In our house, steak and chips is an irresistible treat and the ultimate in “cheery-uppy” dinners after a hard day at work.  When Dave came home after a thoroughly rubbish day I immediately abandoned my plans for a virtuous (yet delicious!) stir-fry and pulled a couple of beautifully marbled rib-eye steaks out of the fridge.

This version of steak and chips is a bit non-traditional but it is so good and it also fits in beautifully with the South Beach lifestyle.  I think I love sweet potato wedges more than “real chips” at the moment, so I totally didn’t feel deprived by having these oven-baked beauties.  The chimichurri sauce was a real revelation to me as I’d never had it before; I was blown away by its zingy flavour and it felt so much better than having a creamy sauce smothering the flavour of the steak.  I’ll be trying it as a marinade and also as a salad dressing in the future.  Tres yummy!

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First, the good.  I have lost 7 pounds this week, courtesy of Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet getting rid of lots of water retention and maybe a pound or two of fat.  Hooray!  So I’ve lost all my holiday gain in one fell swoop, which is awesome.

This week I have been eating Kaylan’s Egg Muffins, Red Thai Chicken Curry (with lentils simmered into the sauce rather than rice on the side), Steak with roasted artichoke hearts, vegetable moussaka and other delights.  Oh, and lots of lunch-time salads, despite the Arctic weather.  I haven’t felt at all deprived apart from one day when I was unwrapping Lucas’s Christmas chocolate money and the smell started to get to me.

The bad: You may have noticed a lack of posts during the week, and while I’m not a prolific poster these days, you may be worried about two diet updates in a row.  Worry not, I’ll get back to posting recipes (mostly South Beach friendly ones) soon, hopefully.  I had a couple of bad falls before Christmas which aggravated my prolapsed discs, and then this Thursday I managed to trap a major nerve in roughly the same area which has left me in agony and unable to stand for more than two minutes.  I am putting my faith in the chiropractor and I hope that I’ll be feeling a lot better in a few weeks.  I’m really gutted that I won’t be able to belly dance for a while, too.

And the recipe: Taco Bake (Phase 1, South Beach Diet, courtesy of 3 Fat Chicks website)

I had intended to cook this for Dave last night, but he ended up cooking it for me instead.  This isn’t my usual sort of meal, but twenty pages of rave reviews convinced me to give it a try.  We both loved it, and I think my portion tasted especially good because my lovely Dave had made it for me.

Serves 4:
1 can refried beans (no lard, please!)
1 lb extra lean beef mince
1 large onion, chopped
1 large bell pepper chopped
8 oz mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1 can green chilis
2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2-3 TB chili powder blend
1 TB ground cumin
2-3 TB tomato puree
2/3 C shredded f/f or l/f cheese, your choice, although I think cheddar is the best

Garnish – any, all work well:
chopped green onions
chopped black olives
l/f, f/f sour cream
chopped lettuce and tomatoes
chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)
chopped white or bermuda onion
salsa

Preheat oven 230C (210 fan). Take a flat casserole dish, spray with cooking spray and spread refried beans on the bottom. Season with salt and pepper and bake for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, sauté meat, onions, bell pepper, garlic (season with S&P) until onion begins to soften and meat beings to brown. Add mushrooms and cook until they’ve released their water and meat is thoroughly browned. Drain fat and add all spices, and cook for about 2-3 minutes until spices toast. Add green chilies and tomato puree, along with a little bit of water, if needed. The mixture should be moist but not runny.

Take the casserole dish with the beans, pour mixture on top and top with cheese (olives and green onions can be added at this stage). Bake in the oven for another 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted and just starts to bubble. Serve with generous heaps of lettuce as a bed (romain, red leaf and iceberg work really well here), and garnish with garnishes of your choice.

You know how it is, I’m sure.  You resolve, hand on heart, to cut back on buying cookbooks.  (Not stop, because that would be utterly ridiculous.  Me, stop buying cookbooks?  Crazy talk!)  But yes… you resolve to cut back and then, along comes a review of a cookbook that sends you scurrying to Amazon faster than Usagni Bolt.

The review in question is Ivonne’s—of Cream Puffs In Venice fame—review of Giada’s Kitchen.  I resisted for a good 24 hours before placing the order.  I even checked the library catalogue in case they had it; I was all prepared to submit a request for the book, but I couldn’t see any option to do so (are you listening, South Glos libraries?)  So, I succumbed and ordered it.  And I’m really glad that I did.

In the UK, we’re slowly starting to get more North American food shows.  So far, no Rachel Ray or Paula Deene who I think we can live without, but we have been getting The Barefoot Contessa for a couple of years—is it me, or does almost every recipe begin with a stick of butter?—Ellie of A Healthy Appetite and last year we had the first season of Giada de Laurentis’s Everyday Italian which I really enjoyed.  Giada’s hallmark is light and fresh Italian cookery with big flavours. She doesn’t shy away from butter but this particular cookbook is her healthiest yet, something that always appeals to me.

When flicking through the book plenty of recipes caught my eye, but I absolutely had to try out her salmon recipe.  I am not a fan of fish soups or stews, but serving the salmon with a citrus broth looked absolutely perfect for the few days of summer we were experiencing.  With a little bit of tweaking—I used much less olive oil—this dish is perfect for Phase Two of the South Beach Diet, and it would be perfect for any time of the year when you need some freshness or a delicious taste of summer.

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Whoops, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  All is fine, Chez Ang, I’ve just been lazing on the beach.  The South Beach Diet, that is.  Yup, after years of getting on (and falling off) the Weight Watchers wagon, I have defected to the sunny shores of the South Beach Diet.

It’s still early days, but I think this is the diet for me.  I think I need more ‘rules’ about eating and a definite absence of cakes and sugar as once I start eating cakes, I find it very hard to stop.  I’m still in Phase One of the plan (low-carbing) and  I must admit that I’m looking forward to a bowl of porridge as soon as Phase Two starts.  (I am also slightly fed up of eggs.  I fear I will be reincarnated as a chicken.)

Thankfully I can still eat some very familiar meals, and pre-SB, one of my new favourite easy dinners was from Bill Granger’s Every Day: seared steak with cannellini beans and tomatoes, all drizzled with some aged balsamic vinegar.  It’s an absolutely delicious meal and I’m so pleased that it fits in perfectly with the South Beach lifestyle. These days I do add extra tomatoes and some red pepper and also serve it with some steamed broccoli to up the veggies, but that just makes it even better. (Especially if the broccoli is stirfried with plenty of garlic.  Mmmm… garlic.)

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Well, here I am.  A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short.  I totally spaced on this month’s Daring Cooks challenge.  I managed to convince myself that the posting date was the 17th and it was only when I saw dumplings popping up on my Google Reader, like a bloom of jellyfish, that it dawned on me that I was late.

“I’m late, I’m late!  For a very important date!” said I, channelling the White Rabbit, and promptly scurried off to the supermarket for supplies.

This month’s Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by the lovely Jen from Use Real Butter and is Chinese dumplings.

Chinese dumplings can be boiled, steamed, or fried.  I am a big fan of frying them to create potstickers as you get the best of two worlds: a gorgeous golden crispy base and a softly steamed upper half.  Mmm… magical.

So after practically throwing Lucas into bed, I got into the kitchen and started chopping.  And chopping.  And chopping.  Half-way through the ingredients list for the pork filling I found myself coming up with bad puns about chopping sprees.  (According to Jen, you have to chop by hand as a food processor creates either mush or irregularly chopped pieces of vegetable.  My knife callus bears testament to my determination to have finely minced veggies in my filling.)

Making the dough was easy enough since I happily used the food procesor for that.  Rolling the dough into decently thin circles was the hardest part for me.  Try as I might, I just couldn’t turn out a perfect circle which then had a knock-on effect with my pleating.  And as we all know, the real art of Chinese dumplings comes from the pleats that give them their trademark crescent shape.  *sigh*  Still, the later ones looked much prettier than my first attempts, so at least I improved.

I actually finished making a batch of the dumplings last night, but managed to burn them all.  I don’t mean a few blackened speckles… I mean solid black bottoms.  I was so dispirited that I (a) didn’t want to take a photo of such tragic dumplings and (b) couldn’t be bothered rolling and filling the other half of the dough so I left that for this morning and attempted to make some with Lucas.  Suffice to say that my dreams of having a dumpling production line in my kitchen have been dashed.  He did have great fun squidging the pork filling and poking at the already shaped dumplings, though!

When I finally finished filling all the dumplings, I shoved two-thirds of them into the freezer for Dave and very, very carefully fried the rest for lunch.  Lucas loved the huge plume of steam that shot out of the pan when I poured in the cold water and couldn’t wait to try the potstickers.  Heck, neither could I.  They smelled so good!

As good as they smelled, the potstickers tasted even better!  I knew I was on to a winner when I flipped one over and it was gorgeously golden brown with an audibly crispy base.  Mmmm… crunchy.  The filling was smooth, fresh and very fragrant with beautifully chopped vegetables, even if I do say so myself!  The best thing is that Lucas loved them, and he’s been a little fussy in his eating habits lately, except where chocolate is concerned of course.  He’s not stupid!  At any rate, he demolished a plateful of potstickers with plenty of “dip-dip” and tried to steal some of mine!   I suspect that my near-future involves making lots of dumplings…

For the recipe and fabulous step-by-step photographs, see Jen’s post here.  Thanks for a great challenge, Jen!

Ever since Ivonne and Lis announced that they were forming a Daring Cooks’ group, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the first challenge recipe.  And I was not to be disappointed: the doyennes of The Daring Kitchen had chosen ricotta gnocchi from The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers.

Gnocchi are my Achilles heel.  I love them to bits, but whenever I’ve tried making them, it has been somewhat disastrous.  I remember trying to make butternut squash gnocchi when I was pregnant, only for my nice neat gnocchi to completely disintegrate when they went into the simmering water.  I kid you not.  It looked like I’d made soup and all I could do was stand there and cry big fat tears into the pan.

My next fearful foray into gnocchi was making potato gnocchi to go with a beef goulash from a Gary Rhodes recipe.  Everything would have been fine, I’m sure, if I had cooked them immediately after shaping, but I was trying to do everything in advance as it was for a Hogmany dinner. *sigh* They didn’t disintegrate but were rather gluey.  Okay, very gluey.

So, when I set out to make the challenge recipe, I made damn sure that I’d read the recipe at least three times and watched every YouTube video I could find on the subject of ricotta gnocchi.  Oh, yeah… I’d never eaten ricotta gnocchi before, either, so had no idea what the texture should be like.  Still, many years of enthusiastic eating have qualified me to say what is tasty and what is not!

I decided to go the whole hog and make my own ricotta for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the supermarket ricotta I buy is very, very wet and I didn’t think it would drain enough and secondly, I had everything I needed to make the ricotta and thought it would be fun!  And it was both fun and really, really easy.  I would totally do it again as it’s much cheaper than buying a tub of ricotta, plus it tasted better.

When I (very nervously) came to make my gnocchi it turned out that I had nothing to worry about.  My ricotta was bone dry and it easily whipped up into a thick, but fluffy batter.  The only thing that went wrong—because something always has to go wrong when I do gnocchi, right?—was that my beloved microplane grater somehow snapped in half when I was grating the Parmesan and I grated a little bit of myself in the ensuing panic.  Am I the only person to have ever broken a microplane like that?  I thought those things were indestructible!

I made rough quenelles of the batter and dropped them into a shallow bowl of flour to shape them.  After the first couple, I got brave and just quickly patted little spoonfuls of batter between my floured hands to shape the gnocchi.  This was far less sticky than previous efforts.  Yay!

The recipe calls for making and cooking a test gnocchi which is such an awesome idea!  I wish I’d thought of that years ago and saved myself many a tear.  Interestingly, the little lumps and bumps of each gnocchi smooth out during the cooking process and each gnocchi almost doubles in size which makes this a great recipe for greedy people like me.  I was also quite fascinated to note how each gnocchi rose from the bottom of the pan in the exact order they’d been dropped into the simmering water.  It was like a scene from Fantasia!

As I’d never tasted ricotta gnocchi before, I decided to keep things very simple and just make a thick tomato sauce to go with them.  I wanted to be able to taste the unadulturated flavour of the gnocchi before dipping into a familiar and comforting sauce.

I’m very pleased to say that this first Daring Cooks’ challenge managed to exorcise the ghosts of gnocchi past.  My gnocchi cooked up into pillowy clouds of ricotta goodness and both Dave and I loved them.  Lucas was less keen, but I didn’t care as that meant there was more for me!  Hooray!

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Oh, lasagne… is there anything I won’t do for you?

For you, I would slave over the stove for hours to create the perfect ragu to lovingly spread between your silky layers.  I would whisk furiously to make a voluptuous bechamel to further your perfection.  I would squirrel away the best Parmigiano-Reggiano for you and you alone.  But, I have now come to a terrible realisation, dear lasagne.  All these years, all the stirring, the whisking, the grating, the love, and still I have wronged you.

Until yesterday, I have never made you your very own pasta.

I am so sorry.  You deserve better, lasagne *sniffle*

Fresh lasagna sheets from the supermarket simply won’t cut it any more, now that I’ve made my own and forget about dried, no need to cook lasagna!  My beautiful lasagne absolutely must have freshly rolled, home-made pasta.

Ahem.  I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to some crazy lady talking to her lasagne, so without further ado… on to this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge!  The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

This is the first time that I’ve made a lasagne completely from scratch.  (Well, to be fair. I didn’t mill the flour or make my own cheese, but you get what I mean, right?)  I’ll happily spend hours cossetting a ragu, throw together a great bechamel, but I’d never considered making my own lasagna sheets.  I have no idea why as I make my own ravioli quite a lot; making pasta isn’t difficult, just a little space-consuming in my little kitchen.  However, now that I’ve done it, and relatively successfully, I’ll certainly be making my own lasagna sheets.

I made the ragu and bechamel on Thursday; both straightforward once you get over the milk curdling scarily in the ragu.  Yes, this is normal. Yes, it’ll stop looking weird if you just let it do its thing on the stove.  And yes, you will find youself panicking even though you know it’s going to happen.

On Friday morning, while looking at the Daring Kitchen forums, I belatedly noticed that the posting date had been brought forward by two days.  I hate being late—you wouldn’t think so, considering how often I am late—so gone was my leisurely day of slowly and lovingly making pasta, then assembling the lasagne.  I was in a rush!

Making the pasta dough was fun, if a little messy.  I usually toss it all into the food processor until it reaches the bread-crumb stage, but being a good little Daring Baker, I proceeded to make a big mess on my worktop.  Like I said, fun   I had to add an extra egg and a few teaspoons of water squeezed from the spinach to get the dough to the right consistency, but I almost always have to add extra liquid when I make pasta.

Amazing what a difference kneading makes!

Lucas was fascinated by the creaking noise of the pasta machine and abandoned Peppa Pig for long enough to turn the handle and roll out two pieces of pasta.  I wish I’d been able to geta picture as it was really, really cute. Half-way through he turned round and said, “Mummy, I love making food!” He’s the sweetest little boy ever and was so proud to eat his pasta.

Following a tip on the private forums, I stacked all my sheets of pasta between layers of clingfilm which worked a treat and saved so much space.  I’ll definitely do that again.

I did take space-saving a little too far.  I decided that as my sheets of pasta were paper thin, I wouldn’t bother to blanch them in boiling water.  I just couldn’t picture getting my mountain of pasta drained properly on sheets of kitchen roll before assembling the lasagne.  And it was getting late, and someone else sait it worked out just fine for them… So, in they went, raw.

I think this would have been absolutely fine if I’d had a lot more bechamel.  I had to thin it a few times when reheating it as it just kept thickening even further, and I’m guessing that the lasagne soaked up plenty of the sauce when it was baking.  So, my lasagne didn’t have the gorgeously creamy white topping that it should have done, despite me holding back a really generous amount when I was building it.  It still tasted great, though.

I managed to use all the ragu, and all but three sheets of the spinach pasta, giving me eight layers. Wow!  It was really impressive to cut into it and see all the wonderful layers; the bechamel and ragu melted into the layers making everything was just so rich, voluptious and delicious.  How could it be otherwise?  It was lasagne.

I must thank our lovely hosta Mary, Melinda and Enza for a fantastic challenge.  We all loved the lasagne and I’ll definitely be making it, and variations, in the future.  How awesome would this be with roasted butternut squash?  I have to… after all, I have years of shocking neglect to make up to my lasagne…

Check out the Daring Blogroll to see all the other incredible lasagnes!

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Spring has sprung in Bristol! It has been gloriously sunny all week, coaxing fuzzy little bumblebees out of their hives—you can almost see them thinking, “Isn’t this a bit early?”—and bringing all the daffodils in my garden into trumpeting bloom.

I love spring. It’s so lovely to see colour appearing in gardens, blossom on trees and see birds flitting around building nests. The best thing about spring, for me, is all the glorious sunshine without the oppressive heat that even a British summer can bring.

Another bonus of spring is that my body suddenly starts craving light, fresh, clean-tasting foods.  Suddenly I find my shopping bags (reusable, naturally) brimming with citrus fruits, cucumbers and early strawberries—apparently the warm spring means an early crop of English strawberries this year.  Hooray!

To celebrate this bright and cheerful weather, I decided that a pea risotto was in order and when I spotted some fat scallops on special offer at the fish counter, I knew that we were going to have the most fantastic dinner…

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I hardly ever eat fast food these days, but a few weeks into a diet and what do I start craving? Burgers and chips. *sigh*  My brain is a funny place at times.  So when I spotted a recipe for burger and chips in Irresistible, the new quarterly food magazine from Weight Watchers UK, I was very keen to try it out and hopefully avoid any insane late-night to Burger King.

I’ve got to say, there’s nothing new in this recipe—it’s all in the portion sizes, you know—but it makes a splendid (and delicious) base recipe for whatever variations your own imagination can come up with.  I laced last night’s burger with plenty of garlic, oregano, parsley and a pinch of chilli flakes for an Italian feel, further cemented by serving it with a balsamic tomato salad.  Next time I’m thinking of Mexican-style burger with cumin, jalapeños and fresh coriander, topped off with some searingly hot tomato salsa.  Yum.

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You can’t beat a Sunday roast.  Whether it’s roast beef and light-as-air Yorkshire puddings or a succulent roast chicken—can you believe that I’ve never roasted a chicken?  Turkeys galore, and partridges, too, but never a chicken—a Sunday roast is a fantastic end (or beginning, depending on your perspective) to the week.

Today I decided to make a modern take on a pork roast using a pork tenderloin (or pork fillet).  It’s not a traditional roasting cut, but I wanted something that would be exactly the right size for 2.5 people with no leftovers to worry about using up.  As I was already off the traditional roast pork track, I decided to serve this with mashed potatoes instead of Dave’s glorious goose fat roast potatoes as the oven wouldn’t be on for long enough to give the roasties a proper go of things.  I’m sure Dave was sceptical about this modernist, non-traditional take on Sunday lunch, but to his credit he didn’t pull any faces!

Amusingly—to me, at any rate—Dave and Lucas went off to feed the piglets at the farm shop while I cooked lunch.  Lucas’s latest obsession is visiting the pigs at the farm shop.  He’s been known to go and get his shoes and coat and announce “Daddy car.  See piggies.”  There’s nothing like knowing your own mind, and he certainly does!  So, off they went, wrapped up warmly against the cold and clutching a bag of vegetable peelings.  I wonder how long it will be before Lucas fully grasps that we eat pigs?  He’s well aware of the difference between Peppa Pig and real, live, smelly pigs but he hasn’t made the mental leap of pig equating to delicious, delicious pork.

But back to the roast pork!  I wrapped the tenderloin in slices of gorgeously smoky pancetta before roasting it atop some sliced apples, onions and fuzzily fresh sage leaves.  While it roasted I sorted out the mashed potatoes and conducted an experiment upon myself. Do I, as an adult, now like Brussels sprouts?  After reading Jeanne’s post last week, I resolved to try to banish my sensory nightmares memories of bad, soggy sprouts.

The pork was deliciously tender and succulent—I guess the extra-long resting time helped there—with deliciously crisp and salty pancetta in each bite.  And I was quite delighted at how the apples and onions cooked down into a rather rustic compote, full of flavour from the double pork combo above.  The roasted garlic mashed potatoes were fantastic; mellow garlic and warm, buttery, comforting potatoes.  The flavours worked so well, but the mash was just so right for the appallingly cold weather we’ve had today.  And the sprouts?  It turns out that I like sprouts when they’re cooked the right way.  I suspect that I’ll forever loathe and despise boiled Brussels sprouts, but sauteéd?  Now we’re talking!

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