
We often make a big chicken or beef stew for Sunday dinner and then have leftovers for dinner the next week. It is a perfect way to get rid of whatever meat we happen to have in the freezer, or what happened to be on sale, and also to use up any root veg we happen to have around so there is a lot of variation. You can pour some wine in with the stew, and we are often using different varieties of store bought seasoning mixes for stews to change things up as well. Sometimes we have been able to go all the way to Thursday on one giant batch of stew. If you don't like to eat the same food many days in a row, just freeze the stew in appropriate sized servings and pull out later. After defrosting, you can either heat it up in the microwave, or in a smaller casserole in the oven. Usually the stew only gets better after standing a few days in the fridge so it's perfect food for re-heating. The stew itself was tasty and got even tastier over the next few days. If you are worried that it will taste too much of beer, it won't. If you really want to taste the Guinness, I would add more that one can to the stew, but if you add one can it just gives a bit of warmth and flavour to the stew but is in no way overpowering. I served the stew with oven baked sweet potato fries. Just chop up your sweet potatoes into sticks, coat lightly in oil and sprinkle with your choice of seasoning (I used just a bit of salt and pepper) and bake in 200 degrees C for 45-55 minutes depending on your preference of crispiness.
Cooking hasn't been very strongly on the menu lately (if you excuse my pun). I spent last week unemployed. Well, if you can call a week of vacation between jobs unemployment. I spent my week cleaning out my old apartment and then cleaning the Culinary Consultant's bachelor pad. And more often then not, while scrubbing walls/floors/bathtubs/sinks (you get the drift) I felt like moving in together might not have been the best decision. And I'm still worried about the exponential increase in housekeeping and gardening time when we move into the new place. But worrying about it won't help. And this week has been a bit easier as I haven't had any time to either clean or worry. First week at the new job. Immediately on the first day there was so much to do. So much new things to learn. I hardly notice when lunch-time comes around. I was worried that after my last job which was moving at the pace of a snail in glue, I wouldn't be capable of working ever again. But seems like the more there is to do, the more I get done. And I realise it's still early days, and I'm getting away easily working on only one project, I am looking forward to really getting my claws into the work.
Possibly the most monumental change is still coming. I have realised this week there is now way I can keep going to my old gym. I was determined to make it work somehow, but after not getting home before nine pm any night that I have been going to the gym, I have realised that I simply have to give it up. I can't spend several hours a day travelling to or from the gym. I am devastated about having to give up my instructors, they are just the best in the world. It is a bit of a comfort that the new gym will have significantly lower membership fees than my current one. And a really cool spa with different saunas, foot baths and scented showers (yes, I was like 'wooot?' too!). So maybe it will work out (again, sic).
In the spirit of I have hardly spent any time awake at home this week, this isn't really a recipe. It's more like a quickie dinner idea. It turned out rather delicious so I felt I shouldn't keep it from you.
Steak and pesto ciabatta (serves 2-3):
1 ciabatta (I used one with olives)
3 tbsp tomato pesto (or any other pesto you happen to have around)
6 cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp mayo (I used 1 tbsp herb and garlic mayo and 1 tbsp regular)
1 gigantic rump steak the size of your ciabatta
butter and olive oil for cooking the steak
salt and pepper for seasoning
The howto:
Heat your frying pan until really hot. Add butter and olive oil onto the pan, and add the steak. Cook for one minute, turn and cook for another minute. Season. Wrap in foil and let rest for five minutes. While the steak is resting, half the ciabatta lengthwise and add pesto and tomatoes to one side and mayo to the other. Add the meat (I poured the cooking juices onto the ciabatta as well). Cut into slices and enjoy immediately.
The verdict:
Well, this isn't exactly haute cuisine. But it's quick, easy and rather tasty. Nothing like a big slab of red meat every once in a while when you drag yourself home exhausted after the gym. And after paying quite a lot for my slab of meat, I was very relieved I managed to cook it to a perfect medium. I don't have the best track record of cooking meat. But this time I had really good advice from the nice gentleman at the meat counter at Waitrose. We got to chatting, and turns out he used to live in Helsinki for a while! It's a small world after all.
I've enjoyed the wonderful crisp winter weather up North this weekend. It just wasn't cold and snowy enough in Cambridge. I was keeping my fingers crossed, as my train journey on Friday evening coincided with the worst part of the snowstorm, so I was worried about missing any of my three train connection. Luckily, despite the second train being 15 minutes late, I made the connection with at least 20 seconds to spare. All thanks to some newfound sprinting skills. On the way back, I got delayed by one cancelled train, which luckily was the last leg of the journey. So I spent a lovely 45 minutes in Stevenage right before midnight on Sunday. Luckily, I found an electric heater which was blasting out hot air, and spent my time rubbing up to it to keep warm. Getting home and into my bed with my hot water bottle was very relaxing after that little adventure.
I enjoyed the weekend with my sis very much. We had time to talk about everything and nothing, obviously we went to the gym. And we cooked some great food. I'm still trying to eat healthily and lose as much weight as possible before my holiday in a few weeks time, and sis is a very healthy eater. But at the same time, I thought a weekend with both of us in the same place is a rare treat, and needs to be celebrated in some way. So we decided a bit of carbs and even cheese was in order. I think we ended up with a really delicious meal despite still being reasonable with the calories. And there was a couple of servings left for sis to have for dinner later in the week. Seeing someone enjoy your cooking is almost as good as eating yourself!
Enchiladas sis&sis (serves 4):
8 whole wheat tortillas
225g beef steak or other low fat cut in thin strips or diced
1 huge onion (or 2 small ones)
1 green pepper
125 g button mushrooms
15 g fajita seasoning mix (half of one of those ready seasoning mix pouches)
1 clove of garlic
390 g tomato passata (we used one with chilli and pepper for added flavour)
90 g reduced fat cheddar or other cheese of choice
One serving (2 enchiladas) contains 511 kcal (19 g fat, 45 g carbs and 29 g protein)
The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Thinly slice the onion, and chop the pepper and mushrooms. Finely chop the garlic clove. If you want to, add some oil in a frying pan, we used a non-stick pan so no extra fat needed. Saute the onions for a few minutes until translucent, add the steak, peppers, garlic and mushrooms. Season with fajita seasoning. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until meat is no longer red.
Take 1/8 of the filling, and wrap inside each tortilla. Line the tortilla wraps in an oven proof dish, spread the passata on top of the tortilla rolls and top with grated cheese. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and golden. Serve with avocado and organic yoghurt. Oh, and check out that nifty little gadget my sister has for removing the avocado flesh. It's manufactured by Fiskars. And if you didn't happen to know, Fiskars is not just the name of the brand, it's also the name of the village where the company was founded. And I lived right next to it when I grew up!
The verdict:
Obviously we cut quite a few corners. We used ready made fajita seasoning, which has all sorts of nasties in it. There are plenty of recipes out there in cyberspace for fajita seasoning mix, so you are obviously more than welcome to make your own. Also, we used ready made tomato passata, whereas you could of course cook your own. But we came home after a day at the gym, doing some shopping and dragging back bags full of groceries, so we just wanted food on the table. Something hot and filling and delicious. And this dish most certainly fulfilled those criteria. Also, you can sub the beef for chicken if you prefer to. Or even tofu or some other vegetarian protein, if you believe in that kind of stuff.
This is the epitome of comfort food. On a cold, snowy winters day, after exhausting yourself at the gym, this is exactly what you need. A good serving of protein, some carbs, a bunch of veggies to help you with your five a day. A bit of heat from the chilli in the tomato passata, combined with the cold fresh yogurt and the creaminess of the avocado. And that glorious golden brown cheese to top it all off. Can you tell I'm excited by the cheese? I haven't had any cheese for over two weeks (ok, I know it's not very long to go without, but it feels like an eternity), so it really tasted good. Nothing like depriving yourself of something you really love to make you find a totally new level of appreciation for it.
This weekend I have been abstaining from cooking, as I'm visiting my sister up North. That doesn't mean I'm not eating well, as my sister is at least as good a cook as I am. On the menu this weekend, among other things: veggie soup with home baked bead rolls (Sis makes the most amazing bread rolls in the whole wide world, I think they deserve a future blog post of their own), pancakes with chocolate spread and strawberries, meat stew and apple crumble with home-made fro-yo. She even made home-made almond butter which turned out amazingly creamy and much tastier than the store bought one (not to mention cheaper as well). There was a bit of a discussion about the name of the meat dish, is it a stew or casserole? Well. It's a stew, it's cooked in a casserole... Pick your favourite, as I'm typing this on an iPad and typing on the virtual keyboard is a bit of a pain, I'll stick with stew as its quicker to type.
I wonder whether mine and Sis' shared love for cooking is a result of genes or environment. This would be a good tangent to air some thoughts about the whole nature vs nurture debate, but I won't go there. All I can say, in our childhood home almost all food was home-cooked. Both my mum and dad used to cook, with dad cooking if we had pizza, steaks or BBQ and mum cooking the rest. We also cooked a lot with my sister, even as kids. We would plan a three course menu, and then we were allowed to have the kitchen all to ourselves. Our parents always ate everything without complaining, although I'm sure not everything turned out perfect. We had several cookbooks we liked, one was a UNICEF cook book for kids, with recipes from all over the world and drawings of how to prepare the dishes. From that book, one popular recipe on our menu was prawn cocktail and avocado. We also had a Donald Duck cookbook, and our favourite recipe was crumbly raisin cakes that we would make for pudding. We also used to cook Grandma Duck's pork chops, which were oven baked in cream on a bed of sweet corn. And my mum had a black binder full of recipes. Some where cut from magazines, others were just scribbles on a piece of paper. It contained recipes for such 80s classics as mocca squares (I guess only Finns know what these are, they are a bit like brownies, I will most certainly post the recipe sometime) and lime meringue pie. These were often baked and served when my parents would have guests and my mum would cook up a feast. So, we certainly grew up in an environment which encouraged us to learn cooking skills, made us appreciate different kinds of food and above all, think of home cooked food as the norm instead of ready made meals or takeaways.
So, the recipes below are stolen from and cooked by my sister.
Beef stew (serves 6-8):
800g diced beef
Butter or oil for frying
One big lee
3 onions
3 parsnips
One small swede
4 carrots
1/2 bottle of red wine
2 beef stock pots or cubes
Bay leaf
Black pepper
Roughly chop all the veg. Brown the meat in butter or oil in the casserole (or a frying pan if you don't have a casserole that can be used on the hob). Add the veg, and fry for a few more minutes. Add the wine, stock cubes, spices and water to fill the casserole. Bake in a 175 degree oven for at least 2 1/2 hours, but the longer the better. Serve with salad and mashed potatoes or sweet potato mash.
Apple with a hint of rhubarb crumble (serves 6-8):
10 apples
Rhubarb (we only had 1 stalk, but I bet more will be great)
1tsp Vanilla paste
1tsp ground cloves
1tbsp cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
Crumble:
175g Demerara sugar
150g white flour
200g rolled oats
1tsp ground cloves
1tbsp cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
200g butter
Peel and chop apples and rhubarb, cook them in a little bit of water for about 10 minutes together with the spices. To make the crumble, mix all dry ingredients and spices. Cut butter into small cubes and use your fingers to make a crumbly dough together with the dry ingredients. Use a big ovenproof dish (26-28 cm), place the fruit on the bottom and spread the crumble on top. Bake in 175 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until a beautiful golden brown. Serve with frozen yoghurt and strawberries.
Frozen yoghurt:
950g organic, full fat Greek yoghurt
3tbsp organic honey
Freeze the ice cream maker over night. Mix yoghurt and honey. Chill in the ice cream maker while the crumble is baking.
The verdict:
After a hike in the Peaks, this was the perfect hearty meal to get warm and make up for the calories we shed climbing Grindsbrook, and almost getting blown away by heavy winds on the way back down.
The stew is heavenly, it was cooked for three hours and then left in the hot oven over night to bake. The veg gets really sweet and tasty after the long cooking, and the meat just crumbles. If you like you veg really crunchy, this is not for you, but if you like full flavours and super tender meat, you should definitely try this out.
I usually wouldn't make a crumble myself, and that's one of the exciting things of eating someone else's cooking, you eat things you wouldn't think of doing yourself. I love the combination of hot and cold, so I loved the crumble. Piping hot apples, the sweet crumble adding crispy texture and then the velvety smoothness of the ice cold yoghurt was heavenly. I think frozen yoghurt was a much better choice for this than ice cream, as it wasn't too sweet, and was a great contrast to the sweet crumble. I'm embarrassed to admit my self control broke down completely, and I not only went back for seconds but even for thirds. I can't wait visit this restaurant again.
