Chunky beef and black bean chili (slow cooker)

In a continuing quest towards my aim of all of us eating the same meals broadly I have started making two stage chilis.  Chili has always been one of my go-to recipes.  It’s warm, it’s spicy, you can make it with whatever ingredients you happen to find lurking in the fridge, you can whallop a load of cheese and sour cream on top if you’re feeling decadent or have it with brown rice if you’re feeling virtuous.   I say ‘recipe’ as it’s something I make so often that I have never actually followed a real recipe…….

Today though I’ve made a chunky beef and black bean version that will bubble away in the slow cooker all day.  I start off by making it really really mild (yet hopefully flavoursome) which the recipe below is and then come this evening I will whack in loads and loads of fresh chili and a big spoon of hot smoked paprika for the grown up dinner.  At some point in family life I suppose we will all have to eat at the same time in the evening – but the boys are hungry for tea before 5 and I’m not and hubby is still at work so for now we have two sittings.

Chunky beef and black bean chili

• 1 onion – chopped (at the moment I chop finely as kids are suspicious but personally I like it chunky)
• 2 cloves garlic – grated or chopped
• Beef – I have used a 350g pack of steak – but braising steak, cheap rump steak would work well – chopped into bite size pieces
• 1 red pepper and 1 yellow pepper chopped
• I also used 1 courgette chopped as it happened to be lurking in the fridge looking a bit sad and lonely and wilty – but you can use whatever you have lurking around – mushrooms, carrots chopped small, leek, celery – all good
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• water (use empty tin of tomatoes and fill to top)
• 1 tin kidney beans
• 1 tin black beans
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• Pinch of dried oregano
• 1 bay leaf

Add all ingredients to slow cooker – give it a good stir – cook all day.  I think cooked on low the longer the better for this.  I season with salt and pepper at the end as I don’t like the boys to eat too much salt.

I personally can’t eat chili without grated cheese and chopped fresh coriander.

Enjoy!

Slow cooker chicken

This is a really really easy way to have a healthy roast chicken dinner.  The squeamish amongst you may not be fans of skinning the chicken but I don’t mind doing it.  Well, I don’t mind doing it for my own dinner – I’m hardly likely to come visit you just to skin a chicken for you now am I.  Well, actually I might if you offer me wine and let me stay for dinner.

Recipe – Slow cooker roast chicken

1 chicken – skin taken off

1 onion chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped roughly

1/2 leek sliced

75 ml vermouth or white wine

150ml chicken stock

1 Bay leaf

A few sprigs of fresh thyme

2 x rashers of pancetta or streaky smoked bacon or bacon medallions if you’re being really low fat.

Put vegetables in slow cooker, pop chicken on top, drape bacon rashers over top of chicken.  Pour over vermouth and chicken stock.

Cook for about 8 hours on low.  Take chicken out and cover with foil to keep warm.  Turn slow cooker up to high (or tip liquid out into a pan and boil on stove) and add a couple of teaspoons of cornflour mixed with water to thicken the gravy.
Served with steamed new potatoes and veg.  Et voila – a no-fuss ‘roast’ dinner – with far less calories.

Heat wave – Italian shepherd’s pie – slow cooker

Well, I most definitely picked the right summer to stop office work and go back to being a SAHM. It’s just been beautiful weather and what a difference it makes to everyone’s mood eh?! If I was sat at work right now – writing yet another tedious legal letter to yet another idiot with nothing better to do than make complaints to all and sundry and I had to just gaze forlornly out of the window at blue skies I think I’d be very very miserable indeed. I do feel truly blessed this last couple of weeks to be back home with my boys and enjoying this lovely weather with them. We’ve basically lived outside for a couple of weeks now. Meals outside (love the fact that mess on floor outside is fine – in fact it’s bird food. That’s like nature conservation innit. Educational and all that. Not a sign of mummy being slovenly), painting outside, paddling pool outside, huge rows between brothers and pushing each other down the slide outside. I’m pretty sure my neighbours are getting a bit sick of me bollocking the boys very loudly several times a day (who am I kidding – several times an hour more like) but we’ve got high fences so out of sight out of mind!

I made this Italian shepherd’s pie a couple of weeks ago and it was really yummy. I made it again this week – I’d frozen a portion of the meat mixture and this time I topped it with sweet potato, carrot and potato mash. I served it to 5 toddlers aged between 2 and 4 – one of which is notoriously fussy and vegetable shy – and they all ate it up. I did use the promise of ice cream for pudding as a bargaining chip, but that my friends is the way of the toddler feeding negotiation world.

I used the slow cooker for the mince as I think it’s great on a hot day to whack it on and forget about it. I then made mash later on in the day and assembled the pie for tea time. But it can all be done in stages. The mince could be out in fridge overnight and mash done the next day and I use due below to make pies for 4 of us and then froze a portion of meat and defrosted it and made a pie for a load more kids. It stretches well so is really a cheap meal despite lamb mince being quite pricey.

Italian shepherd’s pie

250g lamb mince
Shallot or onion
2 cloves garlic minced/grated
2 carrots chopped
Courgette chopped
1/2 green pepper
Large handful puy or green lentils
Tin chopped tomatoes
Tbsp tomato purée
75ml white wine or vermouth
Teaspoon oregano
Tiny pinch dried chili flakes
Bay leaf

Fry off in a non stick frying pan the shallot for 3 minutes then add lamb mince and brown for another 3 minutes – then add wine, tomatoes and stir

While that’s all frying chop veg and throw into slow cooker (on high setting). Add the lamb, tomato mixture and refill tomato can half way with water. Add herbs and spices and give a quick stir.

Keep slow cooker on high for 30 mins then turn down low for the rest of the day.

Toppings – this makes a lovely take on a shepherd’s pie. (Although it’s also good with pasta)

I mashed potato with butter beans and Parmesan to go on top. I boiled potatoes (sorry but I forgot to weigh how much!) and them 3 mins from end of cooking I added a drained can of butter beans. Drained the potatoes and beans and then returned to pan with a knob of butter and a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. Mash up. (Not in a glee club mix of Aerosmith and Rhianna way. In a use a masher and squidge kind of way)

Put sauce in an oven proof dish, top with mash, add more grated cheese if you want them bake in oven around 185c for around 25 mins.

Enjoy!

Shopping with Morrissey – Recipe of the week – slow cooker pulled pork

Spicy pulled pork

I don’t think I’d ever actually had pulled pork until I cooked it the other day.  But it’s one of those dishes that I just knew that I was going to like before I’d even tried it.  Succulent pork that just falls apart and melts in the mouth.  That’s me sold.  And it was so worth it.  Easy to prepare and it made so much pork that we were literally eating it all week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My foray out to get the pork was a bit of an ordeal.  I’ve cooked a couple of marinated pork dishes recently where we used cheap(ish) pork and it leached water out into the marinade massively and ended up being a bit on the tough and flavourless side.  So I decided that Waitrose pork would be a good bet for this recipe.  Now, for a long time I have eschewed the mammoth ordeal that is shopping with 2 toddlers in favour of internet shopping combined with brief forays into the village and trips to the farm shop.  Although my Hugh Fearnley-whatshisface with the annoying floppy curly hair, middle class ‘oh, I want my children to know where their food comes from’ has well and truly bloody backfired.  We’ve always taken them to farm shops.  Now – with the benefit of that smug bitch ‘hindsight’ – I can see that maybe, just maybe, ‘look boys, look at the cute lambs/chickens/calves – aren’t they sweet – now let’s go and purchase their dead relatives to eat.  Yum.’ may be a little off-putting to an over-thinking sensitive wimpy four year old.   Since Christmas Corey has largely been refusing to eat meat.  He asks endless questions about how the animal died, whether it has bones and bloods and generally looks like he wants to puke when meat is presented to him.  Although his staunch vegetarian principles seem to be waived when chicken nuggets are on offer.   Endless ‘meat is murder’ discussions with the young Morrissey are a little wearing and that combined with the fact that the last time I took them to the farm shop on my own we were attacked by some viscious bastard geese (Oh my god, it was so scary.  I’d got Corey out of the car and was just getting Mitch out when the geese attacked us and I mean ATTACKED – Corey and I legged it round the other side of the car leaving Mitch in his car seat with the door of the car wide open and geese trying to peck his feet and every time I came round the car to try and kick the little feckers out of the way Corey got hysterical and I got pecked half to death.  OK, not quite half to death – but they were eeeeeeevil.  I screamed for help and a nonchalant farm yoof came and herded the geese off to another field.  The geese were right smug about it.  I don’t know if geese are renowned for their smug attitudes but they definitely were.  Not so smug when they end up on someone’s Christmas dinner plate next year eh? Take that Goosey Gander)

Anyway – Geese and vegetarian issues and the fact that I needed wine and lots of it – it was a Friday – called for Waitrose.  Frankly *middle class moment* any other supermarket where I have to wait a nano-second at the checkout with two feral miscreants is not an option for me.  Husband assures me I may feel different when we are bankrupt.   I have assured him that at that point I may move on to husband number 3.  And I may or may not choose to have custody of the children.

Last time we went to Waitrose Mitch ate a packet of cheese off the shelf.  Without removing any wrapping.  Not even cheese we were buying.  And Corey fell over into the organic bananas.  I was not expecting great things from this trip.  Though, I have to say, the little sods pleasantly surprised me.  I gave Corey the job of ‘fetcher’ and Mitch was ‘scanner’ with the little gun thing.  It did resemble a manic episode of Supermarket Sweep somewhat, my fruit and veg was hurled particularly enthusiastically into the trolley and Mitch may or may not have scanned some things once, twice, or not at all (is it shoplifting when a 2 year old does it?  Is it? Is it?  Soz, your Honour) but no cheese was harmed in the making of our shopping.

The fridges had all broken and the butcher fella had to disappear for 2 extended periods to find me some Pork – or just to get away from Corey asking ‘Why does that man have BLOOD on his pinny?  Does he KILL animals?’ and eventually returned saying that they had no pork shoulder but (no doubt to get us out of his sight) he would do pork leg for the same price.

All that was a long winded way of saying that the recipe says to use Pork shoulder (or as the Americans I got the recipe from say ‘Pork Butt’ BUTT – HA HA HA HA HA *juvenile moment*) but I didn’t.  I reckon you could use whatever large pork joint you can find though.

This recipe makes loads.  Tonnes.  Perhaps I should have cooked it when we had company.  But it did make us 3 meals and a load of sarnies.  Corey refused to eat it on dead flesh grounds and it blew Mitch’s mouth off – this is probably because the American recipe said 2 tablespoons of yellow mustard.  So I dolloped 2 tablespoons of Colman’s mustard in.  Then I remembered that American mustard is more that hot dog slightly yellow mayonnaisey tasting mustard ooops.  Then I thought in for a penny, in for a pound, so I whacked in the picante paprika instead of the sweet too.  So my version is SPICY.  Even by my standards the sauce is HOT.  We loved it – but if you don’t then use mild mustard and sweet paprika.

In buns with chips and slaw

Spicy slow cooker pulled pork

1. 1 medium onion chopped
2. 1/2 cup ketchup
3. 1/3 cup cider vinegar
4. 1/4 cup demerara sugar
5. 1/4 cup tomato paste
6. 2 tablespoons paprika (I used picante)
7. 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sacue
8. 2 tablespoons mustard (I used good old Colmans)
9. 1 teaspoon salt
10. 1 teaspoon pepper
11. 4lb joint of pork (shoulder preferably)

I mixed up all of the ingredients and then coated the pork well in it and left it in the slow cooker dish in the fridge to marinade for 12 hours.

I then came home after a night out and tipsily (although I accept that this isn’t necessary for the recipe!) and put bowl in slow cooker and turned it on low.

Leave it on low for hours and hours and hours and hours – Mine probably cooked for about 12 hours.  It’s done when you try and lift the pork out and it falls to pieces.

Take the pork out of the sauce and shred it using a couple of forks.  I then spooned a couple of large spoons of the sauce over the pork to keep it moist.

I served this, as the American recipes I’d found suggested, in soft white rolls with the Smitten Kitchen Green slaw and some potato chips.  (Crisps in our parlance, but I like using Americanisms as it well annoys my husband.  Particularly when I say ‘nightstand’)

I kept the pork covered in the fridge – SEPERATE FROM THE SAUCE.  I think it would go a bit mushy otherwise.  The next day I took some to work with some brown rice and sweet corn and it was yum

The nicest way we had it though was as an enchilada – I spooned the pork into tortillas, wrapped them, ladelled the remaining sauce over them and topped with grated cheddar and baked in a hot oven for about 25 minutes.  They were exceedingly delicious and I think the sauce was even nicer for having been in the fridge a few days.

Enchiladas with roasted veg

Spicy pulled pork enchiladas

Husband also enjoyed some sneaky pork sandwiches in between times too.  We ate a lot of pork that week.

Enjoy!

 

 

Recipe of the week – slow cooker pea and ham stew

On my IG feed I have a new(ish) hashtag of #tamsinsdinners and I’m very flattered to get loads of requests to share recipes of what I’m making. I would love to share all the recipes and have tried my best but it’s got a bit of a pain to try and type it all out or scan a photo in (which makes a really boring IG feed of photos of extracts from recipe books). My husband has joked that I could put a photo of a slice of toast and that I’d get a request to explain how I made it. He’s not that funny. That’s my job.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I will start putting a recipe a week up on my blog. Something that we have enjoyed in the preceding week with a little ditty about why we liked it and how it came to be.

This is my way of basically pretending that I’m a best selling author. Also, despite my legal training I’m not entirely sure that reproducing wholesale a recipe from the lovely (my best friend) (in my head) Nigella or those hirsute diet blokes is actually legally allowed. Actually, and probably precisely because I’m a lawyer I am pretty darn sure that this kind of behaviour is actually copying and naughty and could potentially result in a lot of trouble indeed. (See folks, thousands of pounds worth of legal education was NOT wasted. People paid money for legal advice from me. Obviously then I would use some long words to justify my £200 an hour rate – I probably used words like ‘naughty’ a lot less then. The overall outcome is the same though. It’s not good.)

The cookbooks and food blogs that I like best are ones with a bit of background about recipes and suggest things like – does this freeze well? Will children eat it without spitting it out on the floor making accompanying retching noises? What can I do with leftovers? If I haven’t got one of the ingredients what else can I use?

So, that’s what I’m hoping my recipe of the week will look like. A bit story, a bit cooking, a lot tasty.

As spring seems to have coyly peeped at us for a few days and then sodded off for a cruise round the Med leaving the Arctic Tundra in its stead there is absolutely no way on earth that food in the evening can be anything other than hearty. However, in the ongoing request to be slimmer it also has to be low-fat and healthy.

I heart my slow cooker and so devised this split pea and ham stew. More filling than a soup but still satisfyingly sloppy and warming. I made it last week and we ate a whole bowl of it each for dinner and then used the left overs, slightly watered down, to take to work for lunches as soup. The kids had a portion each too and liked it. Especially when I called it “special baked beans”!

This is what roughly went into it (and please bear in mind that I am not a very precise measurement type of a cook – so adjust if it’s looking crap or you don’t like one of the ingredients. Leave that out then or substitute)

Shallot – chopped chunky (use an onion if you don’t have a shallot)
2 x cloves of garlic
Split yellow peas (quite a lot – probably 400g ish – about 2/3 of a bag)
Carrot – peeled and chopped
Swede – half – peeled and chopped
Celery – 2 x sticks chopped up
Butternut squash – peeled and chopped
2 x small smoked gammon steaks with all the fat cut off and cut into little chunks
About 8 new potatoes cut in half
Pint and a half of vegetable stock
Tablespoon of tomato puree
Bay leaf
Grind of black pepper
Oregano

(I was going to put leek in but forgot – I think it would be a good addition!!)

I soaked the split peas in water overnight and then drained them in the morning.

I just browned the shallot in a dry non-stick frying pan for about 5 minutes, then bunged everything into the slowcooker and cook on high for half an hour then down to medium for the rest of the day. If you don’t have a slowcooker (and if not what is wrong with you? They are less than 20 quid and a flipping marvel. Get one) in the oven I reckon it would take 2 or 3 hours on about 150 as the peas need loads of cooking to get them to soften. (The second time I cooked this I tried it on low on slow cooker but it wasn’t done despite being in there for a whole day and we got a Chinese instead – it became the next days dinner!)

Stir occasionally and add more water if it looks too thick – it seems like the peas will never soften and go satisfyingly gloopy but then they do. Trust me.

Serve in a huge bowl. I added chopped fresh dill and a huge dollop of English mustard to mine to serve. I love the mustard alongside the ham. But a handful of parsley or just salt and pepper would work well. I added a side serving of steamed broccoli but it would be lush with a great big hunk of fresh bread.

(Actually husband steamed said broccoli while I was having a post-spinning shower and he was watching football and in a strop about ‘having to cook’ so pretty much put a whole broccoli head in the steamer because he ‘had no time to chop’. I think we can all guess my reaction to that. I do not, for the record, recommend a broccoli tree as a side dish. I needed to use a small hack saw just to get through the stalk)

Enjoy.