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MN Cook Club - September voting

86 replies

ColdSancerre · 18/09/2011 11:34

We have the following suggestions

Starters
Rustic tomato, bread and basil soup
Fresh tomato and basil soup

Roast pumpkin/squash and chickpea salad with garlic tahini dressing (no recipe provided)

Sweet Potato and Sweetcorn Chowder
For 2 people: (double for 4 ppl)
2 small leeks
1 tsp butter
1 tsp fresh rosemary
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
(about 1/4 pint) of vegetable stock
1 sweetcorn cob
1 tsp cornflour
4 tbsp milk

Slice the leeks and soften them in the butter on a low heat.Add fresh rosemary (finely chopped) and the sweet potato (peeled if necessary and diced into 1cm pieces). Cook gently for two minutes before adding the vegetable stock, and bringing to a simmer.

After 6 minutes add the kernels of sweetcorn cob, and simmer for another 2 minutes. Stir cornflour into milk and add it to the pan. Taste and season, then very gently heat the soup.

Minestrone soup
1 large onion chopped
4 med carrots diced
3 celery stalks diced
i tin chopped toms
2 veg stock cubes
1 tin mixed beans
shredded savoy cabbage
salt and pepper
mixed herbs
tom puree

Sweat onion, carrots and celery in a large pan till soft and translcent (onions) add 2 pints stock and the rest of the ingerdients apart form the cabbage and bring to the boil then simmer untill carrots are softened. Test for seasoning. When almost done add cabbage for 2-3 mins till cooked and serve.

French Onion Soup (no recipe given)

Broccoli and Stilton Soup (no recipe given)

Meat/fish main courses
Braised pork with lemon
Saute chunks of potatoes (about 2lbs worth) in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, add about 2lbs worth chunks of pork, leave to braise with the cover on, add lemon juice, salt and pepper when potatoes and meat are thoroughly cooked (about hour and a half).

Chorizo and pork belly with haricot beans

Pork chops boulangere (basically boulangere potatoes with pork chops layered inside, cooked long and slow)

Stuffed hearts with mashed potato, red cabbage and pears

Pasta pie

Roast Chicken with Lemon, Garlic and Basil
8 chicken thighs and legs, bone in.
Olive oil, good quality and fruity.
2 heads of garlic
1 lemon
Large handful of basil, about 30 leaves.
medium glass of white wine

Season the chicken and put the pieces in a roasting tin. Pour over enough olive oil to moisten them and make a shallow pool in the tin. Lightly squash the garlic cloves in their skin and tuck in with the chicken. Squeeze the lemon over the chicken and drop the empty shells in too. Roast for 30 mins in an oven preheated to 200°C/Gas 6, then tear up the basil leaves and toss them about a bit with the chicken. Return to the oven for 10 mins. Remove from the oven, pour the wine over the chicken, then put the roasting tin over a hot flame and let the wine bubble for a minute.

I serve this with a green salad and some potato wedges, but I peel the potatoes so more of the juices can be mopped up...

Crumbly chicken and mixed vegetable pie

Green Chile chicken enchiladas

Turkey Milnes
A turkey breast steak per person
wholemeal breadcrumbs
beaten egg
seasoned flour
Table spoon of mixed herbs

for the sauce
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
1 diced onion
garlic
splash of white wine
Tomato puree

Dried pasta of your choice

Dip the turkey in flour, then in egg then bread crumbs (mix the mixed herbs into bread crumbs) cook for 1-2 mins on either side till golden and pop in oven for 15-20 mins (i cook most things on 200c in my crap electric cooker so just adjust) wipe pan with kitchen paper to remove excess oil, sautee onion and garlic in smidgen olive oil and then add the wine.After the alcohol has cooked out add the tomatoes and tom puree. Cook pasta at the same time.

Serve pasta then sauce then turkey on top and sprinkle liberaly with parmesan. Also add parmesan to breadcrumbs if you like too.

Vegetarian main courses
Homemade sugo pasta sauce
Brown a clove of mashed onion in olive oil, then add 3 tins of tomatoes and 3 fresh chopped tomatoes, some basil, a tablespoon of salt and cook for 20 mins. Can add chili, olives, carrots, etc.

Porotos Granados
Just fry up a sliced onion, throw in half a kilo or so of cubed squash, sizzle for a while with a teaspoon of sweet paprika, a sprig of thyme and a pinch of chilli, then cover with veg stock and simmer. When the pumpkin is almost tender, add in the kernels sliced off two corn cobs, a handful of sliced green beans and a tin of cooked beans such as pinto or cannellini. Give it a few more minutes, check the seasoning and dish it up with flatbreads or a good crusty loaf. You can dot a bit of sour cream on it and scatter a bit of grated cheese over it too if you like.

Butternut squash, mushroom and chard lasagne (no recipe provided)

Oven baked wild mushroom risotto

Maple chicken & ribs

Roasted mediterranean vegetable lasgne

Puddings
Almond cake

1/2 cup, 112g, 4oz butter
1 cup, 225 g, 8oz sugar
1 tsp almond extract (I like Star Kay)
1 egg
1 cup, 125g, 4.5oz flour
Flaked almonds

Cream butter and sugar, add almond extract and egg. Add flour, mix until combined. Spread into pie dish or round cake pan. Sprinkle flaked almonds on top and lightly press into cake. Bake at 325F, 150C, Gas Mark 3 for 20-25 min.

Choux swans.
Make choux pastry and pipe profiterole sized balls. On a non-stick baking sheet pipe s shapes to make the neck with a blob at the end. Use a cocktail stick to put a beak on the head

Bake

Fill with cream and top swans backs with white chocolate icing.

Apple and Almond Tart
750g/6 cooking apples (Granny Smith)
1/4 c honey
30ml butter
1 cinnamon stick
1t grated lemon rind
5ml lemon juice
15ml brandy

Peel and core the apples and cut into thin slices
Make a syrup by cooking the remaining ingredients together
Add the apple slices and cook for 10 minutes

Put this mixture into a greased pie dish

100g butter
100g castor sugar
2 eggs, beaten
100g ground almonds

Cream butter and sugar together
Add the eggs and beat well
Fold in the almonds
Put topping on to the apples
Bake at 180ºC for 45 mins/until golden brown and cooked
Serve with custard/ice-cream or cream

Jamie Oliver toffee apple tart

Tarte tatin made with pears (no recipe provided)

Apple streusel cake

Blackberry and apple cobbler

Mulled apple crumble with vanilla creme fraiche

Bakewell Tart
125g butter
125g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
125g ground rice
½ tsp almond extract
2 tbsp raspberry jam
Icing sugar for sprinkling

For the pastry

175g plain flour
45g chilled butter, cubed
45g chilled white vegetable fat, cubed
About 2 tbsp cold water
Milk for glazing

Make the pastry, line a loose bottomed 19cm flan dish and put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes. Keep the scraps for decorating later.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the caster sugar, and cook for about 1 minute. Remove from the heat, leave to cool a little, then gradually stir in the egg, ground rice and almond extract.

Spread the jam evenly over the bottom of the pastry case, and pour the almond mixture on top.

Roll out the reserved pastry trimmings, and cut into strips and arrange on top of filling to form a lattice, attaching them to the pastry case with a little milk.

Bake on a hot baking tray in a preheated oven at 200°C/gas mark 6 for 45?50 minutes until the filling is well risen and golden and springs back when lightly pressed with a finger. Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve the tart warm or cold.

Pink pavlova with strawberrys and cream (no recipe given)

OP posts:
RockStockAndTwoOpenBottles · 22/09/2011 13:50

*pinterest even...

ColdSancerre · 22/09/2011 13:50

Oh I love spanish food so much. You're so right about the flavour of the meat, I remember a pork chop in Jerez that just tasted so damn porky, it was amazing. I even let DP try a little teeny tiny bit.

OP posts:
RockStockAndTwoOpenBottles · 22/09/2011 13:53

You must really really love him to let him try that then! It is wonderful and SO cheap as well. You just know that it's all been beautifully reared and respected.

ColdSancerre · 22/09/2011 13:53

kveta I joined pinterest but haven't really figured it out but like your idea.

OP posts:
ComradeJing · 23/09/2011 02:11

Kveta I'm on Pinterest and think you're idea is great.

Rockstar - in a nutshell Pinterest is like lots of pinboards with different titles like Style or Food or Craft Projects or wedding ideas or MN recipe club (or whatever you like) and you "Pin" links to other websites in the form of photos from the website. You can also see other peoples Pins and boards and you can repin things from their boards to yours.

So when I'm browsing clothing websites if I find a top I like I pin it to my Style pinboard. Or food that I want to cook to my food pinboard. It's a neater way of saving sites then bookmarks basically.

If anyone wants to follow me I'm here

Kveta do you want to set up the public board?

Not sure what I'll get through as we're going back to Aus next thursday and DH goes to Germany on Sunday morning.

Kveta · 23/09/2011 09:33

Ok, I have set it up, but have NO idea how to make it public...
it's here now anyway - recipe club

if anyone wants an invite, please send me a PM with your email address :)

Kveta · 23/09/2011 10:12

gah, pinterest is being very difficult. maybe we could just all follow the board, and tag Recipe Club in any of our own posts we think should go on it? until i can work out how the jeff to add people. It lets me put your name in ComradeJing, but then says 'no record of this person', despite it predicitng you from the first couple of letters I type, grr!

ColdSancerre · 24/09/2011 21:23

The pork and chorizo thing was very nice (as usual) am too full to try the toffee apple thing now but it does look nice, will have a slice in a bit. I took pics and will report back with costings etc when I'm ot drinking wine.

OP posts:
TobyLeWolef · 25/09/2011 15:56

I'm halfway through making the toffee apple tart. It is THE most horrible pastry I have ever worked with! And I usually use Jamie's pastry recipes. This is not easy to work with at all. Hope it's worth it!

ColdSancerre · 26/09/2011 15:05

Was it nice Toby?

OP posts:
TobyLeWolef · 26/09/2011 15:22

It was delicious. I will do a proper review, but it was nice, and not too difficult apart from the sodding pastry.

piebald · 26/09/2011 20:06

Well i made the pork and chorizo-the pork cost nearly 6 quid and the chorizo 2--when did belly pork become an expensive ingredient and i used bacon as pancetta not available here, everything else was already in my cupboard. It was nice -the kids alled pulled faces and then enjoyed it but no cries of 'please mummy make this again soon'!
I am afraid i have failed on the other recipes, got all geared up to make soup but know that only i and DS1 would eat in and then when i read recipe thought it sounded a bit full of lumpy tomato skins ( i know it said rustic but!)
Has anyone tried it yet
As for pud- i trotted off and got cooking apples and then read aboutTHAT pastry but still all good intentions---except my dear Rayburn is on the blink (about 2 years noww!) and i cook on a camping gas type stove with bottled gas ans it would break my heart to have to boil a tin for 3 hours.
Will look again at sweet potato recipe, DH is home at the weekend and i am more inclined to cook more when he is here BUT we are gatting the keys for our new house on Friday so i might be a bit distracted. It could be the final straw for him-- hang on we cant move get my fudge topping isnt done

TobyLeWolef · 26/09/2011 23:04

So, the pastry for the toffee apple tart was like a proper sweet paste, as opposed to a normal sweet pastry. I am the daughter of a baker and grew up in a bakery, so I have used all sorts of pastry, including this kind.

But this was just really hard to work with. I ended up virtually freezing it before I could get it halfway to reasonable for lining a tart tin.

It was really lovely and crisp on the day I cooked it, though, even when it had completely cooled. However, it softened a huge amount overnight, which was disappointing.

The children and DP thought that there was too much caramel. I loved that part of it, but I do agree with them that one can would have sufficed.

Also, the oven temperature stated didn't seem to be hot enough. The apples seemed to dry out more than caramelising, which gave a very odd texture. Reading down the comments on the recipe, it seems that this was a problem for a few people.

I bake a lot, so I always have all of the store-cupboard ingredients for pastry. I used apples from my garden, so my pricing may be misleading, as all I had to buy especially was the condensed milk. This made the tart a bargainous 40p per slice, based on 8 slices.

I would make it again, but I would use Jamie's standard sweet shortcrust pastry recipe. It is my usual go-to sweet pastry recipe, and I can't see the benefit in using the faffy sweet paste in this recipe. And I would try to fix the 'dried-out' apple thing. And use only one tin of caramel.

To cut a very long post short:

Cost per portion -- 40p
Ease of obtaining ingredients -- 10/10
Ease of following recipe -- 10/10
Time taken to prepare/cook -- 5/10
Family opinion on finished product -- 8/10

RockStockAndTwoOpenBottles · 26/09/2011 23:23

Sorry I've not posted my stuff yet, been sorting out last bits of stuff to go to England today. I shall sit down tomorrow and jot it all down. Next week I won't be able to cook much. My mum arrives in Spain on Sunday and then we start the drive back to England on Friday 7th, so I probably can do some stuff, but it will be disjointed - maybe do one or two before we leave and then something once we're back, hopefully around two weeks today.

ColdSancerre · 26/09/2011 23:25

I also thought too much caramel in the tart but wondered if it was because I didn't use a deep enough tin, so couldn't get enough apple on. I did like it but wouldn't be in a massive hurry to do it again.

OP posts:
Kveta · 27/09/2011 10:10

I made the toffee apple tart too, but used some shortcrust pastry I had in the fridge and the 2 tins of carnation caramel from the cupboard, and some apples from my nan's tree - so I spent no money on it this week. I found it massively disappointing though - the apples dried out, and there was a pool of liquid in the dish after I cut each slice. It was much, much better with hard pears (the way I made it first time), so I wouldn't use apples for it again. Shame.

I have a deep pyrex dish for it, so there was no problem filling it all in. And with the left over pastry, I made some 'apple and caramel smears' - basically very very shallow jam tarts with a smear of apple butter and a smear of caramel on each. they are yummy :o

Toffee Apple Tart
Cost per portion -- none
Ease of obtaining ingredients -- 10/10
Ease of following recipe -- 10/10
Time taken to prepare/cook -- 10/10
Family opinion on finished product -- 7/10 (10/10 for the pear version I made a few weeks back)

I'm making the chorizo/pork tonight, but couldn't find pork belly, so got escalopes in a deal at sains (£10 for 3 meats, so got some chicken and a pork joint for the weekend too). just realised I don't have wine in the house, so may need a dash to the shops for that this afternoon. I'll probably only get a wee bottle though, as I'm not drinking at the moment.

ColdSancerre · 27/09/2011 10:36

Toffee apple tart

As others have said the pastry was very hard to work although did taste very nice, and the apples didn't caramelise the way I thought they would, they just sat on top. I thought they'd sort of sink in a bit and the caramel would bubble up around them. maybe it would have been better with a apple on the bottom? It did taste good though.

I did the caramel in the slow cookers after seeing it suggested on here and that worked fine.

The ingredients for the pastry were store cupboard and as the tart got 8 portions easily it worked out quite cheap per portion, costed on what I bought (apples and condensed milk). It ties in with Toby's costing as the apples were on offer on ocado so it was only £1.00 for the bag I used.

Cost per portion - 0.59
Ease of obtaining ingredients - 10/10
Ease of following recipe - 10/10
Time taken to prepare/cook - 6/10
Family opinion on finished product - 8/10

Belly pork & chorizo
I've done this loads of time so was very easy and everything except the pork, chorizo, pancetta and coriander was store cupboard as I have dried haricot beans in.

I started it in a frying pan and then put it all in the slow cooker for a few hours. It was lovely, and I made some baguettes (did the dough in the breadmaker) to have with it.

Cost per portion - 1.49
Ease of obtaining ingredients - 10/10
Ease of following recipe - 10/10
Time taken to prepare/cook - 8/10
Family opinion on finished product - 10/10

I took some pics with my iPhone will upload them to my profile if I can work out how.

Trying the porotos thing on Friday night.

OP posts:
ColdSancerre · 28/09/2011 18:23

Are we doing a second round? If so what categories?

OP posts:
Kveta · 28/09/2011 20:53

yes, let's do another round! I made the porotas grandos this evening, and it's really nice. did put a wee bit of bacon in it so DH would eat it! it's much more like a soup than a meal - i will post results later.

we could do the same categories, but again not have to do all of them.

TobyLeWolef · 29/09/2011 09:50

I have done the pork/chorizo too. Will do a proper post on it later.

Definitely let's do another round :)

Kveta · 29/09/2011 09:59

so Porotas Grandos -

I had to buy the butternut squash and cannelini beans and corn on the cob for this. a total of £2.78. I reckon there is enough for 6 people if you serve it with enough carbs - I did it with long grain rice, as we don't tend to have bread in the evenings (after sarnies for lunch!). I did add a wee bit of bacon when frying off the onions, and am glad I did - without it, I don't think it would have been as yummy for us! However, it tasted lovely, although much more of a soup than a meal IMO. DH was HUGELY unimpressed with a veggie meal, but actually liked it enough to demand leftovers for lunch today :o I also put a couple of tablespoons aside for DS to have for dinner tonight (he's 2). I have frozen down the rest for a meal next week, as I'm working every evening, so DH and DS will be surviving on ready meals if I don't freeze something down for them.

Cost per portion - £0.46 for us
Ease of obtaining ingredients - 10/10
Ease of following recipe - 10/10
Time taken to prepare/cook - 8/10
Family opinion on finished product - 8/10

I will probably make the chorizo and pork tonight for tomorrow's meal, as it takes 2.5 hours to cook, and I don't get home early enough to get it going for dinner. Don't think I'll bother with the soup this round, as I have been given another sack of pears by my colleague, which I plan to make jam with, so that will occupy me enough in the kitchen!

ColdSancerre · 29/09/2011 10:40

I have the other packet of pancetta from the chorizo thing in the fridge I think I will add it to the porotos (copying you!).

What categories should we do? Preserves or is it a bit late? Halloween?

OP posts:
TobyLeWolef · 29/09/2011 10:44

Ooh, I like the idea of Hallowe'en :)

RogerMelly · 29/09/2011 10:50

wtf is that pasta pie? jeez

Kveta · 29/09/2011 10:50

should we do preserves this time and halloween next? I think you said initially it would be every fortnight, so that would fit the time frame? I have some AMAZING preserves recipes I want to try, and which don't need masses of ingredients :o I've just seen another jamie oliver main meal I'd like to have a go at too, so will nominate that. pinterest isn't letting me pin it though, grr.

where should we post our suggestions?