This is a delicious, substantial and cheap meal. The flatbreads are gorgeous soaked in the sauce. I served with undressed green salad leaves.

Kefta Mkaouara adapted from a food blog recipe.

Meatball ingredients:

500g minced beef
3/4 tsp salt (1 tsp is a bit too salty)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp hot paprika powder
1 small onion, chopped finely and fried till translucent
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley

Sauce ingredients:

1 large onion, chopped finely
2 rounded tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp ground cumin
2 heaped tsp ras el hanout
1 heaped tsp harissa
2 400g cans chopped tomatoes

eggs for poaching
cooking olive oil

Directions:

Combine the minced beef with the cooked onion, salt, cumin, hot paprika and chopped parsley by hand. Make about 20 equal sized meatballs and sear the outsides in a hot pan.

The heat needs to stay low throughout the making of the sauce. Fry onions, add flavouring ingredients and fry a little to bring out flavour, then add tinned tomatoes and simmer. Liquidise if lumpy. Ensure that there is enough sauce and it is loose enough to poach eggs in. Add meatballs 20 mins from the end to cook through and eggs 5 mins from the end to poach. Don’t interfere with the eggs more than necessary as the yolks may break.

Moroccan flatbreads adapted from a BBC Food recipe.

I added 2 tbsp groundnut oil to the following as I don’t like flatbread to be too chewy:

200g/7¼oz plain flour
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cinnamon
boiling water, to bind
pinch of salt

Method is exactly the same as making chapattis. Makes 8.

This recipe is from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. He serves it with salmon fillets and Jersey Royals but in the programme he says it would go with plenty of other food such as white fish or chicken.

Ingredients:

leaves from half a bunch fresh mint
small bunch fresh flat leaf parsley
1 clove garlic
4 anchovy fillets
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 heaped tsp Dijon mustard
1 heaped tsp capers
2 cornichons
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Blitz in food processor until combined. Check for seasoning. Serve in a small bowl.

This is a recipe from Ching’s Chinese Food Made Easy which I borrowed from the library last year. Yesterday I found some leftover sesame sauce in the freezer and used it to flavour a slightly bland veg and noodle stirfry. The sauce is quite acidic but with my stirfry the result was fantastic. I didn’t have the recipe but happily I found it on someone’s food blog:

This recipe is more of a template for me than something to follow to the letter e.g. I like to make the sesame sauce quite thick, omitting a lot of the water for the stock cube, and doubling the amount of tahini. The black rice vinegar can be reduced to 1 tsp as it is very strong.

The method I use is based on Heston’s in In Search of Perfection.

I use Maris Piper (floury), peeled and boiled in salted water using 10g salt per litre of water for 10 mins or until just starting to break apart. I set the oven to 175C with fan. I use olive oil to roast, pouring it into a roasting tray to a depth of about 2-3mm (don’t skimp) and heating the oil up for 10 mins before adding the parboiled potato. I turn the potatoes every 15 mins to get all the sides browned and crunchy. They take about an hour and can’t be rushed; the turning the temperature up results in them getting too dark without getting a thick, glassy crisp side.

Tonight I cooked pheasant breast. I’ve cooked whole pheasant before and the breast was succulent while the legs were tough as old boots so now I just stick to pan-frying breasts coated with seasoned flour.

I would like to try the sauce from Valentine Warner’s pheasant recipe next time.

This makes about 8 servings, bearing in mind it is eaten as part of a meal with other curries.

Chop 500g beans into bite size pieces and precook in water in the microwave for 10 mins on full power. They are still crunchy after this but cooking them in the curry just finishes them off.

Gently fry 2 chopped onions sprinkled with 1/2 tsp salt in 4 tbsp ground nut oil until translucent. Add 1 tsp ajwain seeds and 1 more tbsp of oil and fry for a few seconds, until they release their aroma. Add 2 tbsp garlic and ginger paste, 1 tsp tumeric, 1/4 tsp red chilli powder, 1 tsp cumin and coriander powder. Stir and fry until they release their aroma then add the beans, 1 400g can of quality chopped tomatoes and then half a can of water swished around the empty can.

Cook on a gentle heat until the beans have softened and the tomatoes and spices have cooked into a sauce. I set the timer and check every 5 mins. Towards the end I add salt to taste, 1/4 tsp should suffice. It should take 20-30 mins to finish.

I bought a leg of lamb of very good quality from Waitrose weighing 1.94kg. I used the recipe in Heston Blumenthal at Home. It took quite a while to get the anchovy pieces, garlic slices (I poached in milk AFTER slicing) and rosemary leaves in. I’ve discovered that it’s best to push them in quite far so that they flavour the meat, not just the skin.

I used the small oven and with the dial at 50C the oven thermometer read 90C. The leg of lamb had been defrosting so it started off at room temperature. After 2.5 hours in the oven the meat’s internal temperature had reached 61C and lots of salty (from the anchovies) juices had run out. I made a gravy by sieving the juices and using just 1tsp of flour to thicken. The meat’s temperature goes up during resting so the lamb was more done than I wanted but it was still good. Next time I will check the oven temperature even more carefully and check the meat’s temperature ater 2 hours.

To accompany the roast lamb I made roast potatoes based on Heston’s recipe in the same book except that I boiled the potatoes in salted water (10g salt per litre of water) in accordance with his recipe in In Search of Perfection. The potatoes were done about 15 mins early but then they were quite small. I just took them out of the oven and put them in a warm bowl lined with a sheet of kitchen roll. They turned out very well.

I also made roast squash which I peeled and cut into approx. 1 cm wide slices and coated wih oil, hot paprika and a little salt. These were done after half an hour at 175C, then just to add colour I turned the fan on and cooked for a further 5 mins on each side.

Mark keeps complaining that I overcook baby courgettes when I pan-fry them so after slicing down the middle lengthwise as usual I smeared the flat side with the smallest amount of oil and cooked them on a hot griddle pan instead. They were perfect.

Monkfish were coated with seasoned flour and pan-fried – not the best way to cook monk tails because of the thick skin that curls up

Green beans dressed with 1/4 of:
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons whole grain dijon mustard
1 tsp onion powder – this was overpowering
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Glazed carrots (Larousse’s recipe)
Wedges flavoured with rosemary, thyme and salt

I quite often get my stir-fries wrong; some ingredients end up overcooked or the whole thing ends up too oily or watery. I found some good advice in 200 Wok Recipes which I was given as a Christmas present. In general I don’t like these little bargain bumper recipe books, but this advice seems good. This is my summary:

* Cut all ingredients into small pieces that will cook quickly and evenly e.g. no big broccoli florets next to finely sliced carrots. Add tender veg such as beansprouts at the end to retain crispness.

* Do all weighing, slicing and chopping before you start cooking. Keep all ingredients to hand to be tipped into the wok at the right moment.

* Use only lean cuts of meat trimmed of excess fat and not those that need extended cooking to become tender. Use seafood that keeps its shape e.g. monkfish, prawns and avoid delicate fish like seabass.

* Get the wok smoking hot before starting to cook. It takes a while for the heat to reach the wide rim. When the oil shimmers in the pan it’s time to start cooking. (But won’t this burn minced garlic and ginger?)

* Stirfry in small batches; as soon as ingredients are added to the wok the temperature drops dramatically. Brown the meat or fish first, them remove it to add back in at the end, otherwise it will stew instead of frying.

* Keep stirring to ensure even cooking and prevent sticking and burning. Add a little liquid (usually water but could use stock or soy sauce) to finish, once ingredients have been seared and browned.

So, following from the advice above, perhaps I shouldn’t be adding noodles into the wok as this makes the total volume far too large. Perhaps I should cook them separately and layer the stir-fried stuff between the noodles when serving? Or I could fry off the noodles in a separate wok?

Sounds as if it will be useful to keep a large warmed bowl to hand to transfer cooked ingredients into.