From My Home to Yours

The Christmas preparations are nearly finished.

Yesterday the lovely Emma from Green Parlour dropped off the new wreath and floral arrangements I ordered (I always like to refresh my fresh floral Christmas decorations a couple days before Christmas.) I’m so pleased with them.

I’m all set for Christmas entertaining.

This morning my husband, son and I went to Pangbourne in what is becoming a traditional Christmas Eve visit. We stopped into the gift shop, the bakery and the little grocery store for some last minute bits and pieces and also went to Green’s, our wonderful local butchers, to collect our Christmas order. We were queued out into the street to collect it and everyone was chatting. There were some amazing things coming out of the shop. Beautiful pastry wrapped Beef Wellingtons, geese, hams and of course, turkeys. Everyone was in a festive mood, and folks reminisced about Christmases gone by - and one lady told us about a dish she once had featuring seven birds, all cooked inside each other (a turkey somehow stuffed with a duck, goose, pheasant, quail and two other birds I can’t remember).  It was fascinating, if not very appetising!

Anyway, after a very pleasant few minutes chatting with everyone, we collected our turkey, a cooked, sliced ham, a wonderful pork pie (the pastry wrapped cooked kind with hard boiled egg in the centre) and luscious pastry wrapped sausage rolls.

We came home and had some of the fresh sausage rolls for lunch with some wintery apple salad. While my husband, who is working from home today, works in the study, there is a frenzy of cooking, present wrapping and card delivering going on. I am loving every minute of it.

I hope that wherever you may be you are loving every minute of the Christmas season too!

 From my home to yours, wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

April

The 21st Century Housewife

Grandma's Garlic Bread

This is one of those wonderful 1950’s and 60’s recipes that not only tastes good, it’s frugal too. Back before everyone could pronounce baguette, when garlic was still an exotic ingredient, this was the way my Mom made garlic bread. And sitting at her table one day in Canada thirty years later, my son, who loves it, christened it Grandma’s Garlic Bread.

Of course, he was used to the kind of garlic bread you get in Italy and France, beautiful thick loaves smothered in a thick medley of garlic and unsalted butter. But my Mom’s garlic bread has a cachet all its own, and when it comes down to comfort food, this is the garlic bread I prefer.

The bread part is hamburger buns. They can be white or whole wheat, and if they are a little bit stale it really doesn’t matter. I do recall a couple of occasions when Mom used hotdog buns as well. Originally she made this recipe with garlic salt and margarine, so I have made it healthier to reflect the times, but the spirit and taste of the recipe is very much the same as Mom’s. It’s quick and easy and let’s face it, there are not many dishes garlic bread doesn’t go with.

For about 8 to 10 pieces of Grandma’s Garlic Bread, you need:-

4 or 5 hamburger buns, cut in half

4 to 5 tablespoons butter

1 or 2 cloves of garlic, peeled

(You can use garlic salt here instead, but don’t salt the bread at the end!)

1 to 2 teaspoons dried parsley (you can use fresh if you prefer)

salt and pepper to taste (I like to use ground rock salt and peppercorns)

Preheat the broiler/grill  to about 375℉ (180 to 190℃).

Place the buns, cut side up, on a baking sheet. Melt the butter in the microwave or in a saucepan on the stove. Grate in the garlic and add the parsley.

Brush the cut side of the buns generously with the buttery garlic mixture. Grind some salt and pepper over the top.

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

In the words of another great British cook, Delia Smith, ‘I love Nigella Lawson’s writing and I love her recipes.’ Nigella writes books as if she is talking to you, standing in the kitchen with you, and as a result, her recipes are pretty much fail-safe. In all my years of cooking a huge number of her recipes, only one did not turn out, and that was because I took a (very unwise) shortcut. So when Nigella’s newest book ‘Kitchen’ hit the shelves, I got a copy the very first day it was available. This Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake is one of the recipes from it, also shown as part of the new television series she is doing Thursday nights on the BBC, Nigella Kitchen.

I hesitate to admit this, but this is the first time I have made a baked cheesecake. I was a bit nervous about it to be honest, more a fear of the unknown than anything else, but the temptation of chocolate and peanut butter - in Nigella’s own words a “Reese’s Peanut Butter cup in cheesecake form” - was too much to resist. And in the end, it was actually very easy.

You do virtually everything in a food processor, first blitzing together the digestive biscuits (graham crackers would probably work here too), salted peanuts, dark chocolate and butter. I was very tempted to eat this mixture with a spoon, just as it was.

Once this mixture is pressed into a springform pan and popped in the fridge, you just wipe out the processor and mix up the filling ingredients, which include lots of yummy peanut butter and cream cheese. It’s not as pretty as the crust ingredients, but it sure smelled good.

Then you just pour the filling into the crust and bake for about 50 minutes.

Nigella recommends you check after forty minutes, but mine cooked really fast (ovens vary so radically), I would say to check after thirty minutes as mine was verging on well done in forty. The fact it was a little brown didn’t matter one bit though as you then cover it in a glorious glossy mixture of chocolate, sour cream and brown sugar melted together in a saucepan.

After ten more minutes in the oven, it comes out looking gorgeous. And after cooling and several hours in the fridge (the recipe recommends overnight chilling, but I was too impatient), you can then remove it from the pan.

It is utterly heavenly. I got rave reviews from everyone who tasted it too. Plus, it is so voluptuously rich that I honestly think you could serve at least twelve from it. My first baked cheesecake was a wholly successful experiment, thanks to a great recipe from the original domestic goddess.

For the recipe, please click here to go to the BBC website.

Meatless Monday - Mediterranean Vegetable Tart

I would love to be able to tell you that I always make pastry from scratch, but like most busy moms, I just can’t do that every time. Luckily there are some wonderful ready-made pastries out there, and as long as you find one that uses vegetable shortening (do avoid the hydrogenated kind), they are perfectly fine for vegetarians. Of course, it you would rather make your own scratch pastry that is even better.

If you keep some Roasted Vegetables ready in the fridge, this doesn’t take more than a few minutes to put together, but even if you have to make them specially, it is well worth it for the delicious warming flavour this colourful tart provides.

I make this in a long rectangular quiche dish, but you can use a pie plate if you prefer. It is lovely served with salad or hash browns if you want to make a heartier meal. I have also served it alongside vegetable stew - a combination which has proved very popular in our house.

To serve about four to six people you need:-

1 ready made or homemade pastry to cover the bottom and sides of your chosen pan (I use this brand as it fits my quiche pan perfectly)

3 tablespoons tomato sauce or paste

2 tablespoons basil pesto, homemade or store bought

1½ to 2 cups roasted vegetables

1 to 2 handfuls of vegetarian cheese

(mozzarella is best but any meltable cheese works well)

Preheat the oven to about 350℉ or 170℃.

Place your pastry in the pie or quiche dish, rolling the pastry out first if necessary.

Mix the tomato sauce and pesto together and spread the mixture over the bottom of the pie crust, coating right to the edges.

Top this mixture with the roasted vegetables, spreading them right out to the edge. Sprinkle with the cheese.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted. Allow to sit for about five minutes after it comes out of the oven before slicing.

The 21st Century Housewife's Kitchen

In honour of this, my 400th post on The 21st Century Housewife’s Kitchen, I cordially invite you to visit my actual kitchen. I’ve done a post on my main blog, The 21st Century Housewife, and as there are lots of photographs I’d be grateful if you would click here to visit! (I find it very hard to load and present photographs on Blogger and the post looks so much nicer over there.)

Welcome to one of my favourite rooms in our home and thank you for being a part of my first 400 posts on The 21st Century Housewife’s Kitchen. Here’s to the next 400!

My Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd’s Pie is a British classic. It was traditionally made with lamb, leftover from the Sunday roast and ground into fine pieces. The meat was then mixed with gravy, and maybe some vegetables, topped with fluffy mashed potato and baked. If you had beef for your Sunday roast, you did the same thing but called it Cottage Pie.

Over the years this dish has evolved, and many people now make it from scratch using raw ground lamb or beef as well as the traditional way. Vegetarians use vegetarian mince products like Quorn, or those made from soy or textured vegetable protein.

It’s a great go-to meal to have on hand, and you can even make it ahead and reheat it the next day - or freeze it if you prefer. At one point my mother-in-law was running three homes in three different countries (England, France and Spain), and whichever one you visited, there was always a healthy stock of her homemade shepherd’s pies in the freezer.

In our house, we call it Shepherd’s Pie whatever meat (or vegetable product) I  use to make it, although it is generally pasture raised or free range ground beef that I use. Although it isn’t strictly correct to call it this, it works for us, and is a nod to my son’s cute name for the dish when he was a little boy. He used to refer to any potato topped meat dish as ‘Shepson Pie’.

It really doesn’t take long to make, although if you do have time to let the meat simmer before you bake it in the oven, it does make it taste even better. It’s a fantastic meal to just pop on the table and let folks help themselves to country style, although I always make more than I think I need when I am serving a crowd as everyone always seems to want seconds.

One twist on the traditional I do use pretty regularly when parsnips are in season is to mash some of them with the potatoes. We love parsnips in our house and it gives this dish a gorgeous flavour. However if you don’t have any parsnips, or your family doesn’t love them like we do, just use an extra potato.

To serve about four people you need:-

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 pound ground beef (pasture raised or free range is best)

2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped

½ cup beef stock

1 tablespoon tomato paste

about an eighth of a teaspoon of pepper

1 bay leaf

For the mash:-

2 to 3 large potatoes, peeled and chopped into about four pieces each

2 to 3 parsnips, peeled and chopped

generous tablespoon of butter

about ¼ cup milk

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375℉ or about 170℃. You’ll need an oven safe casserole dish to bake this mixture in. The shape doesn’t matter all that much, but it needs to be fairly deep.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and gently fry the onion until it just begins to soften, but not brown. Stir in the ground beef and brown it, breaking up any larger chunks.

Stir in the carrots, beef stock, tomato paste, pepper and the bay leaf. Cover and simmer over low heat for at least ten minutes or for up to half an hour, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, cook the potatoes and parsnips (if using) in boiling salted water until they are soft enough to mash. Drain and mash with the butter and milk. You may need a little more or less milk depending on the texture of the vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Remove the bay leaf from the simmering ground beef mixture and transfer it to an oven safe casserole.

Carefully, a spoonful at a time, begin to cover the mixture with mashed potato and parsnip. You need to be careful the spoonfuls are not too large or they will sink into the mixture.

When the ground beef mixture is completely covered in the mashed potatoe mixture, run over the top with a fork. This also gives little peaks and troughs which brown up nicely.

You may want to put the casserole dish on a baking sheet as the meat mixture sometimes bubbles through the potato topping when the Shepherd’s Pie is cooking and can mess up the bottom of your oven.

Bake in the oven for about half an hour, until the topping is beginning to turn golden brown. The edges usually get toasty and the meat mixture will definitely try to bubble through, but what this dish lacks in beauty it makes up for in taste!

You can serve this straight from the oven, but take care as it will be molten hot. If you are making this ahead, cool it down before storing in the fridge. Reheat for about half an hour or until piping hot throughout.

If freezing, wrap well in Saran Wrap and aluminum foil when cold. Thaw overnight in the fridge before heating in the oven for about forty to fifty minutes or until piping hot.

My Vegetarian Chili

It's Meatless Monday again and today I want to share my chili recipe. It is full of nutrition and flavour and everyone I serve it to seems to love it.

My family are not huge bean lovers, but they do love vegetables, so when developing my own vegetarian chili I decided to focus on the bit they liked the best. The vegetables I have used are a bit unconventional when it comes to chili, but this recipe does have a nice kick to it. Having said that, my family are fairly conservative when it comes to spices, so if you want to add more chili powder, or even some fresh chilis, please feel free.

Chili is traditionally served with white rice in England, and I also like to serve this with brown, basmati or wild rice. However, it is also lovely with toast, or even tortilla chips if you fancy them. And I can’t help but think it would be nice with lightly spiced couscous too, or even just a basket of lovely warmed rolls.

To serve four to five people, you need:

2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil (I use mild olive oil.)

1 large onion, peeled and sliced in half moons or 3 leeks, thinly sliced, rinsed and drained

2 carrots, peeled, halved and cut in small chunks

2 parsnips, peeled, halved and cut in chunks

1 sweet potato, peeled, quartered and cut in chunks

1 zucchini, cut in half and then half moon shapes

1 red pepper, seeded and cut in chunks

1 yellow pepper, seeded and cut in chunks

1 can (about 14 ounces) chopped tomatoes, preferably organic

1 can (about 14 ounces) mixed beans, preferably organic, drained and rinsed

1 clove garlic, peeled

¼ to ½ teaspoon chili powder

½ cup good red wine

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat to oven to 375℉ (160 to 170℃).

Heat the oil over medium heat in a large casserole with a lid - one that goes from the stove top to the oven safely. Add the onions or leeks and stir fry for a few minutes until they begin to soften. Add the carrots, and stir fry for a few minutes longer so that they begin to soften a little too.

Add the parsnips, sweet potato, zucchini and peppers. Stir fry for a couple of minutes. Stir in the canned tomatoes and the beans. Grate in the garlic and add the chili powder. Add the red wine and mix in well.

Cook on the stove top for a few minutes, bringing the mixture almost to the boil. Then cover and transfer to the oven.  Cook for 40 to 50 minutes until the vegetables have softened but still keep their shape. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve and enjoy.

Easy Spanish Chicken

This is one of those recipes you will make again and again, not only because it is quick and easy, but because everyone will love it. It’s only got a few ingredients, and chances are you probably have most of them on hand. This recipe is inspired by things I have eaten in tiny old cafés that we have stumbled upon during our European travels. The smell of garlic generally arrives before the dish gets to the table, and dishes like this are almost always served with an ice cold glass of beer.

You could just as easily use chicken thighs as chicken breasts for this recipe, and in fact I encourage you to do so as they will be more tender. However my family really prefer chicken breasts so I use those instead. I use the red onions, red skinned potatoes and red pepper because they look so pretty contrasting with the chicken, but if you don’t have any of those on hand, or you would rather use a green or yellow pepper instead, there is no reason why you can’t.

I do like to use un-peeled garlic cloves in this recipe because I love how they roast up into garlicky sweetness. You can then squeeze them out of their skins as you eat the dish. However my son absolutely hates garlic cooked that way, so I usually finely grate a clove of garlic in for him, and scatter some whole cloves through the dish for my husband and I. Also, garlic is a very personal (and sometimes acquired) taste, so use as much as you like - or none at all! If you prefer a milder garlic flavour just toss in a couple whole cloves or perhaps grate one or two into the dish. If you like a lot, you can add as many cloves of garlic as you like. When I have had dishes similar to this in Spain and Italy, they have been loaded with at least a whole garlic bulb’s worth of sweetly roasted garlic cloves. I use less at home!

Madeira or sherry gives this dish a wonderful depth of flavour, and as you are only using a quarter cup of it and the majority of the alcohol will cook off, it really should not be an issue with children. However if you are concerned about it, or are teetotal, or just don’t have any on hand, then please feel free to use chicken stock instead.

To serve four people you need:-

3 tablespoons olive oil (or other vegetable oil) plus a little for drizzling

4 large (or several small) red skinned potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut up

(I generally cut the larger ones in quarters or eighths, but little red potatoes can simply be cut in half.)

2 red onions, peeled and cut in eighths

1 red pepper, seeded and cut in chunks

garlic cloves, either peeled to grate in or left un-peeled and whole

1 teaspoon dried thyme

¼ teaspoon salt

generous pinch of pepper

¼ cup Madeira, sherry or chicken stock

4 chicken breasts or 8 boneless chicken thighs

dried or freshly chopped parsley to garnish

Preheat the oven to 375℉ or about 170℃.

Heat the olive oil in a large casserole (that is safe to use both on the stove top and in the oven) on the stovetop over medium heat. Toss in the onions and stir fry them for a bit but don’t let them go brown. Now add the potatoes, being sure to coat them thoroughly in the oil.  Fry them for a couple minutes, stirring constantly. Add the garlic cloves (or grate in the garlic you are using), the peppers and the seasonings.

Pour the Madeira, sherry or chicken stock over the whole lot and gently stir through. Nestle the chicken on top of the dish, drizzle with a bit of oil and put the the casserole into the oven.

If you are using chicken breasts, this should be cooked within about 25 minutes to half an hour. Be sure the chicken is thoroughly cooked with no pink remaining inside. Chicken thighs will take a little bit longer. Again, do be sure they are cooked through. 

Serve one chicken breast or two thighs on top of a little mound of the potato and onion mixture. Garnish with some parsley and enjoy!

Colourful Vegetable Medley

This is one of those recipes that the photograph doesn’t do justice to. In reality the colours are much brighter, and it makes an excellent side dish with just about any meat. This colourful and fresh dish is also very economical. Plus, it is a fantastic way to use up your more raggedy Thanksgiving leftovers - just stir chunks of cooked turkey and/or ham through it when you add the peas and gently heat through before serving as a one dish meal with hot rolls. Easy and delicious.

To serve four people as a main dish and six to eight as a side, you need:

2 tablespoons oil (I used olive, but any oil is fine)

1 red onion

1 tablespoon sugar

1 small cabbage, shredded

¼ cup Madeira or sherry

¼ cup chicken or vegetable stock

1 tbsp soy sauce

½ cup frozen peas


Heat the oil in a frying pan (with a lid) and sauté the red onion over low heat until it is just beginning to soften. Add the sugar and stir to mix through. 

Turn up the heat to medium and add the shredded cabbage. Stir-fry for a few minutes, just until the cabbage is tender-crisp.  Add the Madeira or sherry and the chicken stock, along with the soy sauce.  Stir to mix and bring to the boil. Allow to bubble away for a minute or so just to let the liquid reduce a bit.  Stir in the frozen peas.  Then put the lid on the frying pan, lower the heat and cook for about three minutes.  You still want the peas to be nice, bright green.