DIET 5:2 EXPERIMENTS - BACON AND MUSHROOM BAKED RISOTTO

Now then! Everyone banging on about the fast diet, the 5:2, where you have a low calorie intake for two non-consecutive days and eat normally the rest of the time? I started looking up some recipes and found a marvellous website called Lavender and Lovage. They list and tag all diet recipes and there is a lot of information on there, well worth a look. Most recipes on there are for two, some are for larger family amounts but it is all explained about portions.

I love risotto so my eyes bulged when I saw a recipe with low calories. It is 380 calories each, so a good main meal for a fasting day, and the amounts are for a serving for two people.

Ingredients:
2 medium rashers of lean back bacon
100g mushrooms, sliced
A few porcini mushrooms, soaked in 150mls of boiling water for ten minutes
1 medium onion, finely chopped
175g risotto rice
150mls dry white wine
300ml vegetable stock
Parsley
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200C/392F

Grill bacon until crispy, then chop into small bits.

In frying pan, use a low fat cooking spray (or a sprinkle of water of it is non-stick) and fry mushrooms for five minutes. Drain porcini mushrooms but keep the liquid. Chop those mushrooms finely and add to the frying pan with onion and cook for a couple of minutes.

Then add rice, stir. Add wine, porcini liquid and stir vigorously.

Add parsley, stock, bacon and give a big stir. Transfer to an over proof dish and cover. Cook for 30 minutes until the rice is soft and creamy.

Verdict, really nice. Never used white wine in risotto even though that is supposed to happen. But I don't like white. but now I have turned into some sort of lush, bought some, put some in this recipe and then got drunk on the rest! This is very tasty and filling.

BANANA 3, YOU GUYS!

This recipe is becoming legend in my house, and one of these has travelled to France. Unfortunately it wasn't the best one I've made so some dude in France thinks I'm not a very good cook. The one I made after that was phenomenal. Typical. ANYWAY. This...is Banana 3.

So, first off, you need to be prepared for this. If I buy a bunch of bananas, and they get a bit too spotty and old, I bag them and they go straight into the freezer. You need three of them for this recipe so start saving your bananas. They make the best banana goo when defrosted, and that only takes a few hours. I used to do this with banana loaves but I never liked the chunks of banana you got in them so I looked for cake recipes, and there was the answer, whizzing them in a food processor. Not too messy either.

Ingredients:
4oz butter
6oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
3 medium bananas
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of honey
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

Preheat oven to 190C/375F

When bananas are thawed, whizz them up so they are a banana goo. Put aside. 

Grease and line a tin, any shape will do but I prefer the round one.

Cream sugar and butter (or margarine) together. Add the eggs and beat so they are fully combined. Add banana goo and mix in well.

Stir in honey then sift in flour and cinnamon and mix well.

Pour into tin.

Cook for 30 minutes, then turn down to 150C/300F and cook for 20 minutes more, not opening the oven. Just turn that sucker down.

Get it out, let it cool on a rack. eat.

It does tend to get moister (is that a word?) as the days go on, but hot cake in your mouth is just too damn good.

Chicken Pot Pie!

And I threw away the recipe. DAMN IT. Anyway, it wasn't that great. It LOOKS awesome. But it was a bit meh. I am guessing the 'scones' on top are what you americans call biscuits. It was like a harder dumpling. But with the rather bland insides meant this may be comforting but it wasn't great.

Bread attempt two and Cheese Roundies.

I tried bread again! And again it was a disaster. I bought this lovely looking flour that claimed on the side to have a simple recipe for rye sourdough. 

I tried it, it looks wonderful, right?

But look carefully on the second picture and you will see a cut mark where I tried to saw a slice off. Too hard. At first, once you got into it, it was quite nice with butter, but the outside crust was too hard, then it just got hard and harder and I just chucked it away. You could use it as a weapon, I guess. 

So I then needed something savoury in the house that worked as a snack. Cheese straws are always brilliant (unless you burn them) so I decided to look for a recipe and make the pastry from scratch because I'm never comfortable using shop-bought pastries, they have loads of crap in them. So I found a recipe were the cheese is in the pastry before you  roll. 

200g mixed grated cheese (I had cheddar, parmesan and gruyere)

120g butter or margarine

250g plain flour

Pinch of cayenne

Sprinkle of rosemary

Sprinkle of salt

Cold water

You mix the cheese and butter together then add the dried ingredients, get your fingers in and work into a crumby mixture THEN add the cold water gradually, stirring in well with a fork until it forms a firm and unsticky dough. Then roll it out to the thickness of a cheese biscuit, and cut out the shapes. Greaseproof paper - tray, oven 190C/375F for 12-15 minutes.

And they were delicious. I also get annoyed with trying to get strips of pastry, it either comes apart or they are very uneven. I found a pastry cutter and did this:

What a brilliant idea. Mr keeps calling them cheese dollars ("Can you bring me five cheese dollars?" "You'll have four and be happy.").

It made loads but they lasted a matter of days. Because they haven't got added hydrogenated fat or whatever in them, they don't do terrible things to your insides.

Beef Stew with Root Vegetables and Dumplings

I love stew. I really love stew. I have so many recipes for stew when really, they are so similar and it doesn't matter what goes in it, it's going to be delicious. Here is one I got from Good Old Fashioned Pies and Stews by Laura Manson, and it is part of the National Trust's book collection. I had no IDEA they did them. Anyway, delicious looking book, looks very traditional and old fashioned.

I will be trying quite a few recipes from there, and to be honest, they all have very similar ingredients but are all slightly different.

Oil
Stewing beef, in cubes
1 large onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Turnips, peeled and diced
1 large parsnip, trimmed, peeled and cubed
1 large carrot, peeled and cubed
Plain flour and self raising flour
250ml of beef stock
250ml of mild beer, wine or beef stock
1 bay leaf
Oregano
Salt and pepper

Heat oven to 150C/300F.

Heat oil in a big frying pan, soften onion then remove from heat. In the same oil, fry the root vegetables for a few minutes then remove and put with the onion.

Mix some plain flour with a bit of salt and pepper then toss the beef cubes into it and begin browning them (in batches if the pan is small) and add to the vegetables in a casserole dish.

Sprinkle a bit of flour in the frying pan and mix in any remaining oil there is then add the beef stock and whichever other liquid you chose to use. I used all beef stock so in total there was 500ml of beef stock. Stir well to get any bits of the side of the pan and bring to the boil.

Pour over the meat and vegetables in the casserole dish, all bay leaf and oregano. Cover and cook for two hours. If you are using shin of beef, apparently reduce heat to 140C/284F and cook for four hours.

Do the dumpling mix, I did this: 8 tablespoons of self raising flour, 4 tablespoons of suet, sprinkle of salt, teaspoon of mustard powder, sprinkle of parsley. Mix little water in at a time until it forms a nice dough, not too sticky. Form into dumplings.

Remove casserole from oven, pop dumplings on top, put oven up to 180C/356F and return to oven uncovered for about 20 minutes.

Made Up Fish Pie

Ok, I got this as a vague recipe so I it made up from that.

I couldn't find any affordable salmon to go in this, but it still turned out delicious with just the haddock and prawns.

Salmon fillets
Smoked haddock
Raw prawns
Peas
Potatoes
Milk
Lemon juice
Cheddar cheese
Onion, chopped
Garlic, crushed
Flour
Butter
Creme fraiche, 2 tablespoons
Ground nutmeg

Heat oven to 190C/374F

Poach the fish in the milk, have the milk covering the fish and simmer Add the onion. Simmer for 15 minutes or so, this should have cooked the fish. Drain but keep the milk, this makes the sauce. Flake the fish up, throwing away the skin. Put into the dish you're going to cook it in. Squirt a bit of lemon over and mix in.

Use the poaching milk to make a thick white sauce. Add flour and a pinch of nutmeg and stir until thickened. Add cheese and take off the heat. Stir until smooth. I add the garlic here. Let it rest.

Then start boiling the potatoes (peeled and chunked) until soft then mash with butter.

Pour the sauce over the fish, add the peas, creme fraiche, mix well.

Then top with mashed potato and cheese.

Pop in the oven until the top is golden (at least 30 minutes).

Lovely Roast, Tricky Cake

It is becoming clear to me that I do roasts good, and cakes that require sandwiching together badly. Savoury rather than sweet. Suits me fine, I like cake maybe twice a year?

Last time I tried a cake and was successful must have been years ago. In recent years I have done banana loafs, lemon cakes, congress tarts, all successfully. Banana 3 is a favourite recipe for banana cake I shall do on here when I next do one. But last two times (in the last month or so) when I got an urge for and attempted coffee cake, both went wrong. First try I chose a recipe that happened to have a large amount of ingredients and I only have some old cake tins from my mum that are small and cute. They have a thing on them where you can move it round the tin and it lifts the cake. Doesn't work NOW but it used to. So there was too much stuff and the cake didn't cook properly. So I ate the bits round the edge and was done with it. This time the sponge was perfect. The icing failed, too runny.

Looks great, right?

But then, uh oh...

And that was after the icing was in the fridge. I had put too much butter in the icing mix and so kept adding more and more and more icing sugar until the whole pack had nearly gone and it STILL wasn't enough. Next time I'll measure. IF THERE IS A NEXT TIME.

SO, roast as always was awesome. Here's Mr Lamb, peeking from his foil tomb.

And all sealed up. 

Oven heated to 200C/392F then immediately down to 170C/338F when you put the lamb in. 3-4 hours. Go off and do stuff. Get it out and then do the rest. Made my own yorkshire puddings, here is the one left over when I forgot to take pictures.

My brilliant roast potatoes:

And I don't know the meaning of carving anymore. I slow roast my beef and lamb now so you just pull the meat apart.

And now I have a massive headache from all the sugar I had to keep licking off my hands as I cooked. I'm definitely a savoury girl.

Bread adventures.

You know when you make something for the first time and it doesn't quite turn out how you want it? So then you decide to make something else that you know you do well to make yourself feel better? That's what happened yesterday.

My first attempt at bread, taken from, you guessed it, A Girl Called Jack. A simple herby bread. Not meant to be a big loaf. Dense. Herby. But I must have not done something quite right, maybe I should have left it even longer to rise? Cooked it longer than it said to? Meh, anyway.

Dough rising, which was quite exciting as I've never done this before:

Then it came out like this:

So it didn't taste great (but didn't give me any adverse effects and was better toasted). So then I thought I need to do my ragu pasta thing. That'll taste delicious. 

RAGUUUUUUUUU!!!!!

Minced beef
Glass of red wine
Red onion, sliced thin
Large carrot, grated
2 clove of garlic, crushed
Black pepper
Oregano
Basil
Bay leaves
200g passata
Squirt of ketchup
Pasta
Parmesan

Dry fried the minced until browning then poured the red wine in and let that cook off. I then added the carrot, onion and garlic to soften. In go the herbs and black pepper, passata, then water from swilling the passata left in the carton. I add a good squirt of ketchup to sweeten it. That simmered for a while while I did the pasta. And that is it. Simple. 

Chilli Night!

Hello hello. This is my chilli. 

Discovery Chilli Con Carne Seasoning mix
Minced beef
Half a courgette, cubed
1 red onion, chopped
Small thing of cherry tomatoes
200g passata
Beef stock blob
Aduki beans
Discovery Chipotle Paste, one teaspoon
2 cloves of garlic
SECRET INGREDIENT: Discovery Buffalo Wings Sauce - a splash, not too much.

When I cook with minced meat, I never use oil now. I dry fry because enough fat comes out of the meat to cook itself in and to soften down onions.
SO, minced beef in until brown, sprinkling the Chilli Powder mix onto the meat as it cooks. I then add the onions and courgette to soften.
Then everything else goes in.

Simmer until the liquid has come out then reduced (because it does get a bit liquidy).

Then I popped some grated cheddar on nachos, BAM.

I fucking love nachos.

MORE CHEAP MEALS and terrible sewing

So I tried another one of A Girl Called Jack called Oh My God Dinner

It's really simple and really tasty. I didn't change a thing so just follow her recipe. Here's what it looked like cooking, the bacon and courgette.

The pasta and beans cooking together.

And the final thing. 

I also did some slightly disastrous sewing today. It actually looks quite cute and neat here but I can assure you, my sewing was too wide apart and two parts of the strap have big side seams open because the stitches were too far apart and tight and when I pulled it straight, the thing popped.