corned beef pie

Photo from Paul Townsend This one is a real blast from the past. I used to make it quite often back in the 70s and 80s, but I’m not sure when I last made it. Years and years, for sure. I had a bowl of cooked potatoes in the fridge, and thought “why not?”. So: cut…

a chicken pie

(I said it was a busy weekend). The last of last weekend’s roast chicken was languishing in a bowl in the fridge, and the weather forecast was Not Nice. So we decided that A Pie was called for. Due to the unexpected trip to Lakeland, I started the filling in the tiny slow cooker before…

christmas cakes 2013

  Please excuse the chocolate dinosaur cakes. They were an experiment which clearly needs more work. No wonder the bloody creatures are extinct. I actually got round to doing my Christmas cakes reasonably early (for me) this year. And inspired by my friend Jane’s most excellent, if sporadic, food blog, I have done them slightly…

oat and molasses bread

Left with the rest of the jar of molasses that Real Foods kindly sent me to try, I decided to give this recipe a go. It meant I had to dig my American cup measures out for the first time in ages, and if I want to make it again, I’l translate the recipe into…

I don't *always* cook from scratch …

On the rare occasions we have Yorkie Puds, I make my own. But it’s faff, and fuel, and as there’s only two of us as a rule, it’s hardly worth an egg’s worth of batter.  I had to pop (or nip) up to Jackson’s for a lemon this morning, thought “what the hell”, and picked…

breakfast frittata

Half a bag of spinach to use up … Diced two rashers of back bacon, a few mushrooms, half a green pepper* and half a red onion, and put them in the shallow pan of the Remoska with a little olive oil for 15 minutes (switched it on, obviously!). Beat four eggs with some seasoning…

haricot beans and cabbage

  The remains of the haricots from the shepherds’ pie mix. What to do with them? There was a cabbage in the fridge. There’s nearly always a cabbage in the fridge, and we are very samey with the way we use it, so I thought I’d do a little experiment. So I chopped about 30g of…

cheesy irish potato scones

Potato scones are a doddle. 3-2-1 potato, flour, butter or marg. I usually do 150g of spud, but there was 225g leftover from last night and really, what am I going to do with 3oz of mash? To hell with it, it’s Friday, I used it all. So – rub flour and marg/butter together to…

stuff to use up today

  Leftover haricot?ish beans, and some cheesy mash, both from last night’s shepherds’ pie.

shepherds' pie

[apologies for the poor quality of the photograph – it looks better than this] I love shepherds’ pie. I don’t dislike its poorer cousin, cottage pie (made with beef), but much better is a cottage pie, made with lamb mince. So as I have a couple of friends coming for supper tonight, I popped into Normans…