Lamb and Spinach Curry

This tasty lamb and spinach curry has to be one of my all time favourite, authentic but easy to prepare dishes!

Here's a picture of the finished dish 

The ingredients you need are:

• lamb
• Spinach
• Onion
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Turmeric
• Black cardamom
• Bay leaf
• Tomatoes - 1 tin chopped
• Tomato puree
• Yogurt

Step 1

Marinade the lamb in a cup of yogurt with chopped garlic and ginger. Leave to marinade for a couple of hours or so.

Step 2

Blanch the spinach (200g) in hot water then puree in a blender. Put to one side.

Step 3

Add 1 bay leaf, 2 cloves and a black cardamom pod to oil and heat until the leaf starts to cook.

Add 2 chopped onions and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes

Step 4

Add 1 tsp of ground coriander and stir for 2 minutes. Then add half a tsp of ground cumin and after stirring, add some water. 

Cook for a few minutes 

Step 5

Add the lamb and all the marinade and stir in well. After 10 minutes add the tin or half tin of tomatoes plus some salt then cover and simmer until lamb is almost cooked - after an hour or so.

Step 6

When nearly cooked, add the spinach and season and cook uncovered for about 10 minutes

Here's the finished Lamb and Spinach curry again

Spicy Pork with Potato, Onion and Garlic Rosti

If you have never tried pork tenderloin - this dish is dead easy to prepare and very tasty!

The tenderloin is prepared with a rub, then griddled for about 6 minutes each side before going into the oven in the griddle for 30 minutes on 350f.

Alongside the rosti I prepared a red wine sauce with shallots and mushrooms.

Pork tenderloin with potato, onion and garlic rosti - sauce on the side.

Ingredients for the tenderloin rub

• Paprika
• Crushed black pepper
• Rock salt
• Freshly chopped garlic
• Chilli flakes

Step 1. Roll the pork in the rub while the pan is heating. Place in the pan and leave for 6 minutes without turning.

After 6 minutes, turn once then leave for another 6 minutes. If you have some shallots - place them round the edges so they start to soften and brown.

Pork tenderloin In the griddle pan

Pork tenderloin with shallots

Step 2. Right before you pop in the oven, place some shopped mushrooms round the edge then shove the whole pan in the oven for 30 minutes on 350f.

Pork tenderloin with mushrooms added

Step 3. Prepare the sauce

After 3 minutes remove the pork from the oven and the pan, cover with foil and stand for 10 minutes.

Add red wine to the pan with all the bits in and reduce. Next add some stock and 2 tsp of redcurrant jelly and reduce further. Thicken with cornflower if you like.

Red wine shallot and mushroom sauce

Preparing the potato rosti

For this slightly hotter version I grated potato then added fried onion, garlic and chilli plus salt and pepper.

Before adding the other ingredients to the potato, squeeze out all the water. Divide into rings, pack down place in a frying pan, cover with foil and cook for about 10 minutes each side.

Freshly Made Linguine Pasta

Here are some pictures of last weekends pasta. It might make a bit of a mess in the kitchen but I guarantee it's well worth the effort!!

All the ingredients for fresh pasta are in the picture below:

• Eggs
• Flour (00 grade)
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Optional - saffron water (just to add colour)

Step 1. Make a well with the flour and break in the eggs. Add the oil, saffron and a pinch of salt. Stir from the middle and keep stirring, bringing the flour in from the edges.

Step 2. Once you've got it all together, knead well on a floured surface for 10 minutes

The finished ball of dough is pictured below.

Step 3 . Using a pasta machine - roll out into increasingly thinner strips

Step 4. Roll back through the machine on the linguine setting (like noodles) then hang out to dry. If you don't have a pasta tree - try using something like wooden spoons - or even a plastic coat hanger might work?

Finally - cook for a couple of minutes, drain and serve. Fresh Linguine tastes amazing!! Check out the picture below

Fresh Linguine - click the picture above to enlarge

Lamb Shanks with caramelised shallots and red wine jus

Slow Cook Lamb Shanks with Garlic

This is an easy dish to prepare and cook. If you like lamb, red wine and garlic - then this is well worth trying. The lamb is amazingly tender and falls off the bone!

Here are some pics - the recipe and ingredients are to follow.

Shallots, Garlic and Sliced Onions

Red wine, Shallots, Garlic and Rosemary

Enter the Lamb Shanks

The finished dish!

Slow Roast Lamb Shanks and Caramelised Shallots

Lamb Kebabs - new marinade

Despite the cold weather I fired up the Weber BBQ last night and tested my new Lamb Kebab marinade.

To accompany the kebabs I prepared a bed of couscous garlic and onion - here's a picture of the kebabs on the BBQ grilling nicely:

Lamb kebabs on the grill - click picture to enlarge

Ingredients for the lamb kebab marinade:

• cup of natural yogurt
• harissa paste - 2 tsp
• redcurrant jelly - 1 tbsp
• garlic - half bulb crushed
• lemon juice
• tandoori paste - 2 tsp (pataks)

Directions:

Mix all the above ingredients together and add cubed lamb. Refrigerate for a few hours then take out and skewer up a couple of hours before bbqing.

BBQ on indirect heat, lid down for 15 minutes then remove, stand and cover for 10 minutes - allowing time to prepare the couscous.

Preparing the garlic and onion couscous:

Fry 1 chopped onion with 1 bulb of garlic and put to one side

prepare the couscous then add to the onion and garlic mix. Add the juice from the lamb as it stands and stir in well. Season and place on a large dish.

Un skewer the lamb and pile on the couscous. Here's a picture of the finished dish. Get stuck in!

Lamb kebabs on a bed of couscous - click picture to enlarge

Lamb Tagine

A Tasty Lamb Tagine with Garlic, Onion, Olives and Chilli!

This tagine dish is a piece of cake to prepare - perfect for a dark, blustery Saturday evening!

I followed my original lamb tagine recipe here but used green olives and added bacon at the end for a bit of extra flavour. -

Here is picture of phase 1, the lamb with chilli, cubed and grated onion.

If you fancy a chicken version - here's a recipe for chicken tagine.

Serve with chunky bread!

Lamb kebab marindade

How to marinade lamb kebabs.

Before we begin - lets take a look at the end result!

Perfect Grilled lamb kebabs - click picture above to enlarge

The lamb kebab marinade I used to create the kebabs in the picture above is really quick and easy, and a slight variation on my usual marinade.

The marinade ingredients:

• Harissa paste - 3 tsp
• Natural yogurt - 1 cup
• Redcurrant jelly - 3 tsp
  
• Lemon - juice of 1
• Garlic - several cloves finely chopped
• Black pepper
• Salt to season - just before grilling
  

Combine all the ingredients except salt in a bowl and add cubed lamb. Marinade as long as possible. Mine below went in the day before for 24 hours.

lamb kebab marinade - click picture above to enlarge

Pre grilling, take the kebabs out of the fridge and allow to come to room temperature then skewer up.

Grill until done, turn to brown all sides - this should take about 10 minutes, depending on the temperature of your grill.

Grilling lamb kebabs - click picture above to enlarge

I transferred from griddle to indirect once the lamb took on a good colour.

Perfect Grilled lamb kebabs - click picture above to enlarge

When the kebabs are done - remove, cover in foil and let stand for 5 or 6 minutes. Serve with hummus, wraps and a nice salad. Very tasty!

BBQ Rib Eye Steak

It doesn't get much better than the perfect rib eye steak.

Over an inch thick, nicely marbelled, seasoned with salt and pepper and served with chunky chips and grilled onions, peppers and home grown garlic!

Rib Eye - medium rare - click picture to enlarge

Grilling the perfect rib eye steak

The rules are simple. For a 1 inch steak I fire up the Weber to around 500f to begin with, then turn down the flames under the bars I'm going to grill on, leaving the other, indirect flames on high.

Assuming the steaks are 1 inch thick - grill as follows. If like mine above they are bigger, add say 15 seconds on each side for medium rare. If smaller, take time off.

1. Rub some oil on the bars then put the steaks on at an angle (10 o'clock) - grill for 2 minutes
2. Flip over on the spot for a further 2 minutes
3. Flip over and change angle (2 o'clock) - grill for a further 2 minutes
4. Flip over on the spot for a further 2 minutes

Once done - remove from the grill, cover in foil and stand for 5 minutes or so.

Serve with chunky chips and grilled vegetables (see picture below)

Grilled vegetables with garlic - click picture to enlarge

Lamb Tagine with Chilli

This tasty dish consists of lamb, potatoes, Chilli, tomatoes and onion olives and paprika. It looks good and tastes even better!

Tagine ingredients:

• Lamb (I used a pack of 3 small rump steaks from Sainsbury's cubed)
• olive oil
• olives - black pitted- about 20 (I prefer greek olives)
  
• new potatoes - 750g cubed
• thyme - sprig of fresh
• apricots - dried - about a dozen
• onion - 2 large chopped into quarters then cubed
• 3 large chillies plus 2 bird eye chillies

Lamb tagine close up - click the picture above to enlarge

Step 1 - Cube the lamb and place it in your tagine/dish and season with salt and pepper - leave for 5 minutes.

Add some water (about 400g), plus the garlic and the bay leaves, and gently bring to the boil.

Once it's boiling - add the onions plus the chillies and simmer for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, add the potatoes plus the olives, put the lid back on and cook for about an hour on a gentle simmer

Lamb tagine cooking - click the picture above to enlarge

Once the lamb is done, sprinkle on paprika and transfer to the oven to finish off and brown the potatoes.

The finished lamb tagine - click the picture above to enlarge

Serve with crusty bread - very tasty!

Best BBQ Ribs Ever

BBQ Ribs cooked low and slow - a full rack of ribs - tastes amazing!

For the health conscious - you can see that the fat layer has been removed from this rack of ribs. Not tried them like this before - I normally leave the fat on the ribs because it tastes so good! Nevertheless these ribs still tasted amazing!

full rack of ribs - fat removed - click picture above to enlarge

home-made rub for ribs - click picture above to enlarge

Step 1

Prepare the rub for the ribs - my finished rub is pictured above. The ingredients for the rub are:

• paprika
• all-spice
  
• light brown sugar
• crushed black pepper
• celery salt
• garlic salt
  
• garlic powder
• mustard powder
• cayenne pepper

Rub the mixture all over the ribs, cover and seal and put in the fridge for a few hours or over night.

When you take the ribs out they should look something like the picture below:

rack of ribs - ready to BBQ - click picture above to enlarge

Step 2

Heat the BBQ to around 250f - my Weber has a temperature guage that makes this quite easy. Prepare for indirect cooking.

Set the temperature to 250f

Step 3

Prepare a BBQ Rib sauce to mop on occasionally as you cook your ribs. This mop can sit on the grill alongside your ribs - to bubble away nicely.

garlic and beer mop for ribs - click picture above to enlarge

The ingredients for the garlic and beer sauce are:

• bottle of beer (this time I used black sheep pale ale)
• cup of white wine vinegar
• bulb of garlic
• light brown sugar
• olive oil
• chilli

As you can see in the picture above - there's lots of garlic in it!


Step 4

Place the ribs on the grill - along with the mop and cook for about 5 or 6 hours.

BBQ Ribs on the BBQ - click picture above to enlarge

Turn every couple of hours and mop on the sauce every hour. Once they're done I like to blend up the garlic and beer sauce that's left to make a nice pour on sauce or dip!

BBQ Ribs - almost done! - click picture above to enlarge

Serve with chunky chips or just eat them on their own. A full rack should serve 4 hungry people quite easily!

Paella

I love Paella! It's so easy to make and yet so tasty! Here are some pictures of a tasty paella I made the other day with mussels, prawns and chorizo.

The finished paella dish - click the picture above to enlarge

Begin by softening mushrooms and garlic, then add some chorizo before the rice. Keep stirring for a minute then pour in some white wine.

Once the wine has been absorbed, add the stick and stir - then leave for about 14 minutes, only stir occasionally if you have to.

Add the mussels and prawns towards the end

Prawn tikka curry

A delicious easy to prepare Prawn curry.

First time ever with this new experimental recipe! I was initially planning to use the sauce as a marinade for skewered prawn tikka but decided to add some cocunut milk at the last minute before turning it into a saucy curry instead :)

Time to prep: 20 minutes plus 1 hour marinade
Time to cook: 10 to 15 minutes

Prawn tikka curry - click picture above to enlarge

Ingredients for prawn tikka curry:

To fry initially:

• red onion 1
• garlic - 1 bulb (use half in the sauce below)
  
• prawns - 24 large raw
• olive oil

And for the sauce:

• lime juice - 2 tbsp
• chillies - 1 bird eye
• harissa paste - 2 tsp
• garam masala - 2 tsp
• turmeric - 1/4 tsp
• ginger - 2cm, grated
• coconut milk - 1/4 tin
• 1/2 the above garlic
  

Prepare the marinade/sauce as follows

Combine all the ingredients except the prawns, onions, oil and half the garlic in a food processor. Add the prawns to this mix and marinade for an hour.

Next fry the garlic and onions. See below

Onions garlic and prawns - click picture above to enlarge

Once the onions are soft, simply pour in the prawns with all the sauce. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Prawn tikka curry cooking - click picture above to enlarge

Serve on a bed of aromatic lime and coriander basmati rice!

Lamb kebabs again!

Can't resist them!

Piled high on on a mountain of couscous with added garlic, onion, cumin and coriander!

Here's my favourite lamb kebab marinade.

Lamb kebabs on a bed of couscous - click picture above to enlarge

Lamb kebabs on the BBQ - click picture above to enlarge

In all the perfect quick meal to eat outdoors on a warm summer evening :)

Best lamb kebab marinade

OK the results are in. My new lamb kebab marinade is absolutely amazing. I'm never going back!

Following the simple marinade recipe here, I cubed the lamb and left it to marinade in the fridge for 24 hours.

Once skewered up I cooked the lamb over the grill for 15 minutes and stood under foil for 10 to settle.

Lamb kebabs on the grill - click picture to enlarge

Lamb kebabs on the grill - up close - click picture to enlarge

Lamb kebabs with sweet potato - click picture to enlarge

The finished result!

After standing for 10 minutes, I served up the lamb with sweet potato rounds, cooked in a foil wrapper with garlic chilli oil, fresh chillies, salt and black pepper. The sweet potato cooks on the grill in under 10 minutes (around 200c).

With a spoonfull of couscous, and some mint raita on the side - its quick, easy and the best lamb kebabs I ever tasted!!!

If you don't follow the links - the ingredients for the lamb kebab marinade are below:

• Natural yogurt - small pot
  
• Harissa paste - 2 tsp - the one pictured below from Sainsbury's is the best ever - slightly sweet with bits of chilli
• Mint jelly - 2 tsp
  
• Garlic - freshly crushed - 4 cloves
• Lemon - 1 freshly squeezed.

BBQ Cheese straws

Warning - don't make these cheese straws (twists) if you plan on eating later!

Deadly cheese twists with pesto click the photo to enlarge

While preparing the stuffed Camembert I had some spare puff pastry so I decided to make cheese twists with pesto as a taster!

Crikey - that was a bad move - the cheese twists above were so good (a dozen in all) that I have had to shelve the stuffed Camembert and the lamb kebabs until tomorrow night!

Ahh well - thats just a bit longer in the marinade for the lamb which is OK but the cheese? Lets just see how it lasts!

Lamb kebabs - new marinade

I normally use this lamb kebab marinade here, however tonight I'm testing out a new recipe with some basic ingredients from my fridge & cupboards. Simply:

• Natural yogurt - small pot
  
• Harissa paste - 2 tsp - the one pictured below from Sainsbury's is the best ever - slightly sweet with bits of chilli
• Mint jelly - 2 tsp
  
• Garlic - freshly crushed - 4 cloves
• Lemon - 1 freshly squeezed.

After tasting this marinade - I think it would make an amazing dip - Wow - hot and sweet! Much simpler than my other marinades as well!

Here are the prep pictures:

Lamb kebab marinade - click picture to enlarge

Lamb cubes in marinade - click picture to enlarge

Sainsbury's Harissa Paste - click picture to enlarge

I'll be leaving the lamb in the fridge to marinade for a few hours before skewering up with red onions and maybe apricots and chillies - not sure yet!

Also planning on stuffing a small Camembert cheese with red onion marmalade before wrapping in puff pastry and BBQing later as well :)

Satay chicken

Satay chicken on the BBQ - delicious, quick to cook and simple to prepare

Here are some pictures:

Satay chicken on skewers

And here's the chicken in the satay marinade

Satay chicken in marinade

Ingredients and instructions to follow :)

Tandoori chicken

What finer way to celebrate a bank holiday weekend than with tandoori chicken served in pitta bread with salad and home made hummus!

chicken in the tandoor - click picture to enlarge

Ingredients for tandoori chicken marinade:

• Yogurt - 1 cup
• garlic - 1 bulb - crushed
• ginger - 1 inch chopped
• paprika - 2 tsp
  
• lemon - juice of 1, squeezed
  
• turmeric - 1 tbsp
• garam masala - 1 tbsp
• cumin - ground - 2 tsp
  

Cube and marinade the chicken for a few hours then put in a tandoor, or failing that, cook indirectly with the lid down on, or even grill in the oven.

Family BBQ

Sometimes you don't have too much time to prepare so when you have 9 people coming to a BBQ at short notice - my advice is to get out the old favourites that are quick to prepare, cook and serve up!

In this case we have on the menu:

• Goats cheese wrapped in pancetta
• BBQ sweet potatoes
• Butterflied leg of lamb BBQ'd
• Lamb Kofte
• Chilli prawns
• BBQ onions and mushrooms
  
• Mint raita

This lot will take around 1.5 hours to prep and less than 60 minutes to BBQ from start to end :)

Alongside these dishes we have some couscous, wraps for the lamb, salady stuff, bread and lots of wine!

Here are some pictures of the food:

Goats cheese in pancetta - click picture above to enlarge

Marinaded leg of lamb on the grill - click picture above to enlarge

Lamb kofte - just off the grill - click picture above to enlarge

The finished spread! - click picture above to enlarge

Butterflied Trout in Garlic and Lemon

BBQ Trout in garlic, lemon and fresh thyme

Butterflied trout in garlic and lemon with sweet potato - click to enlarge picture

When you can buy 2 whole trout for less than 4 quid - this dish is a must!

Begin with your trout on a chopping board below:

Fresh trout- click to enlarge picture

First cut its head off then use a very sharp knife to separate the bones from the flesh down one side. Repeat on the other side. If you have never done this before - just follow the bones - it is very easy I guarantee!

Once you have separated the bones - pull the backbone out - is should come out quite easily and cut the final bit out with a knife.

The finished butterflied trout should look like this:

Butterflied trout - click to enlarge picture

Place the butterflied trout on foil - oiled and seasoned. then Marinade the trout with the following:

• Fresh thyme
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Lots of crushed and chopped garlic
• Olive oil

Butterflied trout in garlic and lemon marinade - click to enlarge picture

BBQ the butterflied trout, Skin down on the foil, lid down for around 10 mins, indirect heat.

Tonight I served with sweet, seasoned potato rounds - check out the picture below:

Butterflied trout in garlic and lemon with sweet potato - click to enlarge picture