Meal Seven - Aubergine and Chickpea Curry

This is one for the vegetarian's out there.

I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't pretend to be. I'm a big meat lover, but I'm not one for shunning the vegetable dishes.

I have a couple of friends who are vegetarians and I always find it difficult to find a dish that is going to satisfy both parties. Well I think I've found one here.

The aubergines offer a meaty alternative, and the amount of spice in this curry certainly doesn't make you feel you're having to opt for the bland veggie option.

I've cooked with aubergines before, specifically in a Melanzane Parmigiana Reggiana and I was always previously taught to drawer out the bitterness by salting the egg plant, but I'm assured by several chefs that as aubergine cultivation has evolved, the need for this process is no longer there.

This dish is simple and relatively quick. The spices are not subtle, so anyone with a lighter palate may opt to reduce the quantity of chilli and garam masala.

The coconut - especially when left to simmer for an hour or so - offers a soothing creaminess against the punchy spices.

I was very pleased with the outcome and would not hesitate to offer this to my vegetarian guests.

Ingredients:

2 aubergines

1 large Spanish onion

2 tsps crushed chilli flakes

4 tsps garam massala

2 tsps ground coriander

2 tsps turmeric

400g tin of coconut milk

400g tin of chick peas, drained

vegetable oil

fresh coriander to garnish

served with wholegrain rice

Meal Six - Nana's Meatloaf with Creamy Mash and an Onion & Red Wine Jous

My Nana (as we called her) wasn't a cook, she was more of a traveller. Not in the Gypsy sense but she loved to get about. The Med, the States, Africa - you name it, she'd been there. You'd think that she'd have picked up some cooking tips along the way but alas, I'm afraid not.

Remembered more for her kitchen disasters, her fear of spiders and the inability to tell the difference between baby apple juice and full blown scrumpy cider, there was never going to be a recipe book made from her memoirs.

Though tonight I'm going to introduce you to my Nana's meatloaf.
It was a dish she knew well and a dish we could pretty much guarantee would be a success.
I've recreated the recipe and added my own twist.

From what I remember she didn't add fresh herbs and they really do add another dimension to the overall flavour.

Ingredients:

500g minced pork
300g smoked streaky bacon
1 onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
a good handful of fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
2 slices of white bread, crumbed
1 egg
4 tbsps grated parmesan cheese


Jous:
1 onion, finely sliced
2 glasses of red wine
1 tsp sugar
1 stock cube (chicken or beef)
water

Mashed Potatoes:
4 large potatoes, halved
milk
butter
4 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1 egg yolk

Adam's Awesome Coleslaw

I've got to share this with you. I couldn't post it as a meal on it's own as that just wouldn't be right, but it definitely deserves a post of it's own.

This Ladies and Gentlemen, is my brothers coleslaw recipe.

Whenever we have a family get together, we generally have a large bowl of coleslaw made up to help us get through the general blandness of a salad.

Whether it's myself or my brother, we can guarantee it'll end up being the same recipe.

The recipe works with both red and white cabbage, but for tradition, we're going to stick to white cabbage for now.

Ingredients:

1 head of white cabbage, finely shredded

2 small onions, 1 grated, 1 finely chopped

2 large carrots, grated

2 lemons, halved, juiced

Mayonnaise

Smoked paprika

Method:

Shred the cabbage as finely as you can get it (a good knife is recommended) and add to a bowl.

Grate over the carrot and one of the onions. Add the chopped onion and then pour over the juice of the two lemons.

Finely grate a small amount of lemon zest and stir thoroughly.

Add as much mayonnaise as you are comfortable with. (For a whole head of cabbage, I tend to use 1/2 to 3/4 of a large jar.)

Sprinkle enough paprika that you can see the speckles throughout when stirred.

To serve, add another sprinkle of paprika.

Meal Five - Potato and Chorizo Tapas with Salad and Adam's Coleslaw

You know when you just fancy something quick and easy? Well, today was no different.
I seem to have a lot of potatoes at the moment and fancied something other than the usual jacket potato to eat.
A quick Google search for "potatoes" along with some other ingredients I had available and up popped this dish from Spain.

Extremely simple but packed with flavour, this certainly tingles the taste buds more than a jacket spud ever could.

It uses a lot of chorizo, and I mean a lot! A whole ring to be precise, but as Sainsbury's currently have them on offer (complete coincidence) I didn't mind putting this dish together.

When cooking with chorizo, you need very little fat when frying, as depending on the quality of the sausage, the pork fat will break down and give you a beautiful pimenton-coloured and flavoured oil. I usually just mop this oil up with a a bit of crusty bread, but the potatoes in the dish soak it up and take on a real punch of flavour.

I served the dish with salad as suggested, but also some coleslaw taken from my brother's recipe. (See next post.)

Ingredients:

325g waxy potatoes

225g chorizo

1 red pepper, finely diced

1/2 bunch spring onions

2 tomatoes, diced

Meal Four - Bacon and Lentil Soup

The second dish of the day is some more homely food. Ideal for a winter's day, especially after all the snow we had last night!!

I'm a big fan of soups for many reasons;

They're cheap.

They fill you up.

They're very easy to make.

They taste great!!

This soup came from another recipe book I'd bought years ago, plain and simply called "400 Soups".

(Is there any relation between me and the simple titles of my recipe books?)

I think along with garlic and cheese, bacon is my favourite ingredient to cook with. It just seems to make everything taste great - unless you're vegetarian or a true Jew! (I'm about 1/4...ish)

The recipe calls for the vegetables to be cut roughly, but I find a bit of refinement goes a long way with this soup. It also asks for a small turnip, but as Sainsbury's were fresh out, I had to make do with a small swede instead. (Or Rutabaga for my American friends!)

Funnily enough, the swede is a close relation to the cabbage I used the other night. Part of the brassica family no less!

It turned out spot on, and it tastes exactly how I remember the first time I cooked it, so the turnip replacement hasn't ruined anything.

Served with a crusty role, I could easily sit down in front of the fire, stick on a movie and while the night away.

Ingredients:

450g smoked bacon

1 large potato, diced

1 small swede, diced

2 carrots, sliced in angles

2 celery sticks, finely diced

1 small onion, roughly chopped

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

Water

Coriander to garnish

Bread role of choice

Meal Three - Piedmontese Peppers

As I was behind in the meal to day ratio, I thought I'd better spend some of today catching up.

The first thing I went for was a dish I saw on Saturday kitchen by "The Good Cook" - Simon Hopkinson.

It was on this very morning and when I saw it, I immediately thought, "I've got to try that!"

Everything in this dish is packed full of flavour. It's very Italian in influence and I wonder whether you would have found me peddling street food on the streets of Rome in a former life.

How can you go wrong with the richness of the roasted peppers and tomatoes, with the garlic slices poaching in the juices and olive oil.

Topped off with a basil leaf and a couple anchovy fillets, this is a proper snack!

I served it with a cheese and onion bread roll to mop up all of those juices!

Ingredients:

2 red peppers, halved with stalk left on

4 ripened plum tomatoes, halved (with skins taken off)

4 cloves of garlic

Extra virgin olive oil

8 anchovy fillets

Fresh basil leaves

Bread roll of choice

Meal Two - Pork Balchao and Garlic Chilli Rice

Tonight was curry night. It might not be a curry you've heard of before though. Myself included until I found a cracking little book from The Works in Oswestry simply called, "150 Curries".

You don't traditionally see pork used in curries but this is a Goan dish and thus heavily influenced by three religions - Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Therefore both pork and beef are present within the Goan cuisine.

I chose this dish as I had a couple of pork chops left over from last night. I decided to go the curry route as I generally have most of the ingredients to hand. The only thing I had to pop out for were a couple of dried chillies.

The photo in the recipe book didn't really sell the dish for me but the flavour turned out to be something else! Firstly it has plenty of my favourite ingredient - garlic but it's the chilli that steals the show in this dish. It's not overpowering at all, but gives your mouth a real glow. The red wine vinegar gives it a nice tang too - almost a chutney vibe but more subtle.

I served it with brown rice fused with more garlic and chilli.

To top the meal off, I served it with a chilled glass of Cobra beer.

Ingredients: 

 4 Pork Chops - cubed 
1 tbsp grated root ginger 
1 tbsp crushed garlic 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
2 dried red chillies, chopped 
1/2 tbsp mace 
2 tsp ground cumin 
10 black peppercorns 
1 tsp ground turmeric 
6 cups warm water 
2 tbsp sundried tomato puree 
1/2 tsp chilli powder 
1 large onion, finely sliced 
1 tsp salt 
1 tsp golden caster sugar 
2 tbsp red wine vinegar 

125g brown rice 
1/2 onion 
1 clove garlic 
1 tsp crushed chillies 
 2 tbsp vegetable oil

Meal One - Pork Chops with Creamed Cabbage and Smoky Potatoes

Well, today I kick-started the challenge.
I already had the savoy cabbage in the house and usually I'd serve it as a vegetable on it's own served with a roast or something similar.
Many people can forget that this beautiful vegetable can be a star in it's own right and I can remember very clearly the first time I ever had creamed cabbage. It was at college when I was about nineteen, and staring at me from the chalk board menu - settled between pizza and chips and spaghetti bolognese - was this creamed cabbage as a meal on it's own. Being fairly adventurous, even back then, I thought I would give it a whirl.
I got back to the table and much to the disgust of most of my classmates, tucked into this delectable dish.
The flavours were amazing and I scoffed down every last morsel.
I was so impressed with the dish, I had to go and ask the dinner lady for the recipe! I kid you not, there were tears in her eyes, as it turned out it was her very own.
I'm sad to say, that as a majority of the class mates were used to scoffing their faces with burger, pizza, chips and crap alike, the creamed cabbage never made it back on the menu - much to my disappointment.

Tonight the cabbage dish had a couple of co-stars thanks to Simon Rimmer - of Sunday Brunch fame.
The recipe was found through trusty Google, and tonight's accompaniment were a pork chop and some "smoky potatoes."



The chop was basic enough, cooked on a griddle pan, seasoned only with cracked black pepper.
The potatoes were disappointing if I'm being honest, as they didn't really have the smoky kick I was expecting. They were tasty, but just not what I had anticipated.


Well, that's meal one down, and I think it was a good choice. Cabbage is not everyone's preference, but I'm hoping that even if you're not a keen brassica lover, then maybe you'll give it a go.

Ingredients:

Pork Chop
Olive Oil
Cracked Black Pepper

Half a head of Savoy Cabbage
125g Smoked Bacon Lardons
125ml Double Cream
1/2 tsp vegetable stock

2 Medium/Large Potatoes
100g Butter
1 tbsp Smoked Paprika

The Challenge

The challenge itself will consist of having to prepare, cook and blog 90 different meals in as close to three months as possible.
There will of course be times, when Sam and I may go out as a couple and it's not possible to sort a meal out which is why I've decided on 90, different dishes.

Some people will look at this as say, "So what! We cook every day!!" Well, I say, "Do you cook 90 different dishes?"
The chances are probably rather slim, as we all know that there always tends to be the same dishes that we cook week in, week out,  purely based on the fact that it's quick, simple and we know what we are doing.

My blog will of course include the trusty favourites like Shepherd's Pie, Cottage Pie and Lasagne, but hopefully with a bit of variation in the way we'd normally do them.



I'm looking at this challenge as something positive - something to look forward to at the end of the day (when I'm not thinking of my wife! ;)
So I may have to cut down on the FIFA time and spend a little more in Sainsburys but so what? We need food to live, so why not enjoy it?



At first I thought the task ahead would be stressful and arduous, but will it be?
How many of us have that recipe book (or in my case, several) that sits on a shelf or in a cupboard untouched apart from the day you got it as a gift?
How many times did we say, "I'm going to attempt that tempura batter......I'm going to make a stroganoff...."
Well, now is that time people!


As I have now joined the "Android" community, I'm hoping to include pictures along the way. I've just got to figure out how to sort that out.


All in all, this is a challenge that I am looking forward to, and I hope that it might inspire some people along the way.

Introduction

Allow me to introduce myself:

My name is Nathan, I am thirty years old. I am married to the wonderful Samantha, and when it boils down to it – I’m a miserable sod!

I shouldn’t be. There is no explanation for it.

I’m in a good job. I’m reasonably paid. I don’t have any kids and so have a good chunk of my own free time, yet I feel – miserable.

It started about six months ago and came from out of no-where, but if I’m being honest – it didn’t surprise me.

I’ve always been the sort of person who doesn’t like routine. I like challenges and if the day to day grind doesn’t throw up a challenge, then I feel as if I’m stagnating.

Hence the reason for the blog.

I’m going to set myself a challenge. A challenge of epic proportions. I have decided to cook myself (and the wife) a different meal, every day for three months.

Not that epic in it’s entirety  I know, but challenging none the less. Especially when there are limited hours mixed between work, copious amounts of FIFA game time and the few hours sleep I manage to acquire.

In truth, I was inspired to write a blog by my cousin +Rachael Lattanzi  , who has fascinated me with her attempt at drawing in the masses and  the keeping record of her exploits of wearing make up for a year. Surprisingly, not as easy as it sounds – on both counts!

And maybe, a little part of me wants to aspire to a childhood goal – call it what you will – of becoming a writer of comedy/fiction/column inches.

Before I begin, I feel I must let you know a little more about the real me;

I was born in the 1980’s in Derby to a couple of hard working parents who go by the names of “Vanessa” and “Nigel”. I affectionately call them “Mum” and “Dad!”

Times were tough for many people but we managed. We weren’t poor but we weren’t living the high life, whatever that is.

If we were labelling ourselves, I’d plump for Upper Lower Middle Class.

In time I was joined by two brothers and later a foster brother, so my upbringing could never and should never be described as lonely.

Meals at home were comforting– home made proper English grub that filled you to your boots!

With Dad working all hours under the sun, the task of satisfying three boys often fell largely on my Mum, who I have to say (in between multiple part time jobs) did a wonderful job.

We’re talking mid-week roasts, hotpots, soups, stews, pies (both open and closed) and always a pudding! 

Our appetites were insatiable and looking back, my parents were – and still are – amazing.

Not once did Mum cave in to the atrocities of Findus Crispy Pancakes, McCains Micro Chips or Angel Delight – much to the frustration of three whining kids.

I’d never had a ready-meal until about the age of fifteen, I went to a friends house and his Mum served up a microwaveable lasagne. Needless to say, we don’t talk anymore.....