Food Highlights of 2012…

I’m writing this on New Year’s Eve, frosty glass of fizzing Cava in hand, and thinking about how 2012 made a difference to my eating and cooking. And I was surprised to find that there were lots of things I cooked a lot of this year that I hadn’t tried much of before. Here’s a run down of some of my food highlights of 2012…

Kimchi
I happily jumped on the ‘Korean food trend’ bandwagon and gobbled up what must have been hundreds of mini plates of this spicy, fermented cabbage. In most places I’ve been to, it’s served fridge-cold, alongside grilled meats, rice dishes or noodles. In fact, I’ve found myself ordering main courses in restaurants just because they come with a side of kimchi. I’m addicted to the stuff. 

Cabbage
This year I’ve really fallen in love with the dark green, frilly leaves of a savoy or Cavalo Nero cabbage. We’ve eaten them stir-fried until crispy, baked them with sliced potatoes and tallegio cheese and chopped up into potato cakes with bacon and a runny fried egg. Nigel Slater’s buttery spring greens and  ham baguette was the best – and most surprising – sandwich of the year. 

Alcoholic cakes and puds
If there was a way of getting some booze into my cakes and desserts this year, I did it. Highlights include a Bailey’s cheesecake, Nigella’s chocolate and espresso cake (laced with Tia Maria) as well as her Coconut (Malibu) cake. Also, Gennaro Contaldo’s chocolate puddings with Amaretto and a Malibu and coconut ice cream. 

Home-made ice cream
This was the year I learned how to (properly) make home-made ice cream, thanks to The Icecreamists book and my Lakeland ice cream maker, bought early in the year. I’ve since found that no supermarket ice cream (even the poshest ones) can compare with ice cream that’s been made at home in the morning for dessert that night. I can whip up a quick custard-based ice cream now with eggs, cream, milk and sugar – but making it using condensed milk was a revelation. And every time I think I’ve cracked my own ice cream recipe, I visit Jane at Tutti Frutti in Reading and then I realise I still have lots to learn. She’s my ice cream hero (try the Trifle flavoured ice cream next time you’re there). 



Cheese
Thanks to the people at the British Cheese Board and cheese expert Patrick McGuigan I learned lots and lots about cheese this year. Everything from the difference between cheap cheese and artisan (water and time, mostly) to the massive variety of cheese available in Britain, all distinct and dependent on many factors such as the cattle’s diet, the quality of the milk, how the cheese is moulded and what’s added later (dried fruits, bacteria, nettle leaves, etc). I’ve developed a thing for Cropwell Bishop Stilton, Sussex Slipcote and melty Lancashire cheese. Tip: the best five-minute snack of 2012 was sliced ‘tasty’ Lancashire cheese, melted in a quesadilla with chorizo and red onion. 

The Slow Cooker
2012 saw me dust off my slow cooker and use it to make not only stews and curries, but really tasty, modern dishes too. We went crazy for slow-cooker barbecue pork ribs, where the meat fell off the bone after a quick blast in the oven to caramelise the sticky topping. We ate bowls of Teriyaki Chicken with Jasmine rice and learned to cook a whole chicken in there (courtesy of Kavey). I’m in the middle of a pork shoulder craze at the moment, where burritos make an appearance on the dinner table at least once a month (cook the pork shoulder in the slow cooker with onions, thyme and beer). I’ve always felt that slow cookers were consigned to the ‘retro’ category but I really think they’re having a bit of a revival now. 

Bubble Tea
One sip and I was converted. I love bubble tea. Icy cold and milky but flavoured with green tea or black tea or sometimes with other fruity flavours with little chewy tapioca balls you suck up through an oversized straw. Bubble tea might have been the big news of 2012, but I reckon it’s going to get even bigger next year, and we’ll be able to get it in some more unusual flavours, too. 




Hot Dog Night
Hot Dog Night overtook Burger Night in our home this year. The dogs: plain and bacon-wrapped smoky jumbo and skinny regular franks, chipolata pork sausages, white German sausages and Cumberland. The toppings? sauerkraut, mustard, ketchup, avocado, cheese, onions. For me, it isn’t a hot dog if it doesn’t come with a sweet and sticky pile of chunkily chopped onions and a good squeeze of both mustard and ketchup. 

What foods did you discover a love for in 2012? What do you think will trend in 2013, food-wise? 

Our Untraditional Christmas Cake… Malibu and Coconut Cake

For years, I diligently stirred, baked, fed and then marzipanned and iced a traditional Christmas cake for the family, each year. And then I realised I was the only one eating it. And so I changed tradition, at least in our family. Each year, I make a very untraditional cake, but one that still appeals to the Christmas spirit (often literally; they usually end up laced with booze).

This year, it was the turn of Nigella’s Coconut Cake (How to be a Domestic Goddess, page 23).



I made the cake the day before Christmas Eve, so we had something to leave out for Santa on the big night. It was really simple. You just soak some desiccated coconut in some boiling water and stir this into a standard vanilla cake batter. After it’s baked and cooled, it’s cut in half (I used one large tin rather than two small sandwich tins) and then spread with a buttercream icing laced with Malibu and with toasted desiccated coconut stirred into it. After it’s pressed together, you whip up some runny-ish Royal icing (made with yet more Malibu) and drizzle it over the top, so the white icing falls down the sides, a bit like snow.




We loved it – if you’re ever after a non-traditional Christmas cake then do consider this one… it might make it onto next year’s menu too…

Did you have a traditional Christmas cake? Or something less traditional? Share your un-traditional Christmas cake ideas in the comments box below….

Slow Cooker Teriyaki Chicken

If there’s one thing my kids love, it’s Teriyaki Chicken. And if there’s one thing I love it’s having dinner miraculously cooked for you all day in the slow cooker. And so the two combined to produce this. 

I got the idea from the Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen blog; I just tweaked quantities a little bit and used mirin, taking out the cider vinegar in the original recipe. It was a real hit and I loved that all I needed to do when everyone was hungry was just put some rice on to cook and chop a spring onion. I love to eat the chicken shredded on fragrant Jasmine rice with some of the sauce poured over and topped with a crunchy, chopped raw spring onion, or some soya beans. Because of the long cooking, I wouldn’t recommend using chicken breast – you’ll find the chicken thighs stay tender and juicy after cooking. Oh, and I did try making this without the sugar – and it just wasn’t the same. You need it, not only for it’s soft sweetness, but it gives a rich consistency to the sauce, too.

Slow Cooker Teriyaki Chicken
Serves 4-6
Ingredients:

• 10-12 skinless and boneless chicken thighs (bank on about 2 per person)
• 60g light brown sugar
• 100ml dark soy
• 100ml mirin
• 1 tsp finely-chopped ginger
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 4 tsp cornflour
• 4 tsp cold water

Method:
1. Heat the slow cooker to high and lay the chicken thighs in the bottom of the crockpot. Replace the lid. Next, combine the sugar, soy, mirin, ginger and garlic in a bowl or a jug and pour this over the chicken. Put the lid on and cook for about 3 hours, until the chicken is tender. 
2. Transfer the chicken to a plate and keep warm (a loose covering of foil should do the trick). Pour the dark sauce into a saucepan and heat, stirring until just boiling. Mix the cornflour and cold water together and pour into the sauce, stirring, to thicken. Serve the chicken on some rice with the chicken flaked over and a little of the sweet, sticky sauce drizzled over the top. 

If you have any leftovers, these are great made into a sandwich with a little chopped spring onion, or flaked, in large chunks, into an aromatic Chinese-style soup. 

Your Wedding Reception… by Domino’s Pizza…

Yes, it’s true. You can get married in McDonald’s in Hong Kong, and over here, they’ll even do your reception for you, at a restaurant decorated with pink balloons. You can also tie the knot by digging into a pyramid of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. And now, instead of worrying about whether to serve elegantly-crafted portions of crab lasagne or fillets of veal to your nearest and dearest, you can just ring up Domino’s instead.

Last weekend, Domino’s delivered pizza for over 60 guests at a wedding reception in Bedford. The happy couple talked about how ‘the boxes just kept on coming’ and that ‘it made a nice change from the usual sandwiches and sausages rolls as everyone loves pizza’.

The happy couple, with Domino’s staff who delivered the order

Domino’s even made a personalised pizza for them.. (Awwww…..)

Weddings definitely seem to be getting more relaxed nowadays, and many couples don’t let tradition get in the way of enjoying their day as they really want to. And we thought Kate Winslet was being down to earth when she served bangers and mash at her first wedding…

Pizza for your wedding guests? A good idea? What do you think? 

An Afternoon with Food Artist Prudence Staite

You might not recognise Prudence Staite by name, but I can almost guarantee that you have seen some of her work. She was the creator of the huge Dita Von Cheese and Barack Obama portrait (both in cheese) and the huge (yes, you’ve guessed it) cheese sculpture of the Queen she created for the Jubilee this summer. She’s also sculpted using other foods – chocolate, fruit and cupcakes… as in another portrait of the queen made up entirely of different flavoured cakes. Prudence even made a huge billboard entirely out of cheese. ‘It was supposed to be edible,’ she told us, ‘but it was sitting in Covent Garden and health and safety didn’t really want it to be eaten. So it was ground up after it had been exhibited and used for animal feed.’

There aren’t many food artists in the UK, she went on to say. Apparently, it’s bigger in America and some other parts of the world than it is here. And whether you agree with food art or you don’t, you have to hand it to her. Where most art students select paint, brushes and charcoal as the tools of their trade, Prudence chose food when she took up studying at Winchester, and her work is now everywhere.

Food artist Prudence Staite 

I wondered how long these impressive sculptures take to put together. ‘The Dita Von Cheese took about 2 days,’ she told me. ‘Because we’re working with food we don’t have a lot of time to create things before they start to dry out or warm up.’ She said that she had a separate chilled part of her studio to work in while she was making Dita, so the cheese could be kept at the right temperature.

We were also joined by Nigel White, Secretary of the British Cheese Board, who took us through a tasting of five different types of British cheese – a Cheddar, Stilton, Wensleydale with Cranberries and a British Brie, along with a new one – called Red Fox. It’s similar to a Red Leicester but it has calcium crystals in. I totally loved it, and will look out for that one when I’m out shopping.



Next, Prudence cast a watchful eye over us as we donned blue food hygiene gloves and scrunched up grated Cheddar to make a snowman, complete with rosemary twig arms and clove buttons and eyes. And then we cut out shapes to make a Christmas tree out of different-sized stars. A twist of orange peel added some colour as tinsel and I gave mine a final sprinkling with silver food glitter. I was quite pleased with them, to be honest. The pictures you see here were taken at home after battling on the tube, railway and two buses in the 5pm rush – so they didn’t do too badly. I think the snowman would actually make a great addition to a cheeseboard, and my children are really keen on making one themselves. They’d eat it, too. 



What I loved most about Prudence was her attitude – she cheerfully admits that there’s nothing she won’t think of making out of food, and was coming up with suggestions for different effects – like using different varieties of cheese for each layer of the tree. ‘Stilton would just about hold it,’ she said, when we considered whether other cheeses would be up to the job. We all agreed Brie was best avoided though as you’d end up with more of a Salvador Dali ‘melting’ effect after half an hour.

There were some rumblings on Twitter a few days before, that cheese sculpting was somehow a fairly crass and pointless activity and various people huffed that they’d rather eat it instead of ‘sculpt’ anything with it. Having spoken to Prudence and seen some of her work, I think it’s all very well – it’s a bit of fun too, and a small little cheesy Christmas tree or a cheese snowman is a cool thing to add as a backdrop to a festive cheeseboard. Especially if you’re going to eat it, too.

With thanks to the British Cheese Board who invited me to the event. 

Burrito-style Slow Cooker Beef Brisket

Once I mastered the art of cooking whole chickens, barbecue ribs and pork shoulder in the slow cooker, I’ve turned my attention now to beef, mostly by chucking it in the crockpot and pouring over either alcohol (beer, red wine), stock or water. But then I came across the cooking technique used on the Eat, Live, Run blog. You don’t add any water, you just bung it all in dry, with some veg, and it cooks beautifully. 

This version uses the same concept of dry-slow-cooking, but I’ve tweaked the flavours to include pimenton (the spicy kind) and fresh thyme. After 6 hours, you just lift the brisket onto a board and shred with a couple of forks. Perfect, no-fuss burrito or taco beef. 

Smoky, Spicy, Slow Cooker Beef Brisket
Serves 4-6 people, as a burrito or taco filling

Ingredients

• 1kg rolled brisket beef joint
• 2 medium onions
• 1 red pepper, washed and deseeded, then cut into small chunks
• half a teaspoon of pimenton
• good pinch of sea salt flakes
• black pepper 
• handful of fresh thyme leaves

Method

1. Switch your slow cooker on and set it to ‘high’. Peel and slice the onions, and scatter them in the bottom of your slow cooker. Place the beef on top. 
2. Rub the pimenton, salt and pepper into the beef and then scatter over the thyme. Replace the lid (no liquid, remember) and leave completely alone, cooking away, for 6 hours. 
3. Once the time is up, and the beef is aromatic and meltingly tender, lift it onto a board and shred with a couple of forks. Ladle over some of the cooking liquor which will keep the beef moist and juicy, along with some of the chopped peppers and onions. 

My favourite way to eat this beef, is piled into a taco shell, straight from the slow cooker, with fresh coriander, avocado, some cheese and a squeeze of lime. It goes without saying that this makes wonderful beef sandwiches with horseradish or cheese and gherkins, the next day, or you can add the shreds of beef to a noodle soup, too. 

Like this? What foods do you cook in the slow cooker? 

Bhaji Man Tikka Masala and Onion Bhaji Mix

I was contacted a little while ago and asked if I wanted to try out a range of products from Don Lear, otherwise known as The Bhaji Man. He wrote to me, telling me that he thought it was a shame that families relied a bit too much on takeaways these days instead of family cooking. So he created a range of spice packs that you just add to chicken, vegetables and stock, for example, to make your own, home-made takeaway favourites. 

I set to work, and chose one of my favourite curries, the Tikka Masala to start with. The spice pack was easy enough to use, but does obviously rely on powdered spices, whereas if you’re cooking a curry completely from scratch, you’re more likely to use fresh garlic, chillies or ginger instead of the ground stuff, and it does make a difference to the flavour. However, the actual cooking was unfussy and quite simple. Each pack is labelled and the instructions are very clear – for example you fry the whole spices, then tip in the meat, then the ground spices and the stock and so on. You don’t have to make any decisions, everything is set out for you. 



I did find the Tikka Masala a bit too strongly flavoured with cinnamon for my taste, to be perfectly honest, and it was spicier than any Tikka Masala I’ve had before (which I’ve usually regarded as a fairly mild dish). But then these are all personal preferences, and it is listed on his website as one of the top sellers.

I did decide to dish up a side of onion bhajis though, and I now know how The Bhaji Man got his name. You slice onions thinly (mine weren’t really thin enough though, you need to slice them super thin), place them in a bowl with some salt and then sprinkle over the onion bhaji seasoning. Leave it for a few minutes and the juice comes out of the onion  and mingles with the seasoning, so the onion slices end up covered in a light batter. 

You then pick up a tangle of the onion slices and fry them until golden. Everyone ate them all, very quickly. Perfect for a Saturday night in front of the telly with a beer or to nibble on alongside a curry. I’ll definitely be making these again.

Onion bhajis, from The Bhaji Man

I still have some other spice packs to make, such as pakoras, Rojan Josh and even a Thai Green Curry and I’ll keep you posted with how these turn out. I like the concept – the curries are a nifty idea, but the bhajis you definitely don’t want to miss… we all thought they were the best we’d tasted.

Bhaji Man Chicken Tikka Masala

Thank you to The Bhaji Man for sending over the spice packs for me to try.

BSFIC: Malibu and Coconut Ice Cream

Hurrah! This month’s theme for the brilliant blogging challenge Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream run by Kavey at Kavey Eats is booze. The challenge: create an ice cream, sorbet or similar with booze in it.

My experiments in ice cream and alcohol have, up until now, failed badly. I’ve always been a bit heavy-handed with the alcohol, meaning that when it came to taking the ice cream out of the freezer, it hadn’t set and was just a sloppy, watery mess. This time I reined myself in and the results were so good that this is now my new favourite ice cream. And seeing as I’ve developed cravings for the coconut ice cream with mango sauce at Wagamama’s I decided to go with the flow and stick to the coconut theme. This ice cream will also scoop nicely straight from the freezer.




Malibu and Coconut Ice Cream
Makes about 400ml

Ingredients:

• 125ml double cream
• 250ml full fat milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 80g caster sugar
• one and a half tbsp Malibu
• 2 tbsp sweetened desiccated coconut

Method:

1. Whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and Malibu until they form a fairly thick, yellow custard-like mixture. 
2. Heat the milk and cream in a small saucepan until it just starts to simmer (don’t let it boil). Gently pour the hot cream and milk over the boozy egg yolks, whisking all the while. Tip this all back into the saucepan and heat gently, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens (this should just take a couple of minutes). 
3. Pour back into the bowl you whisked the eggs and sugar in, cover with cling film and place in the fridge overnight. At this point I also slide the bowl of my ice cream maker into the freezer for the night. 
4. The next day, get your ice cream machine (with the frozen bowl) going and pour the now fridge-cold Malibu-flavoured custard into the ice cream maker, which should be churning. Now add the desiccated coconut and continue to churn for 25 minutes. You should have a coconut-scented and textured soft scoop ice cream. Leave it, covered, in the freezer for an extra hour if you need to firm it up a little bit. 

Do you make any ice creams with alcohol in? Which ones work well and which are your favourites? 

‘Tis the Season to be Jolly…. Or Is It? Science Tells Us Why and How People Get Stressed at Christmas

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have noticed that, on the stroke of midnight on Friday 30th November, something changed. Let me explain. I usually pop to the supermarket on a Friday morning to pick up whatever I need for the weekend, and it’s usually calm, civilised and generally a pleasant thing to go and do for half an hour. I might even grab a coffee and a bacon, egg and mushroom sandwich while I’m there.

But on this Friday, it was nothing like it. I promise you, this is the truth: there were couples arguing about packs of cheese in the middle of the dairy aisle; there was a man shouting down his mobile phone in the toys aisle about which Monster High doll to buy, and there were people everywhere bashing trollies into one another and literally pushing each other out of the way to reach the mince pies and stollen. This is because it is nearly Christmas.

The pre-Christmas trolley dash… (image by Sainsbury’s)

At about the same time the fifth person crashed their trolley into mine and shot me a tense glare, I wondered what had happened. Surely it’s the season to be jolly, right? Well that’s what all the songs say. When I got home, I did a bit of homework. There have actually been quite a few scientific studies into why and how people get so stressed out at Christmas time and I thought I’d share them with you. So if you’re stressed, you’re not alone. And if you know someone who seems to be more stressed than usual, go easy on them. It’s probably just a Christmas thing. These studies really surprised me.

Science proves Christmas shopping stresses us out
A study by the University of East London in 2008 found that Christmas shopping really does increase our blood pressure and stress levels. Researchers gave men and women a shopping list and asked them to return with the items, in the Christmas shopping rush. They tested stress levels, blood pressure and heart rate before and after the shopping. They found that men returned from the shops with double the stress levels they went in with, while women’s stress levels had tripled. They also found that blood pressure increased for 50% of the subjects and heart rates generally increased by 10%. This will explain why so many log on nowadays and shop online. Incidentally, a study by Babychild.org.uk in 2010 also found that 68% of mothers described themselves as ‘very stressed’ over Christmas.

Christmas can be bad for relationships
You know those adverts where couples are laughing lovingly together near a roaring fire, about that bad Christmas jumper? Well, on the inside, there could be a lot more going on, it seems. A study by American law firm Seddons in 2011 found that the average couple argued four times a day during December. Of those people that were questioned by the firm, 20% said they doubted their relationship would last the festive season. They blamed money, entertaining and sharing the stress of Christmas. And it’s not just couples. Tripadvisor polled people in 2009 about family time over Christmas. 40% said that they felt pressured to spend time with relatives over Christmas and 31% said they were actively worried about arguing with another family member over Christmas time. 

Do you think we put too much pressure on ourselves over Christmas? I think it’s really important to have a bit of down time for yourself when Christmas ‘stuff’ is all going on. Nip out for a walk (not near the shops), turn off your mobile for 10 minutes and sit down, watch TV or listen to some music. Make a list of what needs doing and cross everything off as you go. Shop online. Now I know about all this, I’ll feel differently when a tense, muttering shopper bashes their trolley into mine.  

What do you think? Why do we stress ourselves out so much at Christmas time? What can people do to ease stress levels and worry at this time of year? Do you get stressed at Christmas? Or take it all in your stride? Let me know!

Loaded Rudolph Potato Skins

Relax. No enchanted reindeer were harmed during the making of this snack. These are Rudolph potatoes, the red-skinned variety perfect for baking and roasting. I’ve already talked about how I reckon they really do make the perfect roast potatoes, and so this time I decided to bake them, scoop out their fluffy insides and make loaded potato skins with them. We’re going to have some for dinner on Christmas Eve, they’re perfect with a blob of sour cream and scattered with snipped chives.




Loaded Rudolph Potato Skins
Makes 16

Ingredients

• 8 Rudolph potatoes (or other floury variety)
• a little olive oil
• sea salt flakes
• black pepper
• 4 spring onions, chopped
• 60g Tasty Lancashire cheese, chopped into 1cm cubes plus extra for grating over
• chives and sour cream, to serve

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200ºC and get out a baking sheet. Wash the potatoes and dry them. Rub in a little of the olive oil into the skin of each potato and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake in the oven for about one and a half hours. You want the skin to be super-crisp. 
2. After they’ve had their one and a half hours, take them out (but leave the oven on) and cut them in half, using a clean tea towel or oven glove to protect your hands if they’re too hot to handle. Scoop out the white, fluffy insides of the potatoes into a mixing bowl and place the empty, crisp skins back on the tray. 
3. Chop the spring onions and add to the bowl with the potatoes, along with the cubed cheese. Add a good pinch of sea salt and some black pepper and mix together. Spoon the potato mixture back into the skins and then finely grate a little extra cheese over the top. Slide back into the oven and bake for another 10 minutes or so, until the top of the potatoes are golden and the cheese has melted. Serve straight away, scattered with snipped chives and with sour cream to spoon over as you eat. 

What are your favourite loaded potato skin toppings? Bacon? Cheese? Let me know in the comments below… 

Thank you to Rudolph potatoes, who sent me the potatoes to cook with.

Eating Challenges: Are They Really Too Much?

I remember the first time I saw Man vs Food on the Dave channel. It was a warm, summer evening, about two years ago, when I flicked on the telly to avoid doing some ironing. And I ended up transfixed, as Adam Richman single-handedly wolfed down pizzas, burgers, plates of oysters and burritos that would comfortably feed a family of six. It was funny. It was, in a way, fascinating. He sat, tears streaming down his swollen, red cheeks as he tried to finish ‘the hottest wings in the world’, while fellow diners whooped and cheered and took it in turns to kiss him on the cheek. 

Now, eating challenges are everywhere, and all over the UK, too. You can try the ‘world’s spiciest burger’, spiked with Scotch Bonnet Chillies and Ghost Chilli extract, in Bristol. Or the ‘Mile High Burger’ challenge in Southsea – a 24oz burger, topped with onion rings, fries and served with a thick milkshake. Or how about, in North Scotland, the Ashvale Whale challenge: a haddock fillet that weighs one pound. Finish it and you can have another one for free, or a free dessert, if you prefer (I know which I’d choose…).

There’s even one eating challenge in my local town – at Mission Burrito, on the riverside at Reading. In fact, there are two: the 2lb El Doble is basically two burritos made together – it costs £10 to try and if you finish it you get to put a sticker on the wall. But the 3lb El Triple – that’s three tortilla wraps, piled with meat, plus beans, rice and whatever salsas, salads or cheese you want from the counter. When you finish that, you get a T-Shirt and a sticker on the ‘wall of fame’. Local reporter Mike Pyle finished it last summer and wrote of his triumph: ‘I felt similar to what our Team GB heroes must have been feeling over the last week and a bit.’ 

The thing with me is, when I’m full, I’m full. I don’t want to force down the equivalent of two days-worth of food and then be lying on the sofa afterwards, groaning and swigging down spoonfuls of Gaviscon, wearing my crumpled T-shirt of Victory.  I have eaten meals (mostly at TGI Fridays) that were too big for me to manage and it always ended badly. And you know what? No one cheered me on, or queued up to kiss me on the cheek. The waitress just cleared away my plate without even a blink and my husband eyed me, with an embarrassed stare across the table for ‘being greedy’ and wasting ‘all that food’. 

The Mans vs Burrito challenge at Mission Burrito… 

Some people don’t agree with eating challenges because there are people starving in Third World countries and it’s a shameful waste of food. I don’t fully agree with that argument – just go to the back of any supermarket near closing time and you’ll see bins full of discarded foods where the packaging has split or giant, three-quarter wheels of cheese binned just because their time is up on the deli counter, even though, if they were sitting in your fridge, they’d be perfectly safe to eat. According to Love Food Hate Waste, UK households throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food each year. I doubt that eating challenges were to blame for much of that.  

Eating challenges are fun and they promote the restaurants that run them. Think of all the people that pay the £25 to try a burger challenge and fail. It brings in business. Fair play to them. And no one’s forcing you to eat it, anyway. But I have to say, they’re not for me. No wonder Adam Richman declared on his Twitter bio, after four series of Man vs Food, that he was ‘quite done with food challenges, thank you.’ 

Have you ever tried a food challenge? What do you think of them? Just a bit of fun, or an extravagant show of gluttony? Let me know in the comments below…

Pea and Leek Orzo

I’ve gone a bit mad for orzo. I’ve been chucking the slippery little pretend-grains into soups, mock-risottos and salads. And since my 7-year old decided that she HATED risotto, I’ve been feeding her this. And she loves it. 

The leeks here provide sweetness, along with the peas so you end up with quite a spring-like meal – all green and bouncy and fresh-tasting. The orzo is cooked just like the rice is, in a risotto – but you dump all the stock in one go rather than tending to it, stirring patiently, for 20 minutes. It also takes much less time to cook. All works in its favour, doesn’t it?

 

Pea and Leek Orzo
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp butter and a drizzle of olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, grated
• 1 medium leek
• handful frozen petit pois
• 350g orzo
• 900ml chicken stock
• salt and pepper
• handful of grated Grana Padano, plus extra for serving

Method:

1. Heat a large non-stick frying pan and add the butter and olive oil. Grate in the garlic clove and wash, trim and slice the leek. Fry gently, to soften for about 5-10 minutes. 
2. Once the leeks have softened, clatter in the frozen peas and stir to coat in the hot oil and butter. Straight away, tip in the orzo and give it a quick stir, again to coat in the oil. 
3. Tip in the hot stock and bring to a simmer. Keep an eye on it, stirring occasionally and top up with water from the kettle (or more stock, if it’s handy) if it starts to look a bit dry. Within 10 minutes, your orzo should be tender and plump. 
4. Have a taste, seasoning with salt and pepper and stir in a handful of the grated Grana Padano cheese. Serve straight away, while hot, and top with more cheese at the table if you like. 

Mozzarella, Ham and Basil-Stuffed Focaccia

What this is, essentially, is a crispy pizza sandwich. And if that’s not enough to get you going, the whole thing can be knocked up with about five minutes kitchen work and then 20 minutes of doing nothing. And you’ll just need to wash up a baking tray, a chopping board and a few plates.  

I got the idea from a recipe in Nigel Slater’s Real Food, where he marinates mozzarella cheese with basil, olive oil and chillies and then sandwiches it, with some ham, in the middle of a sliced focaccia and griddles it or places it in the oven. I’ve made a few changes to this – Nigel Slater’s version takes an hour to make, with marinating and baking time thrown in. Which is all very well, until one day you come in, late, from the cold, want hot food on the table in a few minutes and a minimum of washing up.   And then you make this. 



Mozzarella, Ham and Basil-Stuffed Focaccia
Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 540g focaccia (the fancy ones with red peppers or roasted onions will be fine, otherwise hunt around for a plain one)
• garlic infused olive oil, for drizzling
• 250g mozzarella
• 4-6 slices Parma ham
• Good handful basil leaves, ripped
• ground black pepper

Method:

1. Get your oven on and heat it up to 200ºC. Score around the outside of your focaccia to give you an outline of where to slice it, and, with a serrated knife, slice it across so you have two thinner focaccia. 
2. Place the bottom side on a baking tray. Slice the mozzarella, rip up the basil and place both in a small bowl. Drizzle liberally with garlic oil and season with black pepper. Leave just while you get on with the ham. 
3. Drizzle a thin layer of garlic oil over the bottom half of the focaccia and slice by slice, lay over the Parma ham, twisting it to fit inside the bread. Lay the mozzarella slices over the top, and pour over any of the juices that have collected in the bottom of the bowl. 
4. Sandwich with the other half of the focaccia and drizzle the top with more garlic oil. Push it all down and bake for 20 minutes. 
5. Once hot and crispy and the cheese has melted inside, cut into 6 and serve straight away, with a big green salad. 

Christmas Dinner in a Cake

Yes, it has been done. In fact, I don’t know how I missed this last year, to be honest. Bakers in Yorkshire have managed to bake an entire Christmas dinner (minus the turkey though, you’ll be pleased to hear), into a cake. There are cranberries, chestnuts, carrots, parsnips and sprouts in there, as well as cinnamon, and a good amount of dark brown sugar.




The cake is sandwiched with a filling made from orange marmalade and it has a cream cheese frosting on top.

The cake was made by Yorkshire-based Allison Whitmarsh, of Proper Maid in Huddersfield last year, for food shop Weetons. ‘We all know that vegetables are great in cakes but who knew you could get an entire Christmas dinner in there’, said Allison at the time. ‘While the cake was baking there was a definite whiff of sprouts, but the end result is absolutely delicious’, she added. 

I’m normally feeling virtuous after a wedge of carrot or beetroot and chocolate cake, but this is something else. What do you think? Would you be up for adding some sprouts into a cake mix on Boxing Day?