Tips & 'Simple Apple crumble'

'Tips'

When I plan my meals I always think of the following:

1. How long its going to cook
2. Balance of nutrients (that may seem a little anal but having a balanced diet is very important, especially with the children. If you bring them up with this philosophy then it just becomes normal and definitely helps them keep a healthier diet when they get older)
3. Price

One of the most important thing when cooking is being organised. As I work in the trade it just comes as second nature to me. But I have a few tips:

1. Organise your kitchen. Everything has a place in the kitchen. Just think logically about where everything lives... i.e. Baking equipment all together, baking ingredients all together. Where do you store your core cooking ingredients, salt, pepper oil etc? Near the cooker as this will save time when cooking if you have these things to hand. It just makes things quicker for you when your cooking. Saving minutes makes such a differnce when cooking.
2. When planning your meals can you make 2 meals using the same main ingredient. i.e. I cooked corned beef this week which I  got to meals out of. 1. Corned beef, posted earlier this week and for todays lunch I cook corned beef hash which I will post later for you.
3. When cooking vegetables don't just cook what you need cook enough for 2 or three meals.Vegetables will stay fresh for at least 3 days in the fridge. I always just reheat them in a microwave with a little butter. So when cooking the vegetables make sure you cook them so they still have a bite to them.
4. Always look at having a wet dish i.e. A stew or bolognaise as you can cook the day before and then just re-heat

If you follow these tips it will save you time and as we all know, time is so short with our busy lives.

'Simple Apple crumble'

Prep time: Took me 10 minutes if that!

This is so quick and easy and fresh! Cost is next to nothing and you will be using good old british brambley apples (I do try and use as much local in season produce as I can. It tends to be cheaper when in season, although to be honest it's not that much cheaper but cheaper none the less...every little helps!)

Ingredients:

• 6 brambley apples
• Water
• Golden caster sugar

Method:

• Peel and dice apples
• Place in dish
• Top with water & sugar

Crumble topping

• 250g Plain flour
• 100g butter cubed
• 80g Golden caster sugar

Method:

• Soften butter first
• Sift flour
• Add sugar
• Mix together until a breadcrumb texture
• Top apples with the crumble
• Cook for 25 / 30 minutes @ 160*c on the middle shelf
• Serve with 'Ambrosia' custard....Devon knows how they make it soooo creamy!

Follow link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_iB61_dTJU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I hope this helps!

enjoy cooking peeps...

Fridays dinner

I changed my mind yesterday....decided to cook meat balls with linguine and home made tomato sauce then apple crumble.

I changed my mind as Olivia had a friend stay over. You can't really go wrong with this dish.

Later today if I have time I will post the Apple crumble. This has a video to help.

You will see in this recipe that I use 500g of steak mince. When I bought my mince I bought a 700g pack. Im going to use the other 200g to make burgers just like macdonald's.....the kids love my home burgers and when you say it's just like Macdonalds you can get away with just adding salt and pepper!!! How easy is that.

Prep time: It took me about 10 miuntes to prep the balls & about 5 minutes to prep the tomato sauce. The cooking time for the tomato sauce is about 40 minutes and the cooking time for the meat balls is about 12-15 minutes.

You will need either a food processer, hand held blitzer or smoothie blender for the tomato sauce.

First you need to start the tomato sauce. This will save you 10 minutes in the whole process.

Tomato sauce

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots diced
• 2 diced onions
• 2 crushed cloves of garlic
• Good pinch of dried mix herbs
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• I oxo veg stock cube
• 800ml water
• 50g tomato puree
• 25g brown sugar

Method:

• Warm a pan with a little olive oil and add the carrots, onions & garlic
• Cook for about 8/10 minutes on a medium heat making sure you do not colour too much
• Add water, stock cube, tomato paste, dried mixed herbs & sugar
• Bring to the boil then simmer. This will take about 30 minutes to cook out
• Once carrots are soft you need to blitz until smooth
• Then add seasoning and the meat balls

Meat balls

Ingredients:

• 500g steak mince
• 1 oxo beef cube
• 1 finely diced onion
• Pinch dry mixed herbs
• 3 pick stems of Lemon tyme (only use the leaf not the stem)
• Salt & pepper

Method:

• Mix all ingredients in a bowl
• This mix will give you 15 meat balls (approx 40g per meat ball)

To cook the meat balls place in the tomato sauce and cook for 12/15 minutes on a medium heat. When this is cooking you need to cook the linguine.

As a rule all dry pasta will take about 8 / 10 minutes to cook. If you're not too sure how much to cook per person I always go with: for children use 50g & for adult use 100g of dry pasta as the pasta will double in weight.





I made garlic bread to accompany this dish. I have posted the flat bread recipe beofre just follow the basic recipe using 2 crushed cloves of garlic in the mix then 15g of sliced butter on the top before cooking in the oven. 170*c for about 8 / 10 on middle shelf. I made this after making the meat balls, while the tomato sauce was cooking.

I am always looking for feed back so please feel free to comment on any of the blogs...

Enjoy peeps :)

Scotch pancakes 'yummy'

When the children wake up every morning I generally get asked the same question 'dad can we have pancakes please'. What I love is these babies keep them full until lunch and they are so easy to make. These are so versetile. You can have them with, butter, strawberries or even bacon and maple syrup. I'm sure you will find a combination other than what I've listed so have fun and give these a go.....

Ingredients:

• 3oo ml semi skimmed milk
• 1 large free range egg
• 75 g golden caster sugar
• 200 g self raising flour

Method:

• Weigh sugar, milk & egg ingredients out into a measuring jug
• Whisk together
• Add flour in three stages

Follow steps in video link to cook:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_J2u81YvnU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Happy cooking people...

October week

So the children are off for October week and they are staying with me all week. Bit straped for cash this month so I've planned a week of great meals for only £55. That's lunch, dinner and dessert costing £5.93 per day for three people....not bad Ashley!

Menu for the week:

Dinner
Corned beef and braised vegetables
Corned beef hash (made with the left overs from the corned beef)
Fish cakes, broccoli, leeks & carrots
Salmon with a creamy spinach & lemon thyme sauce with home made garlic flat bread
Chicken & green bean penne pasta
Breaded Turkey escalope topped with cheese and served with braised cabbage and new potatoes
Minced beef and onion pie with broccoli, carrots and mashed potato

Lunch
Tomato soup (heinz the children will not have another tomato soup!!!)
Home made lentil soup
Scotch broth soup
Homemade ham sandwiches - (boiled ham then roasted with brown sugar & honey)
Cheese sandwiches
There will be plenty of soup left for the other days......

Dessert
Apple pie (Olivia loves this pie from tesco! only a £1)
Apple crumble
Plenty of yoghurts and fruit also
Eton mess made with homemade meringue

Todays dinner is going to be the Corned beef :

Ingredients:

• 1 kilo piece of top side
• 1 onion peeled and roughly chopped
• 3 leek tops cleaned and chopped roughly
• 1 carrot chopped
• 2 bay leaf
• 4 black peppercorns
• Large pinch of special steak seasoning (schwartz)
• Good splash of worchestire sauce
• 3 carrots peeled and left whole
• 3 large potatoes (I've used maris piper) peeled and halved
• 1 savouy cabbage cut into wedges (12 wedges per cabbage 1 or 2 wedges per person), keep stalk on when cooking

Method:

1. Place the beef, chopped vegetables, steak seasoning and worchestire sauce in large pan and cover with water. Bring to the boil skimming off any scum. Cover and leave to simmer for 2½-3 hours, until the beef is tender, topping up the water now and then if necessary.
2. Add the carrots and potatoes bring back to the boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Then add the cabbage and simmer for another 5 minutes.
3. Take the beef out and carve across the grain as it will keep the beef in one peice and feel easier when carving. Arrange the vegetables and potatoes on the plate with the beef. The cooking stock can be thickened if you wish but to be honest just use the stock as is for the gravy.....

Thats dinner number 1...

Dessert tonight will be apple pie so no cooking just warm up and serve.

Tomorrow mornings breakfast will be scotch pancakes and syrup...lovely- recipe tomorrow morning.

Bonus material......Lentil soup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_kCgRv8qE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Have a good day people :)