Indian rice

Rice is nice isn’t it? (Rhetorical.)

Put a scoop of butter and a glug of oil into a saucepan. Add a good tablespoon of garam masala. Fry for a bit.

Add some mixed veg from the freezer. Stir for a bit.

Add 50g rice per person. Measure this rice in cups so you know how “big” it is. Stir it round a bit.

Then add 2.5x as much boiling water as there was rice, cover and simmer for 12-15 minutes ish, or until cooked.

Ideally, as it’s rice you shouldn’t poke it too much, but if it looks like it is drying out then add a bit more water. The aim is that you won’t have to drain it at the end, just spoon it out.

Season with salt and black pepper, and squeeze a bit of lemon juice on if you are feeling posh.

Optional: stir in some dessicated coconut, sprinkle with flaked almonds.

Goes well with curry, or just a spoon of thick yogurt. Mmm!

Flat breads

Or is it flatbreads?

I had to make a curry from leftovers and thought I would excite it up a bit with some homemade breads.

As follows (makes 4):

Ingredients
75g strong bread flour
50g wholemeal flour
Dollop milk
Pinch salt
1tsp sugar
1/4 egg (yes I know, but you can always scale it up and make 16. Or do what I did and make egg fried rice with the remainder.)
Spray oil and butter as required

Making it
1. Mix all ingredients except the butter and oil.
2. Mix some more.
3. Knead. It’s a very sloppy dough – you’re best to oil the surface fairly liberally and slap it around quite a lot, probably for about 10 minutes.
4. Cut into four pieces, roll into balls and rest in an oiled, covered bowl for a bit. This can be left overnight if you like.
5. Flour a surface this time, and roll out into frying pan sized, thinnish rounds/squares (depending on your rolling pin skillz).
6. Spray some oil and chuck a lump of butter into a hot pan. Fry the breads on both sides. Stack under foil to keep them warm. Refresh the oil and butter between breads a bit like pancakes.

These are lovely and work out about 120 calories I reckon (disclaimer: guesswork!). The recipe is adapted from what was described as a Thai roti flatbread but they don’t have much bread in Thai cuisine so I’m not sure how authentic this is. It’s like a delicious chapati (sp?) – try it!

(It isn’t like a delicious chaplain which is what the iPad is desperate to correct it to.)

Mexican scrambled egg

This recipe is delicious and so easy. I’ve had it both for breakfast and for tea on days when I got in late/ couldn’t be bothered/ just fancied it! You can vary it a lot, it’s really just an idea. The original recipe comes from nigella express, but I make it a different way each time, so here’s an idea of what I do.

Ingredients
1-2 tortillas each
2-3 eggs each
Cajun seasoning, or other Mexican seasoning (fajita/ cumin etc)
Oil to fry
Veg (I use mushrooms/ peppers most often, but use whatever’s in the fridge!)

Method
Heat the oil, rip the tortillas into bits and fry them briefly
Take them out the pan and cover in foil to keep them warm
Fry the veg- how long for depends what you’re using!
Beat the eggs with the seasoning and pour into the pan
You want scrambled egg not an omelette, so keep the egg moving in the pan, keep stirring!
When it’s cooked but still soft, pour onto the plate, on top of, or around, the tortilla bits
You could serve it with a salad, or some sour cream/ avocado etc

The fried tortilla is a great accompaniment for a range of Mexican meals. It’s also a good way to use them up, I often end up with a few left in the packet. With the egg, it’s an amazing meal!

Weird prawn fingers

They say the key to a successful recipe is in the naming.

I wanted to make some fish fingers to go with the square potatoes but we didn’t have any fish in. No salmon, no cod, not even a tin of tuna. But we did have some prawns in.

And so, a legend was born. The legend of the slightly shit prawn fingers.

They didn't look like this. But these are in a very neat stack! Bonus points!

Ingredients
A handful of prawns (there is a recession on)
A couple of sticks of celery
A chilli (red)
Some leftover sweet potato.
An egg
Flour
A couple of slices of bread

Special equipment
A stick blender/whizzer/wand/whatever you like to call it

Method

1. Chop the celery and chilli into small pieces.
2. Mix the prawn, celery, chilli and potato. Season.
3. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add a tiny bit to the prawn mix. I said a tiny bit!* Save the rest of the egg.
4. Shape this mix into fingers. I got six out of it, but it will depend on all the obvious things like how much of each ingredient you used and how big your fingers are. Your prawn fingers, I mean, not your actual fingers, although I suppose if you had really big fingers you might not be able to make very small shapes…
5. Whizz the bread into breadcrumbs using the blender thingy.
6. Set out the flour, egg and breadcrumbs into plates or bowls and dip the prawn fingers into the flour, followed by the egg (not for too long or they’ll fall apart) and then roll them in the breadcrumbs.
7. Lie them on a baking tray and oven for 20ish minutes or until they look good.
8. Serve in a stack! Always serve in a stack! I also earnt extra cringe points by doing a circle of tomato ketchup round the outside of the plates. This is optional. Lemon wedges could also work.

I rated this as medium because it is a little fiddly to coat in breadcrumbs without them falling apart, but it’s not hard.

Let me know how you get on! If you don’t have any of the ingredients, pretty much anything else similar will also work.

NOTE: If you have arrived here via Google looking for “weird prawn fingers” for some other reason than you were looking for this recipe then I can only offer you my sympathy.

 

* The problem with egg is that even when you have beaten it all together it still has a tendency to “clump”. If you pour it out of the bowl it is very difficult to just get a small bit, as the remaining egg tries very hard to join it in your fish fingers. Perhaps spooning a small bit of egg into the mix is the answer? Anyway, be aware!

Lemony chorizo and prawn rice pot

Hello!

I am not as poncey as Chris, and as a result will be sharing only delicious and easy recipes which do not require the use of fancy biscuit cutters. Unless I make biscuits, in which case fancy biscuit cutters are OK, especially if baking with Panther (our small baby- she is only 11 months and therefore pre-cooking age, although in a future post I will share the story of when we made Halloween biscuits with her!)

This one comes from my good food magazine and it’s really delicious. So delicious we’re having it again this week. Keeping every new recipe on the menu will not be practical for very long so we’ll need to be careful, otherwise if we keep them all on we’ll be eating 50 meals a week after the year, which would really be too many!

Anyway, here goes (from memory):

Ingredients
200g prawns (recipe calls for raw, which you’d heat through at the end, I used cooked and left over from Christmas)
50g chorizo (for cooking, about 3 small ones, but could happily take more, sliced)
1 sliced onion
2 sliced peppers
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 red chilli, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
250g long grain rice (I’m not really one for measuring that much, and the scales don’t work, but this amount is quite important so it boils down to the right consistency!)
100g frozen peas
Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Method

1. boil kettle. Fry onion, peppers, chorizo, garlic and chilli for 3 mins
2. Add turmeric and rice. Stir. Add 500ml boiling water and cook for 12 mins, covered
3. Uncover and stir, should be nearly cooked. Add prawn and peas, and more water if not needed. Cook for 1 min until prawns are cooked (obviously this doesn’t apply if you use cooked prawns like me – they can be added later or even at the table!)
4. Stir in lemon zest and juice and eat. Serves 4 and is yummy!

Square potatoes

Let’s start off with something simple! This isn’t an exact-quantities recipe, it’s more of a make-use-of-what-you’ve-got-lying-around one.

Ingredients
Some potatoes
A bit of egg
Whatever else is in your fridge/cupboard

Special equipment
Biscuit cutter

Method

1. Boil potatoes in plenty of salted water.
2. Drain and mash when cooked through.
3. Add other things – I added a bit of sweet potato, you could add some sautéed spring onion or something (I don’t like them but I can see they would work), maybe a bit of cheese. I always recommend a knob of butter and some (not too much!) milk. And salt and black pepper of course!
4. Make shapes on a baking sheet (astute readers will have guessed that I boringly used squares) using your biscuit cutter. Brush with the egg and bake for about 15 minutes or until they are crisping up and going brown.

Cookery books never say “going brown” do they? I think I mean “turning a delicate golden colour”. Yes, that’s better.

Use more adventurous shapes and give your children some home-made smiley faces/alphabites!