Choccy Cake

Ivonne made her pound cake and it inspired me. I've adapted that recipe and merged it with this one from UKTVFood. Mine's not as well finished as Cream P's but when is it ever? :-)



I don't have a round thingie, so I just used a normal cake time, and instead of making two thinner ones I made one large one. This was due to the fact that I'm lazy, there's less washing up and I only have one this size :-) That pic is of the botton, I flipped it so it is easier to spread the choccy onto.


My topping was a bit like Ivonne's, it's just cream and chocolate... oh, and a bit too much Couvoisier Brandy. Oh well, what's wrong with a little kick in your cake?

The result was a lovely moist choc cake, with a "subtle" brandy twist... I enjoyed mine with lots of cream :-)

Ribs!!!

I got a little tipsy on Friday after work, which isn't a bad thing, until you wake up with the vague image of you at a supermarket checkout...

Luckily I did buy some real food and not just chips and dip! But since I wasn't planning on buying ribs I didn't really have a recipe on my mind. As fate would have it Catesa logged on as I was recipe hunting and she was nice enough to confide in me her family recipe. Not the secret sauce of course but at least I had a model to follow.


I par-boiled the sweet little things in salted water for about 10 minutes, then removed them and let them cool a little. In the meantime, I mixed some organic ketchup with Worcestershire sauce, oregano, some of the boiling liquid, paprika, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper.

I left the ribs in the "barbecue" sauce overnight, then roasted them in the oven for 30 minutes.

Eat with gusto and lots of wipes :-)

Cold salmon fajitas

Looking quite yummy no? They tasty very yummy.

I bought honey smoked salmon chuncks (not a can in sight!) to go into this little dish (inspired by the one and only Catesa [she eats her weight in salmon every day, true fact!]). I had some creme fraiche left over from my previously blogged dishes, so I mixed a couple of spoon fulls with diced cucumber, thyme, parsley and the salmon chunks.


The I pressed my torti... ok, you got me... I opened a packet of mini tortillas and wrapped them up.

Simple. An lovely too.

Salchicha al vino with creme fraiche

Again I've nicked this from Nigel Slater, though I've adapted it somewhat to fit what I had in the "magic" fridge.

I used Toulouse sausages, which have a high herb content, but use what you have to hand (that's Nazca's motto I think :-)).

First I sweated/fried off an onion, and a sliced stick of celery in a saucepan. When nice and see-through I added the de-skinned sausage lumps and browned them off. The sausage should stick to the pan (mine doesn't have a non-stick surface) which creates lovely crusty/caramelised bits of sausage. At this point I threw in garlic, dried chili, 1/2 red pepper and sliced chestnut mushrooms. Once they'd had a chance to warm through I chucked in the white wine (before the bits stuck to the pan burnt, but after the mushrooms had visibly started to cook), I used enough to just cover the contents of the pan.

At this point I also added thyme (because I have a huge wad of it) and parsley (because I had a huge wad of it). But oregano would be nice too. S*d it, just whack any herbs in, how bad can it be?

Once the wine had reduced to about half (but more importantly, the rice had cooked) I put a spoon full of creme fraiche into the mix and stirred it in... 30 secs later it was ready to serve.

Puff of inspiration

I wasn't going to have Chilli this weekend, until I saw a certain blog. I haven't had chilli for ages I thought.

So a tub of creme fraiche, and some steak mince later... viola as they say in Peckham (Only Fools and Horses joke there).

Onions, garlic, dried chilli, Farmers' Market steak mince, paprika, cayenne pepper, tins of italian tomatoes and a touch of water. Oh... creme fraiche and crispy pitta. Sorted. You'll have to imagine the chives.

Chicken in pesto soup

For this recipe you need lots of spring onions and basil that is getting older than the use by date. My usual scatter-gun approach to shopping went awry again, but from mistakes usually come strokes of genius... but er, I think time will have to tell on this one I think.

To use up my basil I made a quick pesto with the basil, spring onions and garlic. I drizzled in the olive oil while it was being blended. I put that in the fridge over night as I cooked the stir fry that night... hence the monge tout and baby corn you can see above :-)

I browned two big chicken legs in a sauce pan, and added chicken stock once the pieces had had a chance to work off the fat from the skin. After about 30-45 minutes (I was watching football and reading a book so lost track of the time), I removed the chicken and turned up the heat. In went a bottle of Riesling (minus a glass ;-)) and I left it to reduce to about 2/3.

I separated the chicken pieces whilst the "pesto" was added along with the left over monge tout and baby corn. I also had some left-over rice* and decided to add that with the chicken seconds before serving.

It turned out quite nice, though it was missing that je nais se quois to properly cap it off I think. There again, maybe it was just too much fusion cooking, it is after all two left-over meals and chicken pieces. A dish too far maybe.

There was certainly nothing at the bottom of my bowl though :-)

*from the day before stir fry (salmon steak with vegetable rice [fired onions, peppers, garlic etc and then rice and water, you get the idea])

Duck Soup

What do you mean you can't see the duck?! Oh yeah, it was a duck cured sausage that I used. Did I not mention that?

Recipe:
I diced a red onion and fried in a little bit of butter... ok, a good wedge. Once they'd started to caramelise I added large chunks of the duck sausage and a couple of cloves of roughly sliced garlic. Once they'd had a few minutes to start the fat melting I added a large carrot (quartered length-ways) and about a litre of chicken bouillon.

I had soaked a mix of dried lentils, peas and other assorted "healthy" bits in water over-night, they went in next; along with some dried porcini mushrooms. To be honest I think the mushrooms didn't taste of much in the end, I think they must have surrendered their flavour to the wonderful background taste though.

After exactly 45 minutes (i.e. the first have of West Ham V Aston Villa) I removed the large chunks of sausage and chopped them up a little and mixed them back in.

The first serving was much broth-ier than the encore I took the picture of above.

Like me, what it lacks in looks it makes up for in outrageous talent... ha... I, er, mean... taste.