Tag: cooking

taking your appliances for a ride

winter light and shadows

We are about to embark upon a kitchen refit; the prospect fills me with horror, but the end result will be worth it. Tell me it will.
Another thing that horrifies me is the cost of decent appliances – we have a standalone combi microwave (so it is a little oven and grill, as well as a microwave); we paid about £90 for it last year, but built in ones seem to start at the thick end of £600 and just keep going. I’ve been haunting eBay, and finally snared a Neff combi, plus oven, plus cooker hood, for £350 – result.

So yesterday morning we set off for Northallerton, on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, to collect them. We stopped at a Little Thief for an Olympic Breakfast en route, and it really was olympic – neither of us could quite finish it.

We met the chap (who is renovating a really beautiful house, including “just pushing the back wall out 3 ft” – lord knows what that’ll cost him!), and stowed the stuff in the German Barge; the oven went in the boot, and the microwave and hood fitted on the back seat. We wrapped them tenderly in old sheets, and set off for Staithes, a lovely fishing village on the North Yorkshire coast. It’s very steep, but we trolled up and down the hill and little stepped lanes and had a lovely time, finishing with a cuppa and a piece of really very nice coconut, lime and ginger cake in a local cafe. I had a bash at reproducing it yesterday, and my recipe is here.

After Staithes, we drove home across the moor, stopping in Malton en route. Malton is a nice country town, which apparently closes at 4 on a Saturday, but thankfully the nice butcher was still going. They had a BOGOF on pasties and pies, so we bought a couple of each, and some decent bacon. Came home and ate (home cooked) Indian fud.

We think the Neff appliances enjoyed their day out; we thought it a nice idea to give them a treat, as they will shortly be entombed in cabinetry, and set to work for their living.

Yesterday, I made cake, made soup from last week’s lamb bones and a stack of veg, cleaned the new cooker hood, cooked bagels with scrambly egg and bacon for breakfast, had meat and potato pie with cabbage and broccoli for supper, watched Raising Arizona and the BAFTAs … must have done more, but can’t remember.

And now it’s bloody Monday again.

weekend 5/6 sept 2010

Smile please!

Pete has been suffering from A Lurgy, so we weren’t sure whether our planned day out to Lincoln’s Day of (Morris) Dance would come to pass, but he felt OK providing he didn’t have to drive, so off we went.

I love Lincoln – I love all mediaeval cities like Norwich, Chichester, Salisbury, York etc. We’ve only visited once, but it’s going to be somewhere we go regularly, I’m sure. Quite possibly in a fortnight, as there’s a bird of prey display at the Castle, and we found someone who can mend our barometer too!

We gawked in the expensive shops – I fell completely in love with a handbag in a lovely shop where they didn’t seem to mind a bit that I couldn’t afford it, but just brought out different colours for me to try 🙂 We had tea from bone china cups in a little tea room, toiled up and down the hills, decided once again to leave the Castle for another day (see above), and spent quite a bit of time at the Lion and Snake, watching the dancers, particularly the Raving Maes, who I’m thinking about applying to join (although the costumes are probably a bit young for me!)

We had a distinctly indifferent lunch at the pub, and I may well complain to the chain: 35 minutes to produce a couple of sausage baguettes, with a couple of teaspoons of cold caramelised onions from a jar, no cutlery until after the food arrives, *and* a deep sigh when I asked for salt, does not please me particularly. Nor did the advertised “mayo” – no idea what it was, but mayo it most certainly wasn’t. Nice day out, mind, and we bought a couple of splendid stuffed mushrooms, which are destined for tonight’s supper (nice Mr Butcher was quite happy to keep them for us while we wandered round).

supper 5 sept 2010On Sunday, I got up fairly and went for a bike ride – 12.82 miles around the north of the city, to Anlaby Common and thence on to Kirk Ella and West Ella, and home. There are *hills* around there – it’s just on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, and it was hard work, but I did it all, so was dead chuffed (and puffed). Came home and ate bacon and egg and sossidge for breakfast, then constructed a huge vat of goulash, and some molten chocolate puddings, for supper with friends. Very sorry to say that they had to cancel due to ill health, so I hope they’ll be well enough to come and eat with us soon – there was enough goulash to freeze! As it happens, I started coming down with the Lurgy last night, and Pete and I were in bed by 9 p.m., so it may have worked out for the best …

weekend 17/18 April 2010

Saturday was quite lazy really; Pete manfully cycled firstly into town, to fetch more oats and ingredients to make muesli, and then with his trusty bike trailer to Pets at Home, to purchase cat litter and bikkit, thus dealing nicely with both ends, as it were. I caught up with some Desperate Housewives, tried some low GI-ish sort of baking, and went for a walk through the cemetery, which is full of lovely spring flowers. And dead people.  This brought me out at the end of Princes Avenue on the side of the road I never go – dangerous.  I found two nice shops selling bits – and bought some lovely red beads in the form of a necklace and a bracelet, and some nice greetings cards. Oops.  I was going to go home via the park, but I stopped in the local Sainsburys for some stuff, and the incredible string bag was a bit heavy, so I only did a couple of miles. That was my activity for the day, as far as I recall. Watched the rubbish Doctor Who, cooked a prawn and fennel risotto (with 20% less rice than usual), and a rhubarb crumble (with wholemeal flour and oats), which will do us three days instead of the usual two.

river near DriffieldOn Sunday, we ventured forth to Driffield, a market town in the Yorkshire Wolds. Had a mooch around the town, then set out along the canal for a bit – about 5 miles all told, I’d say. There’s a set of photographs on Flickr if you’d like to see more – a lovely walk, and we shall go there again.

We stopped in Beverley on the way back, as I wanted to pop into Lakeland (it’s quite dangerous living within spitting distance of a Lakeland shop). We bought a new pair of oven gloves (planned), and some small plastic boxes for the freezer, but woe – they have discontinued the range I love, and replaced it with horrible ones with rounded corners, and taller lids, and they won’t stack like the old ones 🙁 I shall write and complain.

Then into Julian Graves for supplies of ground almonds (low carb),  dried cranberries, some yellow raisins, and some chocolate ginger (which ought to be for Pete, but they’re hard to resist …)

Supper was lasagne (with half the amount of pasta I usually use) followed by teeny portions of the rhubarb crumble), but that’s OK because breakfast was three crispbread with marmite and a boiled egg, and lunch was a cereal bar in the car (felt a bit odd after the walk) and half a wholemeal banana muffin. We watched The Dark Knight – at least, Pete did. Far too noisy and splody for my liking, and a bit violent for its 12 rating, I thought, so I gave up about 40 minutes in.  He loved it though, so I’m probably a philistine.

And today, my scales tell me I am no longer officially overweight.  And I don’t care what anyone else’s say.

weekend 6/7 Feb 2010

“Quiet”, would best sum it up, I think.  Stuck a ham hock in the slow cooker in the morning, then took the car out for the first time in a fortnight(!) for the monthly Big Shop, and sallied forth to Makro (mainly for cat food, plus some other bits), Pets at Home (for cat litter), and Asda, for the stuff we couldn’t get in Makro, and also I wanted a basil plant.  We bought a few bits and pieces, and forgot the bloody basil plant.  Then to Grain on Newland Avenue, which we don’t like much, but is the only purveyor of Pete’s blackcurrant juice we can find in the area, and the butcher and greengrocer.

On Saturday afternoon, Pete put up a hanging bracked for the £3 hanging basket (planted, too!) we bought at Walton Street Market on Wednesday.  And then we slumped, apart from trying to work out how Reactive Cooking got hacked, and how to fix it … fix it we did, but how it happened is a bit of a worry.

Watched the last half of Independence Day on C4, which was entirely down to inertia, as the DVD is on the shelf!

On Sunday, we:

  • cooked a big fry up for brunch
  • made a slow cooker’s full of Gujerati beef (recipe to follow)
  • turned 5kg of carrots into wine – well, the start of wine; a couple of quid from Makro for a huge bag, had to be done
  • made some carrot soup with the stock from the ham hock
  • made cheese scones for Sunday tea
  • bottled 11 bottles of red wine

We also got up to date with Brothers and Sisters, which we really like – this season might have new writers, because it seems much wittier this time round.

And that was that.  Tonight we’re off to the Eagle on Anlaby Road to investigate the Hull Transition movement – we go out far more often here than we ever did in Long Ashton!

an afternoon in the kitchen


Liliphant being helpful
Originally uploaded by ramtops

1.5kg chicken thighs turned into lemony chicken with coriander, and chicken tagine with apricot and chickpeas.

All the old veg chopped up and made into soup for next week, with the stock from the gammon cooked in ginger beer (which worked really well).

All helped by Lily sitting on the recipe sheet. But she did do it beautifully …

making good use …

jam tarts

… of the oven. I’m trying to cook in a different style – more on the hob, and less lighting of the big oven unless I can use it for more than one thing. I have a decent oven in the microwave, so I use that more now as well.

We were supposed to be going out last night, but one of the cats is unwell, and we didn’t want to leave her. Of course, we had nothing planned for supper, so we pulled the last tub of chilli from the freezer (must make some more!), and as it was frozen solid, I set it in a small cast iron casserole in a low oven to thaw …

read more at Reactive Cooking

fusion risotto

Now, this really was quite barking, and I wasn’t at all sure it would work, but nothing ventured, etc.

As I said, there was more duck left on the carcass than we thought, so risotto seemed appropriate. Basic rule of risotto in this house is 5 oz risotto rice to 1 pint liquid; the liquid can be anything you like, or a permutation there of – stock, wine, lemon juice, water. So, I thought, in a mad, end-of-the-week sort of way, why not use up the bit of coconut milk left from the spring greens the other night …

read more at Reactive Cooking