Category: food

chorizo and lentil soup

Hot diggity, I love chorizo. So meaty, spicy and god-darned irresistible. I hate those pre-packed sweaty little plastic things, so I always buy mine from the deli counter. Except there I have to plead with the assistant not to slice it into bits, it’s always finger-thick slices or rough dice for me.

This wintry soup is a real cracker: fried leeks and chorizo, cooked until softened, joined by red lentils, paprika and stock, then allowed to simmer until everything’s tender. Followed by the obligatory blitz. Just to finish it off I seared some reserved chorizo slices until blackened, then rested on top to allow its savoury blood-red juices to drip into the chunky soup.

food polenta

cornbread

Told you I was only making bread. Though Liam did most of this. We were having a jambalaya and inspired by Simon this was the natural compliment.

I ordered corn meal from Tesco, not realising it’s actually polenta, which I have tons of anyway. Ho-hum. Otherwise, it’s bread-baking as usual except for the addition of, well, polenta.

Doing it again I’d add more sugar to balance the flavours. It went dry pretty quick, good excuse to squeeze some golden syrup over then.

bagels food

bagels

I bought a bread book the other day. I’ve made little else ever since.

I had to try making bagels, such a satisfying and fun food, and so versatile. The bread recipe is fairly standard, flour, yeast, water, yadda yadda, leave to prove etc. But the difference is just before baking to poach the batter in boiling water.

It made for fascinating cooking though the end result wasn’t quite like the bagel I expected. Next time, I’d boil them a little longer, allowing the moisture to seep right in before baking out via steam. Whatever happened, they were gorgeous with full-fat Philly.

food lamb lentils

tomato dahl with lamb

This poor, poor recipe: it got bumped for weeks and weeks off the menu as other things came up, we got home late, someone invited us out… and finally we made it. It was very nice, luckily.

The lamb was supposed to be koftas but mega-juicy onions didn’t allow the meat to bind into kebabs. So instead the lamb mince was mixed with onion, garlic, ginger and turmeric to make a batch of fried mince. The dhal was onion, garlic, turmeric and lentils simmered in stock, with a tin of tomatoes, to form the carb part of the dish. Not fussy, not clever, but satisfying.

(the white strips above are slivers of halloumi cheese that were sitting looking bored in the fridge lightly grilled and left on top)