OH HAI, IM BAK WIF MOAR NOM

I'm sorry there will be no more lol speak.

For one thing it takes ages to figure out how to write in lol speak! so why the lol speak title...

I have a new domain name! It's the beginning of a new beginning where I will continue to update the blog for at LEAST a few more months and then I'll probably get bored again, meh.

You can now reach the blog at

http://www.om-nom.co.uk

Get it om-nom-nom-nom like the meme. The meme?? what's a meme! and more to the point, whats the nom meme?....here's some om nom nom examples :

Chicken Caesar Salad for two

Today is the day I move house again. Whilst our house continues to be lonesome up North (obviously not putting on it's best appearance when people come to view), our current landlord has decided to move back in to our current rental, leaving us the unenviable task of moving to another property.

I pick up the van tonight at 5, and need to have it back by 8am Saturday morning. We can move in tomorrow to the new place. I am NOT looking forward to getting the sofa through the doors, I remember how much of a pain it was last time!

On the bright side the new place is much nicer, split over three floors, with a bigger kitchen - hopefully it will give me the inspiration to start cooking decent food again. Hopefully we should be able to relax in the new place now until the house sells and we can buy something humongous!

So my fridge is bare - we really have hardly anything left, but I think I can muster the ingredients for a Ceasar salad.

A Ceasar salad has nothing to do with the famous Roman Emperor. Apparently it dates back to chef 'Ceasar Cardini' in the 1920's who was stuck in a busy service running out of ingredients, so he came up with the dish, tossing the salad at the table for a bit of flair. So basically he was trying to scam his customers.

The sauce is what 'makes' a Ceasar salad - lettuce and croutons in a bowl just isn't sexy!

If you want to make the dressing the right way you need to coddle an egg. If you can't be bothered you can get away with using mayonnaise instead.

I'll give you my coddled egg recipe, but if you want you can just substitute the egg for a tablespoon of mayonnaise instead.

Lettuce
I suppose you could use any lettuce but you want something that you can pick up with your hands if necessary, drowned in sauce and you can't do that with anything like a hothouse lettuce. Your best off with Cos, Romaine or Little Gem lettuce - firm lettuces which you can leave in big pieces. Cut your lettuce into credit card sized pieces and leave in the fridge to keep crisp. If your using little gems, cut off the very base of the lettuce and keep the leaves whole.

Croutons
I don't like fried croutons and seeing as I'm writing the recipe you aren't getting any. Toast two thick slices of white bread just shy of being burnt, then cut off the crusts and dice the toast into 'dice' sized pieces. Approximately one piece of bread per person

Bacon
I use two slices of streaky bacon, cooked till crispy, but if you haven't got that to hand you can substitute any porky product for some umami goodness. Parma Ham, Prosciutto, Pancetta, Bacon Bits, Salami, anything that you can either slice or dice and fry up. I only have salami at home at the moment, so that's what I'll be using diced into small chunks.

Dressing
The dressing owns the salad, so it's important to get this right.

What do you need?
A mixing bowl/hand blender/food processor. Optimum tool is a hand blender with the mini food processor attachment. A standard food processor is too big for the amount of dressing you make.

1 coddled egg (or a tablespoon of mayonnaise)*
Half a crushed garlic clove (remember garlic is a lot stronger raw)
Juice of a lemon
Few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce
Tablespoon of red or white vinegar
Teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1 Anchovy
Bit of Salt
Lots of crushed black pepper (I really like pepper)

*How do you coddle an egg??
Easy, just the same as boiling an egg except you only leave it in for a minute. It ends up about half raw, half cooked, and gives nice little bits of egg in the dressing.

Whiz the lot up till you have an emulsion (it's all one sauce)

Chicken
Ummmmmm, grill or pan fry two chicken breasts

Plating Up
Add the lettuce to a large bowl and drizzle over some dressing, then add the croutons. Plonk the chicken in the middle and either layer over the slices of streaky bacon, or sprinkle your porky pieces. Then add more dressing.

Shave loads of parmesan cheese over the top and eat

"What! Who said it was healthy!"

If I get around to making this tonight I will add a picture. How about a picture of some packing boxes in the meantime

Naked Wines

A while back I came across a £50 voucher for Naked Wines, a new online wine distributor from the people that brought you Virgin wines and endorsed by good ol' Jamie Oliver, so I thought I'd give it a go

www.nakedwines.com

It's a great site, with a dumbed down approach to wine - making it more approachable to people like me, who only has a smidgeon of knowledge about wine. They have realy tried hard with the social network apects of the site, with the ability to join groups, organise tastings, and they have made reviewing wines really easy - which is the most important aspect of their site I'd say.

The feature that sets this place apart from the rest is their "Become an Angels" feature. Essentially you allow them to debit £20 a month into your online account. This is not an admin charge of any kind, the money you give can be put towards your wine purchases. If you do this, then you can get up to 33% cashback on all your purchases (which can only be used on more wine purchases, but thats no bad thing).

Now if your like me, and spend an awful lot more than £20 a month on wine, it's a bit of a no-brainer as the cashback reduces the cost of your next purchase.

Whats the wine like? Lovely from what I've tasted so far, helped by the wise words of the wine reviewers who have purchased before you.

Delivery is easy, with a handy additional info field for you to fill in advising the delivery guy where to hide your wine if you can't be there to pick it up - which worked perfectly!

I can't find the £50 voucher anymore, but here's a £40 voucher which can be used against a case of £79.99 or more (so you will have to dig £40 deep into your own pockets)

www.nakedwines.com/thelist

I highly recommend using them, I will be ordering again in a few weeks. Here's a picture or two of my first delivery of 15 bottles, which cost a total of £60 - reduced from about £120 with all the offers I had as a first time user of the site.

Venison and Polenta with Cabbage and Pancetta with a Jus

It's been a while!

Ingredients:
2 Venison Steaks/Medallions (cost me about £4 for two)
Instant Polenta
Cabbage (savoy or green)
Pancetta cubes (you can buy little packs of cubed pancetta which is easiest)
2* Shallots
2 large mushrooms chopped
Thyme, Rosemary and a Sage Leaf
Glass of red wine

Add the pancetta to a pan for a few minutes then add half a small cabbage sliced. Put the lid on and leave to soften.

Add 8 tablespoons of (instant) polenta to boiling veg stock slowly and continue to stir for 5 to 10 minutes.

In the meantime add two venison sirloin steaks (or medallions) to a frying pan. Fry for a minute each side then transfer to an oven for about five minutes.

Whilst the steaks are in the oven, add some diced mushroom and shallots to the pan you cooked the meat in. Also add some thyme, rosemary and sage. Cook for a few minutes then add some beefstock and half a glass of red wine.

Reduce the stock and strain.

Add the polenta to a plate, stick the venison on top, put the cabbage to the side and the jus around.

Then Nom :)



If I did it again?

I haven't quite mastered polenta yet. I added it to quickly - plus I used the quick kind. There is a version available which takes up to 45minutes, but gives a much less grainy result. Apparantly some people add milk as well.

I used a green cabbage, instead of savoy as there weren't any in the supermarket. Savoy is so much cooler!

The jus was nice but I didn't use enough red wine. This was an intentional mistake - I only had one bottle and didn't want to share it with the gravy!

Presentation wise, I used too much polenta and was a bit lazy with pouring over the gravy/jus. It's always a bit of a tradeoff really. I want a proper portion of food for my tea which doesn't make for a perfectly presented plate. The belly always wins.

Pasta Masta

Ok, very quick update

Pasta with bacon, olive and sun-blushed tomato

I had the picture so thought I would upload it - took all of ten minutes to make as do most quick pastas when you haven't the energy to prepare anything lavish.

For two people:

Half an onion finely chopped
One garlic clove
1 Red Chilli - deseeded and chopped
Bacon - a couple of rashers chopped
Green Olives (about ten halved)
Sun Blushed Tomatoes (like sun-dried but only semi-dried - not as strong)

1. Boil a pan of water and begin cooking your spaghetti

2. fry the onions for a bit, then add the bacon till it starts to crisp.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan, and cook through

4. Add half a cup or so of the pasta water to the frying pan to create a sauce

5. Drain, then add the pasta to the sauce and serve with parmesan, salad maybe.

Double Stir Fry

I hadn't made a stir fry in ages - the closest I come to Chinese food is normally from the take-away or an obssession I have with Miso soup - as it is completey NOM!

So anyway, Becky (my long suffering girlfriend of almost 11 years) wanted a stir fry so I obliged. Fortunately I had the staple flavourings to hand, light and dark soy sauce. Or if you are Spanish, 'Soya' sauce. It's all the same thing though, comes from soya beans if you hadn't guessed.

What else did I put in it:

Pepper
Mushroom
Carrot (use a mandolin or julienne yourself if you have the patience)
Baby Sweetcorn
Spring Onion
BeanSprouts
Pak-Choi
Egg Noodles (softened in boiling water)

About a tablespoon of light and dark soy sauce (or to your own taste). Fry the lot, adding to the pan in the order above.

I ended up making two stirfries on different days as I had too many vegetables left, the first I made with Sardine Fish Cakes - which worked ok, but the cakes were too thick so it was difficult to cook through/firm up without charring the outside as you'll see in the photo. If I were to do it again I would flatten the cakes out thinner. The second stir-fry was using left over chicken from my Roast dinner on the Sunday (which I also made a stock out the carcus but that will come up in another post I'm sure).

So why sardines? Well, for quite a few reasons really. One is because they are high in Omega-3 oils even when out of a tin unlike Tuna which loses most of it's Omega-3 when canned. Omega-3 is great for the brain, it helps with depression, concentration, reduces possilibity of Alzheimers and loads of other benefits, supposedly anyway. Omega-3 fatty acids are used in the cell membranes of neurons. They make the membrane more flexible allowing ions inside to change shape, and let electricity pass from one cell to another. Lack of Omega-3 leads to stiffer membranes, making it more difficult for electricity or 'information' to pass across. Your body can actually create a substitute that is just about the same as Omega 3 DHA, called DPA, but it's not supposed to be as good as the real stuff. So in essence, it makes you smarter'ish.

Another reason is that I'm allergic to white fish, I can only eat oily fish and shellfish, so no Fish and Chips for me. When I was a kid, the doctor's thought my Mum had poured bleach on my face after I ate some fish, so I went through most of my life staying away from all fish.

Cue one drunken night in my twenties, and a girlfriend who happens to be a dietitian and we determined that there has hardly ever been a case of a person allergic to Oily fish, so we opened a tin of Sardines and I helped myself to no ill effects. Since then I tested myself on most kinds of fish to determine where my allergy lies. What better way to test this than a list which had two columns, one for dead, and the other for alive. Fortunately, my allergy from being a kid seems to have reduced to a severe intolerance. I learnt very quickly that my allergy lies with White Fish, causing major abdominal pain, imagine the worst indigestion ever and you'd be getting close. Bit of a shame really, as the sea bass I tried was amazing.

So thats the main reasons really, plus we had a tin of sardines in the cupboard as well.

Oh, and just for the record, I'm also allergic to certain tree nuts. I cannot eat brazil nuts and walnuts. I am most probably, but not ever made a decent attempt to confirm whether I am also allergic to cashew nuts, almonds and hazelnuts. I can however eat peanuts, and pistachio nuts so it's not all bad.

Wow, essay! Ok, so quickly here's the recipe for the fishcakes, then some pictures

2 potatoes
Lemon rind
Parsely
Lemon Juice
Tin of Sardines in Spring Water
Salt/Pepper

Mix the lot together, make into cake shapes, and dust in flour then fry for 10-15 minutes. I made too much by accident with this mixture, so I'd probably reduce to one potato and half a tin of sardines.

Stew Pudding

A fancy name for stew in a large yorkshire pudding, and no I didn’t make the yorkshire pudding as I'm lazy!

Stewing Meat - Shin beef is the best but they didn't have any so I used a mixture of stewing steak and braising meat. Mix the chopped meat round in flour

1.5 Medium Onions, chopped into large chunks
3 carrots
1 Parsnip
1 Leek
2 Potatoes
Mushrooms
Gravy Granules
Oxo Stock Cube
An amazing Le Creuset Casserole Dish - or some cheap imitation copy. Pfft!

1. Brown off the floured meat in at least two lots, ensuring you brown each side, then transfer to a bowl whilst you get on with the rest.
2. Gently fry the onion and carrot in the same dish trying to get a bit of caramelisation on the oninos and carrots, it all adds to the flavour.
3. Add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes, adding salt and pepper to the dish to get some of the water out of the mushrooms
4. Add the potato, parsnip, leek and meat to the casserole dish, and cover with the gravy mix (which you should make seperately in a pyrex jug or whatever you have to hand. You want the gravy quite thick, but not sludge!
5. Add boiling water ensuring that all the stew items are covered, then cover with the casserole lid, and transfer to an oven at about 140 degrees.
6. Leave for as long as possible, about seven hours if you can (start cooking it in the morning, and have it for tea)

If I get the time, I'm making stirfried vegetables and Sardine fish cakes for tea, Nom Nom Nom Omega 3 Nom.