Pig - Cooking with a passion for pork by Johnnie Mountain

Johnnie Mountain is the chef and owner of a London restaurant celebrating the versatility of pork called, unsurprisingly, The English Pig. You might also know him as the chef who walked off Great British Menu in a tirade of beeps after he was (in my view) harshly judged by Marcus Wareing. If he's going to write a book, it can only be about pork, can't it?

Johnnie kindly arranged for a copy of his book to be sent to me to give it the once over. Even from a distance, there is no mistaking what this book is about!

The front section is full of useful and interesting information about pork, its different cuts, how to buy and how best to cook each part. I had never really thought too much about the different cuts so I found it very useful.

The pork recipes are divided into 4 chapters  - home favourites, cured, dried, preserved and smoked, spicy and aromatic and slow-cooked. There is an enormous variety of recipes - pretty much something for everyone. Some will be very inexpensive family recipes, others much grander for special occasions. They cater for every occasion, every budget and pretty much every level of cooking ability, whether you have a few minutes or several hours to cook. The layout of the recipes is nice and clear, with lots of lovely photographs which just make you drool.

I always worry that cookery books written by chefs will be, well, too cheffy. I have one book from which I have never cooked a single recipe - all the recipes are over a page long (and we're talking a large A4 book) and the list of ingredients is huge, with some ingredients difficult to find. I was glad to see that this was nothing like that. As you can see, the recipe is short and you can see at a glance how long it should take to make (although I always take those with a pinch of salt). For this recipe, the most unusual ingredient was smoked pancetta which I bought from a supermarket. I had a lot of ingredients already in my store cupboard.

The instructions are clear and simple, and easy to follow. However, if you need some extra help, some of the recipes (including this one, it's just out of shot) have QR codes which if you scan them, take you to videos that show you how to do some of the techniques described in the book. This is a brilliant feature of the book as sometimes, it's just so much easier to watch someone make something and then do it yourself with confidence. In this recipe, the video shows Johnnie moulding and wrapping the meatloaf. Here's my attempt.

The recipes really are mouth-watering. I have a list saved on my computer of things I want to make soon so I will be working my way through them over the coming months. They range from burgers to curries, stir fries to pasta dishes. And perhaps, one day, I'll try curing my own bacon or doing Johnnie's signature dish of slow roasted pork belly.

There's also a section at the end of the book containing recipes for standard accompaniments like mashed potatoes, gnocchi - even sticky red cabbage.

So far, I have cooked two recipes from the book. This is how my spicy pork meatloaf, which is served with a sauce a lot like home made brown sauce, turned out.

I also made a pork chilli which was very hard to determine was made from pork not beef, lifted by adding some dark chocolate near the end. Both dishes were very popular with all the family. Monkey particularly liked the sauce on the meatloaf but I feel this is just his northernness coming out. Missy Woo wasn't wild about the sauce but loved the meatloaf. Both were requested again by the children, which I always take to be a very good sign.

Quite simply, this book is THE definitive guide to cooking pork and turning even the humblest cut (pig's ears anyone?) into something delicious. Popular dishes are adapted for pork as well as the old favourites, plus some new dishes you want to try. If you love pork, or would like to love pork and cook it better, you will love this book.

(I was sent a free copy of this book.) 

Gusto for Gousto?

Basil mint pesto fusilli with pancetta and mushrooms

You may remember that a few weeks ago, I mentioned in a Meal Planning Monday post that I was trying Gousto out for some of my meals. I was going to mention in the following week how it went but felt it deserved its own post. So here we are.

The idea of Gousto is that you choose 2 to 4 meals from their list to cook and they deliver all the ingredients to you, along with a recipe card with full instructions how to cook each dish. All ingredients are delivered on a Wednesday night between 6pm and 10pm if you are in London but they have also just launched nationwide, delivering between 9am and 5pm.

The week I chose the recipes, I found it quite difficult to choose as there weren't too many that appealed to my personal taste. Husband had to help me choose although we ended up choosing two chicken dishes. To be fair, I just looked at the current selection and the range is more appealing so I was probably unlucky that week. You can place the subscription on hold at any time so I guess you could dip out if a particular week didn't appeal to you. When choosing the recipes, you are given the calories, the level of difficulty, how long it takes to make and any extra equipment (like a blender) that you need so that you can use to suit your circumstances.

Obviously, we are not in London so the delivery was due to be on a Thursday between 9am and 5pm. We were around the time they started doing nationwide deliveries so I'm expecting there may have been some teething problems. I wasn't all that comfortable with it being a day long delivery slot - it's just not possible to stay in ALL day, especially when I am doing the school run. We were out between 10 and 11, which was taking a risk on my part, but there was no card through the door when I returned. But I waited... and I waited ... and I waited. Good job I was (mostly) watching the Olympics. The inescapable fact was that the food didn't arrive. When husband got home, I had to go to the chippy - not that the children complained, but it was annoying.

Gousto promised to sort this out for me - the following week. Had I been a paying customer, I would not have been happy about that. I was just trying to plan what to eat, when the door went. Our food was finally delivered on Friday at 12 noon. The delivery agent seemed to know nothing about it being late for delivery so I really don't know what happened. Obviously, having ordered chicken, I was a tad nervous about this. However the contents seemed fairly cool when I got them. Plus, we ate it and no-one got ill. Still, it was not a great start.

This is the box we received. It's wool insulated and the meat were kept in a foil bag with ice packs. But when they say every ingredient, they mean everything, with the exception perhaps of oil for cooking. Because we were catering for 4, not 2 people, we had two of everything. This made it quite hefty on the packaging and I can't help wondering if they couldn't look at reducing by combining - there were two packs of everything, many of them half full. I also found it odd that hardly anything was labelled - if you weren't familiar with certain ingredients, it could prove a problem.

Onto cooking the dishes. The recipe cards were clear and laid out well with lots of photos. However, some of the recipes were in a strange order - I added one ingredient way too early as it told me to wash it and another ingredient but only added one in the next step and I managed to speed read it. Oops. Also, in another recipe, it told me to make up stock, then keep back 200ml for later before using the rest. I couldn't, however, find where I was to use the stock I'd kept back. I even got husband to confirm I wasn't going mad and he couldn't find it either, so this extra stock went unused.

Portion sizes were generous. More than generous in fact. I tend to make dishes for 4 people even though the kids don't eat a full adult portion as the leftovers are taken to work by husband  for his lunch. So I know how big a 4 person dish looks like - and these were HUGE portions. Well, the carbohydrates in the dish were - we had bulgar with one of the dishes and the leftovers filled my Mason Cash mixing bowl and got used over the course of a weekend. I reckon it could have fed 8 people! Wise to this, when I went to make the next dish, containing parsnips, I held back some of them and it was still way too much. However, when I made the pasta dish, there wasn't leftovers as the children love pasta but it was still a substantial portion.

The quality of the ingredients was good - especially the meat, which was organic. However, I did find that one of my packs of basil went slimy after only a couple of days - and coincidentally, someone else had sent me another pack of basil in the post at the same time which was fine and I had to use that instead, along with the other pack. I wasn't overly impressed with the quality of the parsnips we had either - I had to cut out quite a lot of black bits.

My biggest problem with Gousto is the cost. I looked up how much the subscription cost was for what we had - 3 meals for 4 people. £72! (£66 for the full vegetarian option). That is a hefty week of supermarket shopping in our house, including breakfast, snacks and lunches, and all 7 main meals.

But then, this service is not really aimed at someone like me. I have a pretty decent store cupboard because I cook such a wide range of dishes for the family. Out of all the non-perishable ingredients I was sent, there were only two I had never used before and everything else I had in my cupboards. Of the perishable items, they are all things I buy fairly regularly. I have time to plan our meals and my shopping list - in fact, I'd say it saves me time over the course of a week. I'd want to plan all my meals in one go on here or nothing. And I definitely could NOT afford a whole week's worth! This service is for the cash rich time poor person who wants to make nice food without having to think too hard about it - although you still have to choose your meals well in advance so the ingredients can be prepared and sent out to you.

If I were that type of person, I'd want assurances that the delivery was better service than I received. You can arrange delivery to your workplace, but what would you do if it didn't arrive? Go home without food.

Gousto is a nice idea. In my experience, it didn't live up to all its promises but if I was paying for a subscription, I'd expect it to. Because of that, Gousto fails the value for money test for me and therefore, I do not really have gusto for Gousto.

(Gousto kindly sent me 3 meals chosen by us for the purposes of a review. I have not received any other compensation for this post and all opinions are my own.)

Cake of the Week - a chocolate Barca cake (in away colours)

Of course, my cake of the week just HAD to be Monkey's birthday cake. The origins of this cake go back a whole year actually, and I like to think comparing these two cakes will give you an idea of where I have gone with baking over the last year and also displays how great tutorials and recipes from other bloggers can really make a difference.

So, last year, when Monkey turned 6, we took him to Barcelona for the weekend as husband was running his first marathon and he had asked to go. Whilst we were there, we took him to see Barcelona play and I took him to the museum during the morning of the marathon, once husband had run past where we were staying and before we went to see him cross the finish line.

His birthday wasn't until just after we came back so I had time to make him a cake and I came up with the idea of turning into a Barcelona cake like this:

Which at the time, I was pretty impressed with. All I did was buy some ready to roll icing and the blue and red seemed to be close to Barcelona home colours and then of course, cut out the 6 from yellow icing, adding an offcut that looks mysteriously NOT like a football. Monkey loved it, especially as he had no idea I was making it and it was a bit of a spur of the moment late night decision which I basically winged my way through. 

At the time, we teased Monkey that if he'd been a year older, he could have had a David Villa cake as his squad number was 7. This is because when we were out there, he chose an away shirt with David Villa's name on the back as a present. You can see him in it here. 

Fast forward a year, and when I asked Monkey what kind of cake he wanted, his answer was unequivocal: a David Villa cake, in the away colours of his shirt, which is now so last season. Hey ho. So, this is how I did it, with links to recipes or instructions that I used. 

First, I made a chocolate cake. My go to recipe at the moment is on The Pink Whisk by the lovely Ruth. Yes, the recipe is for chocolate muffins but Ruth says you can use the same quantities to split between two 20cm/8 inch sandwich tins. I actually make it in a single tin, cook it for about an hour. I allow it to cool in the tin, so that I can shave the top level, then slice it in two, admittedly not very straight. 

Then, I referred again to Ruth's blog to follow instructions for covering the cake with sugarpaste. This can be summarised by saying having levelled and sliced it, I sandwiched the cakes with chocolate buttercream, chilled the cake, topped it with icing and spread it around the sides then chilled it again. Having bought the same pack of ready to roll icing, I realised my mistake in that there was far too little green for the job, but I ran out to the supermarket and bought some white sugarpaste and kneaded about half of it into the green and very quickly, it became evenly coloured. It probably was about right as the green needed to be lighter than the stuff in the packet. I rolled it out, and learned that I need to keep turning it or it sticks very easily, even if you have lightly dusted your workspace! Placing it on the cake is always a nervy moment but I get there and it's never as perfect as Ruth's final result but it will do. 

Next, I needed to do the red and blue flash that was on the front. For this, Monkey had given me his shirt for me to work from which was actually quite handy. I rolled out the red icing into an oblong shape, then trimmed it to the width I wanted and cutting it to the desired angle on the right hand side. I rolled out the blue icing and again trimmed it to the width I needed, overlapped it onto the red icing so I made sure when I cut that side, it was at the same angle. Then I fixed them both to the bottom third of the cake, using a few dabs of water from a clean paintbrush, another trick I learned from Ruth. I made sure they lined up against each other. 

For the lettering, I had thought ahead enough to go and buy number and letter cutters from Dunelm Mill a few days before, so I rolled out the rest of the blue icing, cut out the lettering I needed, and again fixed them to the cake with a bit of water. This was the nerviest part, making sure I got the spacing about right and I wished that I'd made a bigger cake at this point! 

Once it was done, I was ready to go for a lie down. 

And here it is, with candles on Monkey's big day.

And do take a look at Cake of the Week, over on Helen's blog.

Cake of the Week - a chocolatey Jaffa drizzle cake!

Randomly, I decided to bake at the weekend with Missy Woo and this cake jumped out at me from a booklet with this month's Good Food magazine as I had everything I needed to hand, and it celebrated two things she loves foodwise - chocolate and citrus. This is the little girl that will literally lick the cut edge of lemons and enjoy it.

The original recipe is for a loaf cake but I thought I would share my unique method of preparation with you. As I didn't have a large enough loaf tin (it specified a 1.2 litre loaf tin), I used a 7 or 8 inch round deep baking tin which really requires adjustments of cooking time, which I have given here. Also, I wasn't sure the cake would be orangey enough so I took inspiration from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, which has an orange drizzle loaf cake recipe using marmalade, so I bunged that in too.

Jaffa Drizzle Cake 

Ingredients
(Cuts into 10-12)

For the cake:
140g/5oz butter, softened
200g/7oz self-raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
200g/7oz caster sugar
3 large eggs
6 tbsp milk
75g any marmalade - shredless is best
1 large orange

For the syrup:
3 tbsp orange juice (from the orange)
50g/2oz caster sugar

To top the cake:
75g/3oz dark chocolate (the darker, the better - 70% cocoa solids is good)

This is how I actually did it.

1. Heat your oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4. Butter and line the base of either a 20cm/8" deep round tin or a 1.2l loaf tin with baking parchment.

2. Measure your butter, and place in microwave ready to soften.

3. Place all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and start to beat with hand whisk. Realise you haven't grated in the zest of the orange, so stop and finely grate the zest into the bowl.

4. Recommence beating with hand whisk for 3-5 mins and wonder why it's not gone light and fluffy as expected, but more like a cake batter. Realise baking powder has not been added, add that in and mix again.

5. Realise your cake mixture is not going to go light and fluffy. Shrug. Pour cake batter into tin and go to place cake in oven. Turn towards microwave and ..... OH MY GOD! The butter. It's STILL in the microwave. Turn microwave on to soften butter.

6. Wrestle cake bowl that children were about to start licking from small hands, pour cake batter into bowl. Quickly wash out tin, discarding cake parchment. Re-butter and re-line the base of the tin.

7. Add now softened butter. Mix again, and realise that butter was indeed the missing ingredient and the mixture finally becomes light and fluffy. Place in the tin, level the top.

8. Bake in the oven until risen and firm to the touch, should be about 50-55 mins if you use a round tin, 40-50 mins if you are using the loaf tin. In the last few mins of cooking, place the orange juice and sugar in a pan  over a gentle heat, and stir until all the sugar dissolved. Try to keep warm, but don't allow to bubble too much or the liquid will evaporate and dry too hard. (Ahem.)

9. Remove cake from the oven and spoon over the syrup. Leave to cool in the tin. Remove from the tin, using ingenuity and some force to ease the solidified syrup from the top of the cake. Leave to cool completely.

10. Break the chocolate into small pieces and either melt in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, ensuring the water does not touch the bowl or microwave in 30 second bursts and stirring vigorously between. Drizzle over the cake and leave to set.

Thankfully, this is a fairly forgiving cake. It's an all-in-one sponge, so all you do is place ingredients in the bowl and just mix them together. Missing the butter out initially didn't mean the final cake suffered - it was actually light and fluffy, even though it sank back quite some distance after removing from the oven, although the syrup might be the culprit there. It smells gorgeous, even cold. I wondered if you could add some cocoa powder to the sponge to make it fully chocolate and orange flavoured; that might be a step too far but it may be an experiment for another day.

Linking this up with Helen's Cake of the Week feature once again, just because I love her cakes!

Some quick ideas for using leftover turkey

Fed up of turkey sandwiches yet? We're probably coming to the limit of the time you can use leftover turkey but you're probably drowning in it, whilst not wanting to waste it. Of course, a good way to jazz up a turkey sandwich is to add some bacon, or some stuffing, or even some cheese - and toast the bread first to make it a turkey club sandwich. Yum!

Anyway, here are just a few things I make to use up what's left of the turkey. Thankfully, we don't have tons as we had a turkey crown but there is still way more meat on it than 4 people will ever eat in 10 meals, let alone one. If you are reheating the turkey in anyway, don't forget to make sure it's heated right through.

Coronation turkey - this is really quick and quite a flexible recipe. It goes really well in sandwiches but if you're bored of that, then use as a filling for jacket potatoes or just have with some green salad. Look away now if you don't like fruit with meat, this is not for you!

First, chop up some turkey meat into bite sized pieces. I don't weigh how much I've got, I just cut off enough to feed however many people are eating. Finely chop an onion and cook in 1-2tbsp oil for a couple of mins without browning it. Add some mild curry powder (about 1 tbsp) or some curry paste and cook for another minute, stirring. Then, add 1 tbsp tomato puree or ketchup, a hefty dash of lemon (or lime) juice, and about 125ml of chicken stock, from a cube or proper stock. The tomato is entirely optional, leave it out if you don't want the finished result to look quite orangey. Simmer this for about 10 mins until you have quite a thick sauce. In the meantime, chop up some dried apricots and add to the turkey. If you don't have them, use raisins or sultanas instead, or even some chopped fresh apple. Once the sauce is done, cool the sauce. If you're in a rush, run some cold water into your washing up bowl, plunge the pan into that and it will be cool in about 10 mins. Now add mayonnaise (low fat will be fine) and natural yogurt in roughly equal quantities. If you're making for 4, you'll probably need about 200-250ml of each but stir it into the cooled sauce and see if you like the consistency. Taste and season, pour over the turkey and fruit mix, stir in and serve. Add some flaked almonds if you really want and have some to hand.

Turkey tacos or fajitas - This is really quick and a nice way to serve up an informal meal with a bit of spice! First, slice up some turkey meat, some onion (red or white but red looks best), and 2-3 peppers of any sort (preferably a mixture of colours). You can also use sliced mushrooms, sliced baby sweetcorn or any leftover veg that you think might go. Heat some oil in a pan or wok and add the turkey, stirring for a few minutes, then add some chilli powder, ground coriander and ground cumin. Again, I tend to do this by eye, but usually about a teaspoon of each. Stir to cover the turkey and let the spices cook without burning, then add the veg. Cook for a few minutes until the veg are softened. Then heat tacos or some tortillas according to the instructions.  Put everything out on a table in dishes, adding some pots of other things you'd like to add - such as grated cheese, sour cream (though greek yogurt will do), perhaps some salsa or some guacamole. Everyone can help themselves and build their own fajita or taco.

Turkey and ham pie - brilliant if you have leftover gammon too but you can add any ham and again, you can adapt it to what you have left. It takes longer to make but it's quick to prepare, then you can relax whilst it bakes. Chop up as much turkey and ham leftovers as you want to use into bite sized pieces. Finely chop an onion and cook it in some butter for a few minutes, then add some sliced mushrooms and cook until  golden brown. Next, either make a white sauce (like Delia's all-in-one white sauce, which I use a lot) or if you have leftover cream, add that to the mushrooms and onions, bring to the boil and simmer gently until it thickens. Mix everything together - if you have other leftover veg, you could add that too - leeks, sweetcorn, carrots, broccoli are all good. Pour into a baking dish, and cover with pastry. If you have an oblong dish and ready rolled pastry sheets, it should be as simple as putting the pastry on top, sealing the edges and then making a small hole for the steam to escape in the middle. Brush with beaten egg then bake at 220C for about 20 minutes, then cook for a further 15-20 mins at 180C.

If you have any quick and easy yummy recipes for leftover turkey, add them in the comments below or blog about them and link away in the comments.

Either way, that turkey will be gone in no time!

My collection

When I was prompted to think about this, I thought I was averse to collections and collecting. This goes back to when I was about 10 or 11 and my mum was friends with a local hairdresser who I sometimes "babysat" for. (I'd be upstairs in their flat, watching her daughter, whilst she was downstairs in her salon.) She was a strange personality, and quite snobbish - which is some going for a hairdresser who lived above her shop. When she gave me this book - I can't remember the occasion - she told me, "I want to see something good out of this." My mind froze as to what I might collect but the book was pretty. I never started a collection. At home, a terraced house lived in by 6 people, there just wasn't the space to collect things endlessly, certainly not of any size. I may have dabbled in stamps at one stage almost as a rite of passage, but I could never say I actually collected anything. Mary would probably have not been best pleased but I'm not sure I cared.

Fancy a Meal Planning app? Then vote for us!

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Mums On Three event in Manchester. Three are working to try and help mums save time. Apparently, they discovered from a survey that mums think that they could save themselves around 135 hours a year by using their smartphones more. At the event, we designed an app to help mums save time. We're up against 4 other teams from around the country. The winning app will be designed and available for download (for free). The lovely Sandy led our team and made a video detailing our idea.

What we came up with was a meal planning application. It was a popular choice and several people had the same idea as me. What we envisage the app doing is allow you to make a weekly meal plan from popular choices of meals - it will be preloaded initially with some popular family recipes - and plan your week's meals. You'll be able to scale up or down according to the size of family that you have and allow you to set preferences for dislikes or allergies etc. And then, when you've planned your meals, it will create a shopping list. We see this as a great timesaver so that you can get your meals planned in one go and hopefully all your groceries bought in one trip to the supermarket.

If you would like to vote for us, please go to the Three UK page on Facebook and like it then go to the Mums On the Go Mums tab and like our video, which is, of course, Weekly Meal Plan.

If we win, we'll be credited in the app and will win a slap up meal but that's all that's in it for us. As you know, I really rate meal planning as a way to keep your food bills down as well as saving time, and helping you to eat a more varied diet as a family. Obviously, I think this is the best idea.

So please, vote for us!

Meal Planning Monday - a week of My Daddy Cooks meals!

If you read this feature weekly, you'll know that last week, I used the Sainsbury's Feed your Family for £50 meal plan after they kindly sent me a week's shopping to test out the meal plan. It went pretty well, although we didn't use all the lunch stuff, partly due to the others going camping. The meals were pretty good on the whole - some could have done with a little more flavour, but the frittata and "carbonara" were gorgeous. The sweet and sour was the only dish that was not nice at all - but it used a jar of cooking sauce and I'm never a big fan of those. The breakfasts were a bit basic in the week, but I found that using yogurt with the muesli, for example, made it more palatable. Some of the portion sizes were HUGE - the tuna pasta bake, for example, was enough for 8 meals, not 4!

We did film ourselves cooking and the children appeared in an advert! It was on Wednesday night during Britain's Got Talent. I would have missed it were it not for Twitter as I got a few "was that your children?" tweets. Thanks to ITV+1 and Sky+, I managed to record it for the children, who were, of course, away camping at the time. You could also see my hands and hear Missy Woo saying "It's a bit gooey" as we rolled sausages into meatballs. So thanks very much to Sainsbury's for giving us the opportunity to try out the meal plan - and for turning my children into stars for 5 seconds.

So, onto this week and again, I'm doing something different. You see, I've been inspired. The other day, I received a copy of My Daddy Cooks by Nick Coffer. Nick is a Twitter friend whose blog - also called My Daddy Cooks - became a runaway success when he started it in late 2009. Nick films his son Archie and himself cooking in their kitchen. Nick's recipes are always easy to follow, great family food and accessible to cook with children around - exactly what I like. And now he's written a book containing 100 recipes.

Photo - Veronique Leplat

When the book arrived, I had a quick flick through and I loved the layout and style of the book - easy to read and follow, with some nice pictures, both of the dishes and of Nick and Archie going. Then I sat down and read through the book - and I read and read and kept reading! I started to make a list of all the recipes that I must cook as soon as possible - and the list ran over two pages. So then, I had an idea to plan my week's meals around recipes from the book. To be honest, I could be planning meals from the book for weeks given the length of the list - this doesn't even scratch the surface of it. Needless to say, I loved the book - it's full of great family recipes that you'll enjoy cooking, with children or without. I cannot wait to try this week's recipes.

So, here we go. This week's meals are going to be:

Monday - Minty lamb and butternut squash tagine
Tuesday - No fry Singapore noodles
Wednesday - Turkey and cranberry meatloaf
Thursday - Chickpea and chorizo soup
Friday -  Burgers and chips
Saturday - Lentil curry with cauliflower
Sunday - Family party so no cooking for me!

And I shall report back next week on how it all went.

Why not pop over to Mrs M's blog for more meal planning entries?

( Sainsbury's sent me a week's shopping so I could try out their £50 weekly meal plan and a camera so I could film making one of the meals. I was also sent, separately, a copy of My Daddy Cooks to review and keep. I have not received any other compensation in either case; I have not been told what to write and all opinions are my own.)

Meal Planning Monday

I've just realised I gave this totally the wrong name last week. Mrs M, from At Home with Mrs M, has actually called it Meal Planning Monday and I called it Menu Planning Monday. Only two words different and subtly different meaning. Hey ho and profuse apologies to Mrs M. 

So, last week's menu went mostly to plan, except I changed Saturday's as I remembered I had some nice beefburgers in the freezer so we had those grilled, with a potato and sweet potato wedges and salad. Everything else went down well - the Rosti Bolognese Pie went down a storm as did the Honey Mustard Pork and two casseroles. I loved the Mustard Chicken with Bacon but my husband was not wild about it. 

As I mentioned last week, I actually planned this week's meals last week. I've already had to tweak the plans as Missy Woo is having a friend come to tea on Tuesday. 

So, here we go for this week commencing 28th March

Monday - leftover Pork and Veg Casserole (see last week)

Tuesday - Pizza for children, Chickpea with Chorizo and couscous

Wednesday - Bacon and Fish o' Leekie

Thursday - Sausages with Onion Gravy (slow cooker) with mash and peas

Friday - Lamb, Coconut and Mango Pilau

Saturday - Roast Vegetable Pasta

Sunday - Mother's Day; I'm not cooking - we're going to Parkers Arms for lunch and I can't wait! 

Hmm, lots of pork again this week! Will have to be a bit more balanced next week, maybe some chicken again?

You can find more entries for Meal Planning Monday over at Mrs M's blog.

Review and Competition: Jamie at Home DVD series

Jamie Oliver seems to have become a bit of a Marmite figure. You either love him or you hate him. Some don't like his accent and his presenting style, others think he's become a bit sanctimonious and preachy with his more recent projects. What you cannot deny is that he has a passion for food and some of his crusades have made a difference to attitudes, as well as the way some of us eat (although there is probably a contract on his head issued by the turkey twizzler industry).

Although I never really watched things like The Naked Chef in the early days, I have watched a lot of his programmes and I do like his cooking style. It's largely unfussy, it's unpretentious, and it makes people think "yeah, I can do that". His fish pie recipe was recommended to me by a friend and it's now a regular in this house as it's less work than traditional fish pie, and not only that, has lots of veg in it which makes it great family food. In fact, I'm about to head into the kitchen to make it again once I've finished writing this post!

I watched Jamie at Home when it first came out and I got the book as a present. I will admit that I have only made occasional use of it. I'm going to rectify that now because I've recently been sent the whole series on DVD by The Sun's Buzz magazine and it's inspired me to get the book out again. The series is a combination of cookery and gardening as it features Jamie in his garden. The focus is on using ingredients that you've grown yourself, largely. I say yourself, but Jamie's gardener features a lot in the programmes! It's worth remembering that growing your own can be quite a lot of effort. Still, the recipes he demonstrates are again simple, though I do find it amusing he does some of his cooking outside with the hugest outdoor oven you'll ever see. Jamie  cooks, as usual, with infectious enthusiasm, such that you almost want to head straight into the kitchen to make them. I have designs on making his sausages with bubble and squeak and onion gravy now - and possibly the only reason I've not made it is I have too many cookbooks!

If you want to get the entire Jamie at Home series on DVD for yourself, you can collect tokens starting today in The Sun Buzz magazine, and continuing in The Sun newspaper for the rest of the week. Take your tokens to Tesco on the day of print and you can get each day's DVD for free. Each one features two half-hour episodes from the series.

Alternatively, you can win a full set of the DVDS by entering my competition! I have a full set of the DVDs to give away to one lucky person.

To enter the competition, you first need to become a blog follower via either Google Friend Connect, Networked Blogs or an email subscriber. You can follow via more than one route if you like, but it won't make any difference! Then, leave me a comment telling me what your favourite Jamie Oliver recipe is. If you can provide a link to it, great. If you have a picture of your efforts that you can link to, even better. But don't worry if you can't - just tell me the recipe and where it's from  - as in which book or series and why it's your favourite. Please mention in the comment how you are following The Five Fs so that I can check you've signed up.

The winner will be selected at random from all commenters on this post who are also followers or email subscribers. The competition closes at 23:59 next Friday, 11th February.

Good luck!

Terms & Conditions

The competition is open to residents of the UK only. (Sorry!)
There is no cash alternative offered.
To enter, please leave a comment below as required above and become a follower of the blog via Google Friends Connect or Networked Blogs, or become an email subscriber. Please ensure you leave contact details via twitter or email.
The winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries. The winner will receive a full set of Jamie at Home DVDs - please note the DVDs are in cardboard sleeves with some Sun branding on them; they are not a boxset.
The competition will close at 23:59 on Friday 11th February 2011.
Prizewinners will be asked to provide a full UK postal address with postcode. I will endeavour to post the prize within 1 week.
If a prizewinner does not provide a full UK postal address within a week of being contacted, the prize will be re-drawn and a new winner will be contacted. 
One entry per person only. If you enter more than once, only the first entry will count.


(I was provided with the DVDs to review and have received no other compensation. The opinions stated here are my own, and have not been influenced by the aforementioned compensation.)

Easy Christmas party food - a compilation of ideas

Photo credit: DontBblu

So, the Christmas party season is upon us. In little over a week, kids everywhere will be ripping paper off obscenely expensive toys and the cooks of the household will be panicking about getting the big event that is Christmas Dinner just so. It can be a lot of work - although most of the work is getting it all ready at the same time without spoiling.

With Christmas lunch the star of the show, most people don't want to be spending hours making food for Christmas parties, whether it is just a few friends round for drinks and nibbles, or a whole houseful that leave your house looking like a plague of locusts has been and gone. (Or is that just our families that do that?). I know the answer for some will be to go to the supermarket but it works out pretty darned expensive and I find it a bit samey. Obviously, if it's after the big day, there's a possibility of leftover turkey etc - but this starts to wear thin quite quickly and it's nice to make something slightly different.

I have a few ideas that I use for parties, although I often resort to an oven full of jacket potatoes and a slow cooker full of chilli con carne to pad it out. I had an idea that I would put it out to the good people of Twitter to tweet me some nice but easy ideas for party food for Christmas time. I got tons of replies and am going to try and mention as many as possible.

Let's start with mine:

• Philly and Chilli (also suggested by @grealis) - put a tub of soft cheese on a large plate, pour sweet chilli sauce over it and surround with tortilla chips or kettle chips for dipping into the cheese. It is delicious!
• Pesto Palmiers - lay ready rolled puff pastry out flat and spread with pesto, then roll the pastry up from each of the short ends so that they meet in the middle. Wrap in cling film, chill for 20 mins. Unwrap then brush with beaten egg yolk and slice into 1cm slices and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 200C/400F/Gas 6 for 10 mins or golden brown. Grate over a little parmesan as you remove from the oven. Serve warm or cold. 
• Christmas Crispy Squares - melt 4tbsp unsalted butter, 2 cups marshmallows and 100g white chocolate chips in a pan over a low heat, using a spatula to stir them together. Add 100g rice krispies and 125g dried cranberries and stir until well combined. Quickly spoon into a baking tin lined on bases and all sides, and press flat with spatula or fingers. Leave to set for 20 mins. Lift out of the tin using the paper and cut into squares.

Moving on to ideas from other tweeters:

• Mummy Limited - Goat's cheese and fig wrapped in parma ham were a hit last year.
• Soggous - Bruschetta - lightly toast slices of baguette, rub with garlic clove, top with chopped tomatoes & basil, drizzle with oil. Or spread tapenade on toasted baguette slices. Another fave is smoked salmon on triangles of brown bread.
• @Jannism - brush tortillas with oil, place on baking sheets in a hot oven (200C/400F/Gas 4) for 5 mins so they puff up. Also, horseradish added to hummus is good.
• English Mum - Chicken tikka skewers! Marinate chicken in mixture of yoghurt, tikka paste and squeeze of lemon. Thread, grill, serve with raita. Also, I'm doing mince pies with a piped meringue top as little puds.
• @ebabeelikes - Italian breadsticks wrapped in parma ham, yummy and very easy.
• sezi13 - Honey and Mustard Cocktail Sausages. Mix together 2tbsp wholegrain mustard, 3tbsp runny honey, 1tsp white wine vin & 1tsp olive oil. Pour over cooked sausages and put in medium hot oven for 15 mins. (@Wholovesmecouk also suggested honey and chilli sausages)
• @Tracytid - Cheese Stars. Mix together 50g flour, pinch cayenne, 25g softened butter, 80g finely grated red leicester, and 20g grated parmesan by hand or in a food processor. Knead together. Roll out thinly and stamp out star shapes. Bake at 200C/400F/Gas 6 for 10 mins. 
• @Tracytid - cubes of beef on a stick with horseradish dip. (Sounds great for leftover roast!)
• @Tracytid - cut flattened slices of bread into circles, dip into melted butter and garlic, bake until crisp, top with cream cheese and salmon.
• DomesticJules - Mini Toad in the Holes. Make a usual recipe but make individual ones with chipolatas or cocktail sausages in a bun tin. Bake for 15 mins. 
• AFCband - Butter slices of bread and lay a slice of ham on top. Roll each slice longways, wrap and chill overnight. Slice into rounds. 
• TheMummyLife - Party Mini Pizzas. Mix 1 cup of flour (100g) and 1tsp baking powder in a bowl. Beat an egg lightly and add to the bowl with 3/4 cup/160ml of milk, whisking thoroughly. Add 60g grated cheese and 2 pepperami cut into bite sized pieces to the mixture. Leave to stand for 10 mins. Pour into muffin or cake tins and bake at 160C/320F/Gas 3 for 20-30mins until golden brown. Can be eaten hot or cold. (The veggie side of me would want to do this with peppers and mushrooms instead!)
• @putajumperon - Blinis with sour cream and lumpfish caviar or cream cheese and smoked salmon. 
• imperfectpages - Popcorn with paprika. Melt 2oz butter in a pan, add 2 tsp each of ground cumin, ground cinnamon and ground paprika, mix and pour over popped corn. Shake together with some salt and sugar.

Let me know if you try any of these and what you think of them. If you have any quick and simple ideas you'd like to share, then let me know by leaving a comment below. Thanks to everyone that tweeted ideas or emailed me recipes. Sorry if I've missed you out, but I had to stop somewhere - this post could have gone forever. 

May all your parties be fun-filled and stress-free. And most importantly, filled with lots of lovely food.

(Oh and as an afterthought, I've just thought that the ideas on my Tapas Tea might also be relevant. Russian salad, in particular, is great for parties and it's easy to make.)