Mains

Aubergine (Eggplant) Rolls In Tomato Sauce

June 5, 2010

It’s frightening blogging about this dish because the very first time I had it it was made by my Sicilian friend Antonina when she was pregnant with her first child…he’s about to go to university this autumn…where has the time gone? Isn’t it funny how you associate a dish with a time and place in [...]

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Roast Rack of Pork with Fennel Seeds

May 23, 2010

My favourite roast is my Mum’s rack of pork which has been marinated in the traditional Portuguese marinade of white wine, garlic, bay leaves and salt and pepper (we use ground white pepper often with pork for its pungency). She manages to roast it until falling off the bone tender. The English are crazy for [...]

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Chicken Wrapped in Banana Leaf – First Attempt

May 21, 2010

When I made my recent very short stop into China town in London and picked up a few ingredients like Chinese garlic chives I also picked up a bag of these, banana leaves because I’ve never used them before, which is like a red rag to a bull with me, I have cupboards full of [...]

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Noodle Salad – Feeding Hungry Teenagers

March 29, 2010

This noodle salad isn’t just to feed sixteen 15 year olds coming over to celebrate your daughter’s birthday, this is a good salad to make for family meals, pack lunch, to have in the fridge over the weekend giving you the answer to, ‘..what shall I snack on..’. This was a one of very two [...]

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Store Cupboard Chicken – Chicken with Soy, Mirin and Ginger or Chili

February 25, 2010

This chicken dish is like my miso noodles, a cupboard recipe with only three ingredients as the title suggests. The hardest thing is deciding how to cut the chicken depending on how you’re cooking it, grilling it as I’ve made it above, stir fry or pan fry it. For me there’s a time in the [...]

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Sauteed Potatoes with the Leftover Pork

January 28, 2010

Make sure you have some of that bacon and ribs from the Poor Man’s Feijoada just so you can eat these potatoes, because if there ever was anything that should be attached to potatoes is crispy bits of pork and if you are so incline finish it off with a runny egg over it, it [...]

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Poor Man’s Feijoada – Beans cooked with Pork

January 28, 2010

Feijoada pronouncing the ‘j’ like you would in ‘Jack’ and not the Spanish way of an ‘s’ sound, if you type into the search engine you’ll have lots of pages on examples of Brazilian feijoda with black beans, fresh and salted pork, fresh and dried beef, cured sausages, blood sausages, quite an extensive list of [...]

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A Different Kind of Roast Chicken

January 26, 2010

There are those like my cousin’s wife who do not like roast chicken because they had it so often as a kid that now as an adult it doesn’t float their boat. In our house I can’t go long without a roast chicken the girls look forward to it and for the cook it provides [...]

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From Ordinary Mushrooms to Sublime Mushrooms

January 19, 2010

This is a delicious dish, an intense earthy sweet mushroom dish which can be used any which way you so wish, lots of flavour for little money. You can add stock to it and turn it into soup or make pasta sauce with it, you can evaporate the juice further and put them on bruschetta/crostini, [...]

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Miso Noodles – Easy Way To Eat Japanese

January 15, 2010

It seems the snow is finally thawing and you can feel a sigh of relief from people as I do my weekly shop. Here I am, halfway through the month, supposedly the worst and most depressing month in our calendar. Lack of sunlight and by now we’re fed up with the cold, feeling poorer having [...]

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New Year and Not Quite New Decade – Chicken Tagine

January 2, 2010

New Year’s eve at our friends Steve and Lynnette’s and the conversation after having gone through, ‘I don’t know why people are celebrating a new decade since it doesn’t start until the end of 2010!’ yes Steve we felt your annoyance inevitably came around to resolutions. I think we’re getting a bit too old because [...]

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Gurnard In Tomato Sauce with Star Anise

December 5, 2009

This post was suppose to be about my butternut squash soup spiced with coriander seeds but the day didn’t quite go as planned and what came out of the kitchen today was a vegetable soup, which in fact did contained coriander spice, but it also had a lot of leeks and according to the family [...]

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Slow Tomato Sauce

June 30, 2009

This is a really simple tomato recipe but like all simple things it requires a little bit of attention. The most important ingredient is obviously the tomatoes, but more importantly is the ripeness of the tomatoes. When I visit Portugal one of the single most enjoyable flavours I look forward to is the flavour of [...]

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Rojões – Portuguese Pork with Cumin and White Wine

June 10, 2009

Cooking rojões always takes me back to my Gran. I picture her standing over the stove on which there’s a huge pot, wearing her blue apron, wooden spoon in hand turning around asking me if I want a rojõe to keep me going until lunch was ready. You’re never allowed to be hungry when my [...]

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