We had a Mum’s night out on Friday. There were cocktails, kale crisps, wine, koftas, steak, cheese, pie and brownies. Plus gossip and laughter and comparing and contrasting. It was fun. I didn’t want it to end. But my inbuilt guilt alarm struck at about midnight. Like some kind of baggier, older Cinders I felt the need to hail cabs, gingerly unlock the door and creep up the creaky stairs. And then I felt this strange low-level sadness sweep over me. READ MORE
Has the trifle all gone yet? Twiglets? Cheese shape thingies? What about the ham? Or the Quality Street? Phew. Thank goodness for that.
If you need something a little simpler. Easy to eat, easy to prepare and not in any way slathered in cream, chocolate or brandy then look no further.
Lots of great recipes like this in my book, Recipes from a Normal Mum, out now… on Amazon, at Waterstones, WHSmith, The Book Depository and many smaller outlets.
Last December: My slow cooker beef bourguignon pie and Crumble topped mince pies and a very ugly but delicious cranberry & raspberry traybake
Two years ago: Mini Yorkshire pudding canapes and Christmas pudding fizz and Brandy butter icing and Rudolf morsels
Three years ago: Lime meringue pie with chocolate pastry and Christmas scones and Ginger cake with Christmas cottage and Hot chocolate on a stick
Four years ago: Moonuts and Cheese biscuits and Parsnip soup and Inauthentic chicken tagine
2 minute marinade
Ingredients:
Mix all the ingredients together and slather all over chicken thighs, breasts, legs or all of the above. Leave for 2 minutes then bake in the oven at 190°C/Gas mark 5 for 50 minutes or until the skin is crispy and the juices run clear from the thickest part of the chicken.
I serve with lots of buttered peas and a jacket potato for the antidote to Christmassy rich food.
There’s sunshine at last! I can feel a smile spread across my face at the prospect of soaking up some vitamin D. The barbecue has grown dusty with lack of use this year but no longer. This weekend I will endeavour to BBQ everything, well, you never know when the next sunny spell might be. Barbecued bananas for breakfast anyone? Perhaps kedgeree with barbecued sardines on top? Or for dinner my favourite, a juicy burger with all the trimmings.
Sainsbury’s asked me to help Ian, a father of 3, make a family barbecue really special. Sainsbury’s recipe for lemon and coriander turkey burgers really hits the spot; filling, tasty, easy to make, low in fat and they won’t break the bank. My sons gobble these burgers up in no time at all with the youngest shouting out ‘again!’ at the top of his voice. Rare praise from Mr Fussy. If you want you can add a bit of magic by popping cheese into the centres or use turkey steaks for super speedy burgers. And to feed a crowd make the ingredients go a little further and make kebabs. I’ve been using this recipe to make meatballs, but now the sun’s out we’re back to the burgers! Here’s the film:
The recipe sheet can be found here!
Sometimes wives make cakes. Sometimes they make a lot of cakes. Sometimes husbands kindly taste them and even take them to work in their lunchbox. Sometimes wives are duty bound to provide something a little more wholesome in said lunchbox to counteract the cake.
Enter the lunchbox salad.
They’re becoming a regular fixture. No more sandwiches in the Bell household. We barely know what they are anymore. They’re a distant memory. Quinoa salad though – we know what that is. It’s both delicious and incites a sense of worthiness one can only get from eating rainbow coloured food.
Ingredients:
This is easy. You can make it whilst sterilising bottles, reading Thomas the Tank Engine out loud or even playing hiding behind the curtains. Though you can’t be the one hiding.
Put the kettle on to boil and put the quinoa into a sieve that fits into a nice large saucepan. Then fill the saucepan with cold water. That way the quinoa gets a wash and you don’t have to pick tiny bits of wet grain from a pan. After a 5 min soaky wash lift the quinoa out of the saucepan (in the sieve) and throw the water away. Then put the quinoa into the saucepan (this time not in the sieve) and pour boiling water over it. Enough to come half way up the sides of the pan. Put on a medium heat to boil. I used a lid, but I like to save energy like that you see.
In the meantime take your tupperware lunchbox receptacle and put everything else on the list into it. This works best if you put all the wet stuff in first, then add the other bits and bobs. Give the mixture a good stir with a fork and once the quinoa is ready (the grains look like curls) drain it and add to the mix. Stir and pop something less virtuous on top. Like steak. Or belly of pork. Or in this case a nice piece of teriyaki salmon. Send husband/wife/child to place of work/learning with the lunchbox and a fork.
My son (the eldest, not the baby one – that would be weird) has taken to saying goodbye to everything. When we leave the bathroom he says ‘bye bath.’ When we get out of the car he says ‘bye car.’ When we leave the sitting room he says ‘bye baby Mass.’ (Mass is a toddler version of the name Max, his baby brother, don’t you know.) And so on and so forth…
What I like about this is his equal respect for human beings, inanimate objects, dogs, even his dinner gets a bye bye just before it’s devoured. Unless it’s biscuits, in which case he often says bye bye once they’re safely in his tummy, away from Daddy’s potentially thieving mitts.
Now these ribs are the kind of food you’ll probably wolf down so quickly it’s nigh on impossible to say bye bye to them until they’re safely stored in your tummy. They’re tender and sticky and slightly sweet to boot. Mr B made like a caveman and ate them with his hands, tearing the meat off the bone. Not in front of a fire though, in front of the TV. So maybe not that caveman like after all.
This serves 2 with rice or one person with some green veg I think.
Ingredients:
Start the day before you fancy the ribs. Mix all the ingredients together and put into a deep oven proof dish with a lid. I used a Le Creuset casserole dish. Pop the ribs in and stir until covered all over in the sticky sauce then leave in the fridge overnight.
The next day get the ribs out about 2 hours before you want to cook them and leave in the kitchen to get back to room temperature. Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/350F and pop the dish with lid on into the middle of the oven for about an hour. Give them a stir half way through. Then up the temp to Gas 5/190C/375F and remove the lid. Leave at that temp for another 30 mins. Lastly up the heat to Gas 6/200C/400F and keeping the lid off, cook for another 30 mins. You need to watch the ribs at this stage as they can easily char and burn so keep spying on them and if needs be give them a turn and a stir.
The ribs are done when the sticky sauce is soldered to the ribs, the meat is tender and the fat crispy. Serve on a bed of green veggies or on some steamed white rice with the sauce drizzled over the top. NB: A large sheet of kitchen roll is required in order to eat these monsters.
P.S. Expect the sweet sticky sauce to stay soldered to the dish for a few days. Mine has only just recovered after the 3rd scrub – but oh so worth it.
Charlie surprises me on a daily basis, such are his whims. His fave supper of Baghdad beef stew, carrots and pasta was recently rejected in favour of this cous cous. He eyed the adults eating it with slight suspicion, then after a little spying, made his move and pounced. Initially picking out the chickpeas, then moving on to scooping up cous cous with his chubby, slightly yoghurty fingers. Even the coriander was devoured. The only sounds from his mouth: ‘yum yum mummy.’
This recipe makes LOADS – a huge bowl to be left in the fridge and dipped into whenever peckish. It lasted about 3 days in this house which just shows how much there was as we’re greedy Bells. It’s not too highly spiced or lemony which makes it a good accompaniment to spicier dishes, Mr B thinks.
Ingredients:
Get the onions cooking in the oil and sugar on a low heat in a frying pan. They need about 20 mins to get to that caramelly look and taste. Then add the aubergine, garlic and mushrooms and fry until cooked through.
Meanwhile make the cous cous by taking 500g, putting it into a large bowl and then adding 600ml of boiling water. Cover the bowl with a large dish or plate and leave for 10 mins. Don’t disturb! You need the steam to stay in the bowl. After a good ten mins have elapsed take the plate or lid type utensil off the top and use a fork to fluff the cous cous up.
Add the drained chick peas, crumbled feta, spring onions and onion-y, aubergine-y mix to the cous cous and fork through until combined. Then add chopped coriander and mix through gently, using serving spoons.
Today I cut Charlie’s hair. Previously he’d been having it cut by a friend of my mothers. This hairdresser is one of those who visit you at home, so rather than have someone staring up your nose as they lather your hair, they have a rather fine view of your bent over backside.
Charlie doesn’t like my mother’s hairdressing friend. In fact he went as far as to injure himself on one occasion, drawing blood on my mother’s watch, in order to escape her snippy clutches. This is sad as she cut my late grandmother’s hair, my mothers and now Charlies. But the tradition can’t continue. Charlie is so distressed by her presence it seems unfair on her more than him. No-one wants to be treated like the child catcher.
I was ready for a fight so I had all my weapons lined up. Cbeebies was the first one to be released. I had yoghurt covered raisins, banana chips and orange squash all lined up as placation tools. If it got serious there was always Daddy who was upstairs photographing things for eBay. As always, Charlie surprised me by not giving a damn. I snipped away and he hummed nursery rhymes with baby blue eyes glued to the box. His hair looks okay-ish. Not bad enough to make anyone feel sorry for him anyway. I feel a huge sense of achievement as I sit on the sofa this evening.
A recipe tonight for steak in disguise. I think this treatment of beef suits those who aren’t exactly keen on huge hunks of thick bloody steak but do like a bit of the iron rich stuff now and again. I’ve used a version of chimichurri sauce but rather than using it post cooking, have used it as a marinade. So you end up with a kind of grassy looking steak.
Ingredients:
Whizz everything together in a food processor except for the beef. Cover the minute steak in the marinade and refrigerate for 4 hours minimum or overnight if poss. Remove from the fridge about an hour before you want to cook the beef. Then either pop on the barbecue for about 1 minute either side (or longer if you’re preggers like me – see pic) or under the grill for the same amount of time. Serve with rice or cous cous or if you need more green in your life, a green salad.
I recently spent the day with some of my lovely friends who I don’t often see these days. I dusted off my old Oyster card (and was relieved that it still works after 3 years in retirement,) I reserved my train seat as last time I had to stand for an hour and I arranged for Charlie to spend the day with my Mum, AKA Nan-neeee. This is no hardship for him as 1) he adores her and 2) her house is a kind of toddlers version of Alton Towers, though without the need to queue.
Spending the day without Charlie is a curious thing. I enjoyed choosing food because I wanted it, rather than because he might like it. I enjoyed having a conversation uninterrupted, without being presented with a small car or a book to read. I enjoyed going to the loo without an audience pointing and shouting ‘what’s that?’ Most of all though I felt like I’d lost a limb. I missed his sticky little hands gripping mine, his habit of humming nursery rhymes as he eats. I even missed his tantrum-face and vigorous head shaking every time I ask him if he’d like to help Mummy with something. Is it like this forever I wonder. Will I sit at home draining glasses of gin when he’s 25, feeling like I’ve lost an appendage and boring people with tales of what a beautiful baby he was?
Carrying on with the grown up theme, here’s a recipe with a hot chilli chicken kick perfect for the Sunday blues. Be more careful than I was when you handle the scotch bonnet chilli. The stuff is lethal. One brush on my index finger and it tingled for hours. I think sensible people advise wearing washing up gloves.
Ingredients:
Put on some gloves! Cut the tops off the chillis and throw away, then throw everything except the chicken into a food processor and whizz for 2 mins until finely chopped and mixed together. Cover the chicken with the marinade, remembering only to use a spoon rather than your hands to mix it and then refrigerate for 4 hours or preferably overnight.
Depending on the weather, cook for either 20 mins each side on the barbecue or 40 mins at Gas 5 on a baking tray. Crisp the chicken skin if you used the oven, by finishing under the grill for 5 minutes. Serve with something mellow like a simple green salad or some steamed basmati rice.
NB: The chilli mellows with time and cooking so that your mouth doesn’t explode or tingle or do anything else unpleasant.
I didn’t like tomatoes until I went on a package holiday to Greece circa 1995. I had always associated them with what I call ‘salid’ – salad type ingredients served straight from the fridge, tasting of the cold, served possibly with a tin of something. Tuna, corned beef or pink salmon on a normal day and red salmon at Christmas. Perhaps some quarters of hard boiled eggs too, adorned with ground white pepper, not forgetting the pickled beetroot to stain the Heinz Salad Cream magenta.
You know you’re getting older when you start to have an affection for all things reminiscent of your childhood. So of course, with the eye cream comes an affection for ‘salid’ as it reminds me of my Nanna’s house on a hot summer’s day. However, these days the tomatoes live in the fruit bowl until they’re called upon, in a bid to warm them and develop their flavour, in homage to the Greek salads enjoyed 15 years ago.
This is a version of tomato and mozzarella salad for when the shops fail you, which they did on this occasion. For some reason Leicester is experiencing a fresh basil shortage. I even broke my own rule and made a special trip out to look for the stuff. Someone, somewhere in the Midlands is making a truck load of fresh pesto. I hope they enjoyed it. I’d still have preferred the fresh stuff, but for when you can’t find it, this isn’t a bad substitute.
Ingredients:
Pretty self explanatory but here goes… slice the tomatoes and cheese and arrange to look pretty or artistic, depending on your mood. Then make the basil dressing by mixing the squeezy basil with the olive oil. Drizzle over the salad, then make pretty lines, in a Masterchef fashion with the balsamic reduction. Finally pop some freshly ground black pepper over the top and then salt on just the toms. Serve as a starter or as a main, upping or downing the portions accordingly.
What a day! Going to the zoo requires military preparation when taking a toddler. Here is a list of everything we took:
Buggy, rain cover, coat for Charlie, coat for Mummy, spare trousers, spare shorts, spare T shirt, sun cream, sat nav, nappies, wet wipes, changing mat, ice pack, milk, water, blueberries, cheese sandwiches, cold sausages, yoghurt, an apple, sweetcorn fritters, grapes, caramel rice cakes, water biscuits, camera, pretend steering wheel and my handbag full of all the paraphernalia that makes me walk like a hunchback.
And this was travelling light. Of course the only things Charlie wanted to eat out of his packed lunch were the sausages and grapes. He’s a salt and sugar fiend. My theory is that the salt ban for the first year of every baby’s life results in obsession. A bit like every time I diet I end up reading cookbooks in bed like some kind of chick lit page turner. (Is there such a thing?) The boy loves anything salty – strong cheese, sausages, olives, crisps, savoury biscuits, adult chips that have been covered in salt and vinegar etc. Bad, bad, bad.
I don’t think he’s tried feta yet but am fairly sure he’d love it. This recipe is sufficiently salty to please the average toddler but full of garlicky veggies too, making it feel oddly quite meaty. The kind of veggie food that even Mr B admits to liking.
Ingredients:
Get the onions frying in the oil on a medium heat, you want them all brown and caramelly so go slowly. They need about 20 minutes slowly frying to get that sticky marmaladey look. Then add the garlic, black pepper, aubergine and mushrooms and fry for another 10ish mins until all the oil is absorbed and the veggies are cooked through. Take off the heat and mix the feta into the mixture.
Take each beef tomato, cut a lid off the top and carefully scoop out the tomato flesh until you have an empty shell. Cut the tomatoey flesh into small pieces and mix into the veggie mix you’ve just cooked, then scoop back into the beef tomato and replace the lids.
Take a square of foil and drizzle with a little olive oil, then place a tomato on top and scrunch the foil up until sealed. Repeat for the remaining 3 tomatoes and then place on the barbecue or in an oven (Gas 5) for about 15 mins. If you chill first remember to let the tomatoes get back down to room temperature before cooking.
NB: The tomatoes ooze an unattractive juice when stripped of their foil jackets – it tastes nice but can look a bit off putting. If trying to impress perhaps drain away first, otherwise just provide crusty bread for mopping.
Holly Bell 