Tag: food and drink

It’s a pizza with chipotle, goat’s cheese and red onion.

I simmered down a tin of tomatoes with three chopped chipotles for the sauce, and topped the pizza with a mix of mozzarella and goat’s cheese, some sliced red onion, and dried thyme. Yummy.

And while I’m here – I made ‘spotted rooster’ the other day, which is a Costa Rican rice and beans dish, and Madhur Jaffrey mentioned that in CR it would be serve with some kind of hot sauce, possibly a tamarind-based one. So I mixed up tamarind oncentrate with West Indian hot pepper sauce, and it was delicious. About two parts tamarind to one part chilli sauce.

I was just going to post the food reference from today’s entry at Pepys’ Diary, which tickled my fancy, but actually the whole thing is great. It completely sums up why Pepys is such a joy – the combination of frankness, interesting historical detail, and lively prose style.

“Up early. This being, by God

An improvised meatloaf that was good enough to try and record the recipe.

400g minced beef
50g breadcrumbs soaked in 4tbs milk for about 30 mins
1 egg
2 cloves of garlic
1 finely chopped onion
1 baby orange pepper (perh 1/2 of a normal pepper)
about 2/3 of a sainsbury’s box of chestnut mushroms (150g?)
1 chopped tomato
a squidge of tomato puree (1 tsp?)
1 chopped anchovy
a sprinkle of Cool Chile Co. dried chillis
a v. small amount of fresh sage – about 1 leaf
a generous amount of fresh rosemary and basil
a splash of balsamic vinegar
a handful of freshly grated parmesan
salt and pepper

(I think that’s everything)

mix and put in an oiled loaf tin, spread a bit of oil on top

cook for 35 mins at 200C

pour off the juice and reserve

It was a bit wetter than I intended, so it didn’t slice very well. Tasted good, though. I poured a bit of the reserved juice over each serving to keep the flavour.

Last night I served up sweetmeat cake, which is an egg-based tart with candied peel and chopped roasted hazelnuts in it. The recipe isfrom Jane Grigson’s English Food. To go with it I made ratafia ice cream – whipped cream mixed with crushed ratafia biscuits and some cointreau, and frozen. I meant to use Archers rather than cointreau, but didn’t have enough. The ice cream was nice, but rather too strongly flavoured for the tart. I might make it again and serve it with something else, though.

Found it in the freezer. Too big to snack on or easily use in sandwiches once it’s defrosted, but very strongly-flavoured and salty for cooking. Hmmm.

I embarked on shepherd’s pie yesterday only to find I had no potatoes. So I topped it with bread.

An onion, two sticks of celery, a left-over bit of fennel, a red pepper and a carrot chopped and cooked together in a frying pan until starting to brown slightly.

A kilo of minced lamb, browned a bit.

Put the veg, the meat, plenty of garlic and rosemary, and some beef stock in a pan and simmer for an hour or so.

Put the sauce in a shallow oven-proof dish, then top with slices of bread (I used multi-grain) spread with French mustard, mustard-side down. Put in the oven, 180C until bubbling and looking brown and crunchy on top. Yummy.