A Stable Diet

Due to the stress of coursework and impending exams, I haven’t been cooking much lately. Instead, I’ve been drinking copious amounts of wine and eating my weight in leftover cake from Chris’s grandparents 50th wedding anniversary - not that I’m complaining. When I have managed to muster the energy to cook, it’s been comfort food - the type that gets you through the tough last few weeks of the uni year. I’ve been searching for recipes that fit the bill, and came across this belter…

I am a huge fan of American style BBQ. But like most people, I was convinced that we wouldn’t be able to make anything of the same quality that you get from joints like Bodean’s or Tony Roma’s - which, despite being a chain restaurant, makes some bloody good ribs! One morning last week, though, I was watching This Morning (i.e. avoiding uni work) and witnessed Gizzi Erskine make these yummy wings with such ease that I had to give it a try.

They are so cheap, simple, and easy that you HAVE to try them.

(Recipe taken from itv.com/thismorning)

For the chicken wings:

• 20 chicken wings cut into winglets by cutting through each of the joints, keeping the 2 meaty pieces and discarding the wing tips to make 40 pieces
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the barbecue sauce:

• 150ml tomato ketchup
• 120ml cider vinegar
• 4 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp hot sauce, or sweet chilli sauce if you’d like it more mild
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• ½ tsp salt
• Black pepper

For the blue cheese dressing:

• 100g blue cheese, preferably Gorgonzola
• 200ml soured cream
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve:

• 4 celery stalks, cleaned, each one cut into 4 small stalks

For the potato skins:

• 3 medium baking potatoes, pricked
• 6 spritz’s of olive oil
• Sea salt and black pepper

Method:

For the chicken and dressing:

1. Preheat the oven to 220C/gas 7. Lay the chicken pieces on a large baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pop them into the oven and let them roast for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180C/gas 4 and cook for a further 40 minutes.

2. To make the barbecue sauce, put all the ingredients together in a pan and let it bubble away for 3-5 minutes to thicken up a little. Taste and add more seasoning if necessary.

3. Thirty minutes before the end of the chicken wings’ cooking time, take them out of the oven and coat them in half the barbecue sauce. Then, when fully cooked, toss them in the rest of the sauce so that they become sticky. They are just as delicious served straight from the oven as they are cold.

4. While the chicken is in the oven, it’s the perfect time to get on with the blue cheese dressing. Mash together the cheese, soured cream, lemon juice and salt and pepper until combined (a few lumps are nice though).

5. Serve the wings with the celery stalks and the blue cheese dressing.

For the stuffed potato skins:

1. Heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Bake the potatoes until tender - this should take about 45 minutes. Cool and cut each potato into 4 wedges. Scoop out most of the cooked potato (keep and use for mash or fishcakes - you can freeze it), leaving a shell of potato and skin about 8mm thick. Spritz with oil on both sides and season.

2. Put on a baking tray, set on top of an oven tray. Bake for 30 minutes or until crisp and golden.

My Tips:

For the BBQ sauce, hot sauce is VITAL. We used Cholula’s Chipotle hot sauce, and the BBQ sauce turned out incredible. Smoked paprika is also integral to the smokey BBQ taste. Since we obviously don’t have the capacity to smoke the meat, it’s the only way that you can replicate the taste.

Also, if you want to cut down the cooking time of the potato skins, you can quarter the baked potatoes and carefully cut out the majority of the flesh - although this doesn’t allow for the skins to crisp up quite as much as you might like. It does, however, allow you to eat the skins after 30 mins or so. Saying that, the chicken wings take about an hour, so you might as well do it the long way!

Enjoy! And Happy Easter! 

Anna x

Anyone who knows Chris and I will know that we are completely infatuated will all things Mexican. Chilli is a weekly staple in our house - the ultimate comfort food! Chris is in charge of cooking this recipe, and has gradually adapted it as we’ve increased our tolerance of heat, and as better ingredients have become more easily available.

I began making Guacomole from scratch after making one of Jamie Oliver’s ‘30 Minute Meals’ recipes, which used it as a side with spicy baked salmon. The recipe has been adapted slightly to our personal taste, but sticks to the traditional guacomole structure! We can no longer face buying supermarket guacomole - this recipe is so quick, easy and cheap that it just doesn’t make sense to.

For the Chilli (Serves approx 6):

500g lean minced beef

Half of a ring of Chorizo sausage (either cooking Chorizo, or cured - doesn’t matter!)

1 onion

4 garlic cloves

2 red chillis, seeds left in (use more or less according to your preference)

1 tin kidney beans

1 tin mixed mexican beans (usually a mix of black, pinto and kidney beans) - we use these as they are available in our local Asda. If you are lucky to live near a Mexican deli like Lupe Pintos, make sure you take advantage of their great selection of tinned beans.

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon of Cumin

1 tablespoon of Paprika (smoked if you have it)

1/2 tablespoon of Cinnamon

Small bunch of fresh Coriander (keep some to serve)

Method:

1. Sauté your chopped onion, garlic and chillis in a large pan until soft. Add the chorizo, and fry until the onion takes on the colour of the sausage.

2. Add the mince, and fry until brown.

3. Add the tinned tomatoes and stir.

4. Prepare your spices - chop 3/4 of the coriander (saving the rest to serve), and measure out your spices. Add these to the mixture. Stir well, and leave to simmer for 5-10 minutes.

5. Add the beans, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Leave the chilli to cook for as long as you can on a low heat. The longer you are able to let it simmer, the better. At a minimum, we leave ours for 45 minutes.

For the Guacomole:

1 ripe avacado

3 or 4 spring onions (depending on size)

1 red chilli (seeds removed)

1 garlic clove

1 handful of plum/cherry tomatoes

3 limes

a handful of coriander

extra virgin olive oil

Method:

You will need a blender, or a hand blender with a container attachment.

1. Place the spring onions, tomatoes, garlic and chilli in the blender. Chop together, but don’t blitz to a pulp!

2. Add the avocado, the coriander, a generous gulp of extra virgin olive oil, the juice of the limes and zest of one of them. Blend to your preferred consistency - I know some people like it smooth, and some chunky!

3. Season with plenty of salt and a little pepper, stir, and serve in a bowl or resealable tub if you don’t think it’ll get finished up! It will keep for about 3/4 days in the fridge if you squeeze a little more lime juice on top - this prevents discolouration!

We love our chilli and guacomole with refried beans, cheese, sour cream, jalapenos, and our favourite hot sauce Cholula as a burrito - can’t beat it! But these two are amazing with nachos, tacos, enchiladas or simply on their own.

Anna x

This Sunday I bring to you one of our most loved recipes - my variation on the traditional Arabic Tabbouleh. We eat this at least once a week, and its a particularly good one to make at the start of the week to have for lunches over the next few days.

Whilst a traditional Tabbouleh incorporates flat-leaf parsley and mint, we often use coriander as we usually have some left over. Having tried both variations, though, I can assure you that they are both equally as tasty.

For my Tabbouleh:

1 cup Bulgar Wheat

3 vine-ripened tomatoes

1/2 red onion

1/2 pepper (I don’t actually usually use this, but had it leftover in the fridge)

1 large handful of coriander

2 lemons

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Method:

To soften up the bulgar wheat, you need to soak it in just over 1/2 cup of water of boiling water. Place the bulgar wheat in a bowl with a dash of extra virgin olive oil (this stops it from sticking together), pour over the water and cover for at least a half hour.

Chop all your ingredients - apart from your herbs - as fine as you can. I find using a serrated knife particularly useful for doing this (unless you have incredible knives!). Combine them all in a large bowl - ensuring that you keep all the tomato juices - and add the juice of the two lemons, as well as a good lug of the olive oil. 

Once the bulgar wheat has soaked, add it to the other ingredients and stir well. Roughly chop and add the coriander (or parsley and mint if you choose to use it). Season the mixture with salt and pepper, tasting as you go. Once done, I like to leave the mixture in the fridge for a good hour before indulging - this allows the bulgar wheat to soak up all the yummy juices and for the flavours to develop.

Serve with salad, as part of a mezze platter, in pittas with Halloumi and leaves, with Chilli, with a tagine… It’s gorgeous alone but is also a very versatile side-dish!

Anna x

Whilst this is predominantly a food blog, I feel compelled to post this video in hope that it might reach another few people. Awareness can change the world!

Good afternoon y’all!

Hope you’re all having a relaxing Sunday. After getting my dissertation printed yesterday I have been in high spirits. Last night, in order to celebrate, Chris and I made a special dessert, had a gorgeous bottle of wine and watched Son of Ranbow. Having been stressed for the past few weeks, I of course fell asleep half way through the film… But the parts I did see were charming and hilarious!

Anyway, Chris and I don’t often make desserts. If we have a craving for something sweet, we usually just grab some lemon sorbet or Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s from the supermarket. If its a special occasion, I’ll make a lemon cheesecake, but Chris isn’t too big on cake cakes (like Victoria Sponge etc.) so it’s a rarity that we’ll seek out a dessert recipe.

This one, on the other hand, we discovered when watching Channel 4’s ‘The Fabulous Baker Brothers’, which screened recently on a Wednesday night. It was on the first episode, and we instantly thought ‘we gotta make that!’. So, we did. Here they are, the wonderful, Sticky Sticks!

Now - ‘what are they?’ - you ask. Well, Sticky Sticks are essentially long doughnuts, rolled in sugar and orange zest, and smothered in a dark chocolate sauce - they are devine!

Here’s how you can whip some up for yourself.

(Taken from the Channel 4 website)

• Question: Hey AnnaandChris, really like the look of your Greek salad with Halloumi, and I fo sure going to make it for the kids tonight. How often are you planning on posting new recipes? - fabfoody
• Answer:

  Hey fabfoody,

  Thanks for your comment, I’m glad you think enough of it to feed it to your kids! I hope to post as many recipes as I can. I will be finishing off my dissertation this week so should have more time as of next week!

Welcome to Munchin’!

I’ve always wanted to start a food blog, yet I feared that mine might get lost in the abyss of food blogs that has appeared over the past couple of years. But since Chris and I invested in a fabulous new Canon 550D, I thought I better put it - and my cooking - to good use.

I don’t want anyone to think that I consider myself a brilliant cook - not by any stretch of the imagination! But Chris and I do make a special effort to eat well nowadays, and I hope that I can impart some wisdom (i.e. some recipes) on others, as I believe its probably one of the best gifts that you can give someone. Every now and then we come across a great recipe and latch on to it as if it might escape - these are the recipes that I will post up.

Nevertheless, I am beginning this blog with a recipe that Chris and I only discovered today, but of which we’ve been making a variation of for a long time. It’s a fragrant Greek salad made without salad leaves, but with parsley and mint - topped off with some crispy fried halloumi… Yum! Credit goes to Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall for this one.

(Serves 2)

For the salad:

• A handful of flat-leaf parsley
• A handful of mint leaves
• Half a cucumber (cut into cubes)
• A large handful of cherry tomatoes (halved)
• 1 red onion (halved and finely sliced)
• A handful of olives (black or green, stone out)
• Halloumi
• 25g Plain flour
• 1 teaspoon of paprika

For the dressing:

• A teaspoon of honey
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 small clove of garlic (crushed)
• salt & pepper
• chilli flakes
• 3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

It’s a simple one! First combine all the ingredients for the dressing, and whisk. Chop the tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and herbs and place in a large bowl. Take a small bowl, and combine the flour and paprika. Slice the Halloumi, and dampen the slices (if not already). Dust the Halloumi in the flour and paprika mixture before placing in a pan on a medium heat with olive oil. Fry until crispy!

Then simply place the dressing over the salad, toss, and serve with the crispy Halloumi on top.

Anna x