Category: pork

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food lamb pork reviews

review: marley spoon meal delivery service

Do you want the pleasure of home cooked food, but find yourself lacking inspiration or short on shopping time? Then Marley Spoon might have the service for you.

Marley Spoon invited me to try out their meal delivery service to see how it worked.

The proposition is this: pick the meals you like the sound of from Marley Spoon’s website, then on either Wednesday or Friday they will deliver the ingredients to you. With the small assumption that you have basics like oil, salt, sugar and pepper you’ll then have everything you need in perfect portions to cook the dish. You’ll also have a large recipe card to help you along.

The meals are well chosen, with a decent variety every week, including fish, vegetarian and vegan options. If you’re omnivorous the dinner inspirations are from all corners of the globe and feel well balanced. There’s plenty of gorgeous photography to help you choose the dish that you fancy for dinner that week.

I chose a couple of things to try: nasi goreng (a household favourite) and lamb steaks with red cabbage and neeps.

Aside: check out some more of my lamb dishes!

The checkout process is smooth and painless, and delivery was spot on – an hour beforehand the driver rung me to advise he was running 15 minutes late so I was kept informed. Everything was packaged well and insulated sensibly. It was also smartly labelled so I could put things away ready for the next dinner, along with a cute little hand-signed card by the picker inside. Nice touch.

 

Come cooking time I followed the simple instructions, and as promised both meals were ready in 40 minutes. The nasi goreng was really enjoyable, tasting fresh and exciting. The pork loin was of a very good quality, from Devon Rose farms. It was nestled in wild rice and plenty of veg.

The lamb dish was a comforting meat-and-two-veg style dish and delivered excellent flavour. The gravy in particular was plate-lickingly good thanks to an really good redcurrant jelly. Again the lamb was great quality.

So far so good. But there are some elements that prevent it being a solid recommendation.

Some of the vegetables I received were not of great quality. The chinese leaf had a soft, dog-eared feel to it, and the carrots were poor. Browned and able to be bent at more than 45 degrees, I don’t think these were fresh from the farm that day. Take a look at the carrots in this pic:

Sad specimens. I could forgive small things like this could if the price reflected that. But there’s the biggest but.

A portion of a meal costs £9. And you have to order 4 portions of something to qualify for a delivery. So that’s £38 to receive these ingredients. And that’s before you’ve started cleaning, chopping, cooking and washing up after. And I really struggle with that price point.

If we take that as £18 for two people, I can find a bunch of high end ready meals for that money (such as Bigham’s), which will involve a lot less peeling and chopping my end. Or get a decent takeaway for that money. Which begs the question, when does this become good value? You’re paying for your time-saving in choosing the recipe, shopping for the ingredients and bringing them to you. If you’re a busy professional couple who still want to cook for themselves than rely on ‘ready made’ options, there are much cheaper ways to do it and I suspect you will have a battery of decent go-to recipes. And they still took me 40 minutes as directed, and I’d like to think I’m an experienced, multitasking home cook.

It’s a frustrating prospect. I want to support Marley Spoon a lot as they advocate home cooking and being a little adventurous. But I can’t see how that price represents good value. If they could at least do some prep: the cleaning and dicing of veg, providing marinades pre-mixed.

The website is great for dinner inspiration, and I’ll definitely be checking in for meal ideas. If they can get that price down I’d definitely use it again as the recipes are perfect.

Check out Marley Spoon for yourself here.

Marley Spoon provided the meals for free.

Categories
champagne food gammon ham marmalade

champagne and marmalade ham

Every year on Christmas Eve I like to serve up a joint of gammon, that inevitably gets served up on Boxing Day as yummy leftovers. I’ve got a ton of gammon recipes on here, such as honey roast, salted caramel and more. This year I had an excess of champagne (disaster!) so I just had to use it.

The process is always the same, simmering the joint in a root veg-packed broth and followed by a brief roasting in a flavoured glaze.

With the addition of marmalade the bitter edge offsets the sweet meat really well.

Here’s to next year’s ham!

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champagne and marmalade ham

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 5 kg gammon ham joint
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 stick celery
  • 1 onion halved
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tablespoon black peppercorns

For the glaze:

  • 1/2 bottle champagne
  • 2 tablespoons marmalade
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • Cloves to decorate

Instructions

  • Put the gammon in a large pan with the veg and spices and cover with water. Simmer for 1.5 - 2 hours until a knife can enter it with no resistance. Switch off the heat and leave to rest in the liquor for half an hour.
  • While the meat rests, make the glaze. Add the champagne to a saucepan and crank up the heat. Reduce by at least half and the liquid should be noticeably thicker. Add the rosemary, stir in the marmalade and simmer for another five minutes. Check the seasoning and remove from the heat. Preheat the oven to 200C.
  • Put the meat on to a baking tray lined with paper or foil (the sugars in the marmalade will bake on to your tray and be hell to remove otherwise). Stud decoratively with cloves. Coat the ham with a layer of the baste and pop in the oven. Every ten minutes add more baste, building up a glass-like crust. When it's ready leave for ten minutes to rest and carve, or pop in the fridge for another day.
Categories
bacon pie pork

home made pork pie

I’ve eaten pork pies hundreds of times but this was my first attempt at a home made pork pie. It’s really worth the effort.

If you are English and reading this you will already know what I mean by the phrase “pork pie”. It has a very definite meaning: a raised, crisp pastry, filled with coarse meat surrounded by a spiced jelly. It’s a picnic mainstay and a lock for any buffet table.

The pastry is specific. It is a hot water made with boiling lard, which crystallizes as it cools to give it a distinctive crunch. In centuries past the pastry was a container for the filling and was meant to be discarded, it is relatively recently that the pastry became edible.

As a further preserving agent, clarified butter was poured around the meat to keep it good. This has shifted over time to the divisive jelly. In my opinion the surrounding opaque jelly really makes it, but there are plenty of people who will tell you it’s revolting.

The popularity of the pork pie centres around the town of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, which has held PDO appellation since 2008. The booming dairy industry of the 1700s led to a surplus of whey, which became pig fodder. All this meat needs to be kept somewhere hence, the pork pie rose up around these farms.

I chose to make one large home made pork pie instead of smaller ones. You combine various pork meats…

Mix up your pastry and line a tin…

Fill with meat and bake. Later you pour in jelly from the top. It’s a little shambolic round the edges but it’s a lot of fun to make. I hadn’t made hot water pastry before and it spits with volcanic fury so be careful, but it is quite manageable.

Obviously it makes quite a large pie to go around, but you may as well. I enjoyed mine at my office the following day.

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home made pork pie

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

For the pastry:

  • 150 ml water
  • 150 ml milk
  • 175 g lard
  • 675 g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg beaten

For the filling:

  • 700 g pork belly
  • 700 g pork shoulder
  • 6 rashers smoked streaky bacon
  • 2 onions diced
  • 1/2 nutmeg grated
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
  • 1 teaspoon mustard

For the jelly:

  • 500 ml chicken stock
  • 250 ml apple juice
  • 2 sheets leaf gelatine snipped

Instructions

  • Fry the onions gently with the sage, thyme, nutmeg and mustard, then leave to cool.
  • Dice the porks and bacon together (I pulsed mine very gently in batches in a food processor). Combine with the onion mix and season generously with salt and pepper.
  • For the pastry bring the water, milk and lard to the boil in a saucepan. Sift in the flour and salt and beat with a wooden spoon to make a dough. Grease an 18cm springform baking tin and line with paper. When cool enough to handle roll the pastry to 5mm thick and use 3/4 of it to line your baking tin. Fill with the meat and then use the remaining pastry to make a lid. Use a fork to make a sealing pattern around the edge, then glaze with the egg. Poke a thumb-sized hole in the top with a knife to let the steam escape. Bake at 220C for 30 minutes, then turn down the oven to 190C for a further 1 hour. If it looks to be going brown a little prematurely cover with foil. You're looking for an internal temperature of 65C when probed.
  • While it cools, make the jelly stock. Soak the gelatine in cold water for twenty minutes. Bring the stock and juice combined to a simmer. Squeeze the gelatine of excess water and whisk into the stock until dissolved. Remember the hole you poked in the pie earlier? Force a funnel into it and trickle the stock into the pie. It'll take a little at a time as it seeps in, and keep topping it up until it cannae take no more. Leave in the fridge to set for at least 24 hours, and if you can wait a few more days it will taste even better. Serve with pickles and cheese.

Need more pies?

Try Elizabeth’s leftover roast beef pie. I love the sound of this one!

Categories
bacon broccoli cheese food gnocchi

gnocchi cheese bake with broccoli

Sometimes you get in from work, it’s just late, it’s dark, it’s raining. The urge to pick up the phone (or app, these days) and order some food in. But you know there’s just enough stuff in the cupboards that can be coerced into something that doesn’t scream leftovers. And that’s where this gnocchi cheese bake was born.

It has a macaroni cheese at it’s heart but with pillowy gnocchi instead for a toothy bite. The broccoli is there to assuage a little guilt and have something green poking out of it, though the irony taste does help damp down the richness.

The sauce is also a lightning-fast one, made with Greek yoghurt instead of a traditional roux. It’s not quite the same but it’s a helluva lot faster. Pure comfort food.

I’m entering this into Speedy Suppers hosted by Maison Cupcake and Feeding Boys; the theme this month is cheese so what could be more apt?

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gnocchi cheese bake with broccoli

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • Gnocchi
  • 200 g frozen broccoli
  • 1 slice bread
  • 3 rashers smoked streaky bacon diced (optional)

For the cheese sauce:

  • 2 tablespoons cornflour level
  • 1 500 g Greek-style yoghurt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 50 g fresh parmesan grated
  • 50 g cheddar grated

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 200C.
  • Put a large pan of water on to boil. Put the gnocchi and broccoli in the water until al dente and drain.
  • While the gnoc 'n' broc cooks, measure the cornflour into a bowl. Blend in a little yoghurt, stir in the eggs and whisk until smooth. Mix in the remaining yoghurt, cheeses and the mustard.
  • Get an oven-safe dish over a low heat. If you're using the bacon, fry it quickly until crispy. Whizz up half the bacon and bread in a food processor and keep to one side for a moment.
  • Add the gnocchi, broccoli and the other half of the bacon to the cheese sauce, adding a little milk if required to let it down. Top with the bacony breadcrumbs and bake for 20 mins, or until puffy and golden.

Need more cheesy dinners? Try the Jackie Kashian creamy penne. Or Heston’s macaroni cheese!

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