Family food adventures – because it's fun to play with your food
With Jack Frost nipping at our toes, the time for warming, hearty comfort food is most definitely here. And if it’s quick and easy to rustle up, so much the better.
This simple Chicken Tortilla Bake is a firm family favourite, and so easy to throw together with a few frozen veggies. It’s basically a lasagne with flour tortillas replacing the pasta sheets. Continue reading “Chicken tortilla bake”
Today is Stir Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent and traditionally the day for making Christmas puddings and cakes. We, however, are breaking slightly with tradition here at Chez Bangers. Instead of making our usual Amaretto Christmas cake, this year we’ve gone for something slightly different. Continue reading “Chocolate fruit cake for Christmas”
If you’re looking for a gift for the foodie bloke in your life, can I recommend this latest title from Haynes. Yes, that’s right. Haynes, as in the publisher of the popular car manuals.
Following on from their success with the Haynes Baby Manual , they’re now taking a foray into the world of cookbooks, namely in the form of manly pies. The Men’s Pie Manual is written by food journalist and author, Andy Webb, who has also been a judge at the British Pie Awards since 2011, so he should know a good pie when he sees one.
They’ve got the look and tone of the Men’s Pie Manual just right – that 70s DIY manual feel is all there. And with a quote on the cover from the blokiest of TV chefs, the gert lush Tom Kerridge, Haynes clearly feel there’s a booming market out there for lads, as opposed to chaps, in the kitchen. Continue reading “Bangin’ books: Men’s Pie Manual, plus a hearty oxtail and beef cheek pie”
I realise beetroot’s appearing rather a lot on this blog at the moment. I think I might actually be addicted to the stuff. Which is handy, as we have rather a lot in the veg patch and they keep turning up in the weekly veg box too.
Beetroot and chocolate muffins are a bit of a favourite here and for some reason I was seized by the idea of throwing in some chopped prunes when I baked a batch last week. I know it sounds a bit odd, but it’s good to experiment. Continue reading “Chocolate, beetroot and prune muffins”
Last month on Family Foodies we invited food bloggers to share their ideas for fun, tasty recipes to cook with kids and you rose to the challenge brilliantly. If you’re looking for new ways to encourage your children to get active in the kitchen, this recipe round-up is just what you need… Continue reading “Cool recipes to cook with kids: the Family Foodies round-up”
Here’s one final recipe idea to tie in with British Sausage Week, plus a neat way to use up leftover mashed potato.
Ever so quick and easy to make, these potato cakes are a tasty accompaniment to your favourite bangers and are great as part of a traditional Full English cooked breakfast. I’ve served mine here with some delicious pork, apple and chive sausages, part of the ‘alternative sausage selection’ from online butchers, Donald Russell. Continue reading “Easy mashed potato cakes”
In case yesterday’s post wasn’t quite sausagey enough for you, here’s another brilliant banger recipe. It is British Sausage Week after all, and could there be a more traditionally British way to eat bangers than in good old toad in the hole?
Like most children, my daughters love mini versions of most foods and these mini toads were a big hit this weekend. As well as having the dinky factor, individual Yorkshires mean you get just the right ratio of crispy crunch to soft, squidgy pud. Continue reading “Mini toad in the holes with caramelised onion”
Shakshuka is one of our favourite weekend brunch dishes. It’s essentially a spiced tomato and pepper stew with eggs poached on top and hails originally from North Africa. As you may have noticed, I’m a sucker for any dish that comes with an egg on top.
We play around with the ingredients of our shakshuka quite a bit – it’s one of those versatile dishes that lends itself to experimentation. This particular variation is very good and very satisfying, bringing together flavours of North Africa with elements of a Full English, namely sausage and potato. If you happen to have either or both of these leftover in your fridge, it’s the perfect way to put them to good use.
The addition of sausage is rather fitting as this week is British Sausage Week, an annual celebration of the traditional Great British Banger. We adore sausages here at Chez Bangers, as you might have guessed, but we are very fussy about the sausages we buy. Only proper bangers with a high meat content from happy pigs make it onto our table.
For this shakshuka, I used delicious Cumberland pork and honey sausages from Donald Russell, an award-winning online butcher. They are beautifully flavoured with herbs and spices and there’s a subtle sweetness from the honey, which works so well with the spicy vegetable stew. All Donald Russell sausages are made with Freedom Food pork shoulder meat as standard.
Make sure you serve this up with lots of crusty white bread for mopping up all those gorgeous spicy juices and runny egg yolk.
Serves 3 to 4
1 tsp cumin seeds
4 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, halved and sliced
1 red and 1 green pepper, sliced
2 bay leaves
handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
6 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
½ tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
4 good quality pork sausages, grilled and chopped into bitesize chunks
3 medium potatoes, boiled and diced
3 or 4 eggs (1 per person)
Dry roast the cumin seeds in a large frying pan for a couple of minutes, before adding the oil and onions. Gently cook the onions for 5 minutes, then add the peppers, bay leaves and thyme. Continue to cook gently for 10 to 15 minutes.
Next add the chopped tomatoes, cayenne and season to taste. Turn the heat down low and cook for another 15 minutes. Then stir in the cooked sausages and potatoes.
Preheat oven to 180°C / gas mark 4.
Pour the stew into a large, flat, ovenproof dish. Using the back of a ladle or large spoon, make ‘dents’ in the stew into which you then break your eggs. Place the dish carefully in the oven and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until the eggs are just cooked – the whites should be set but the yolk still runny.
Serve immediately with lots of fresh, white bread.
Disclosure: I received a selection of complimentary sausages and sausage products from Donald Russell for review and recipe development. No money exchanged hands and all opinions expressed are my own. For details of the full range visit www.donaldrussell.com.
This tasty and very satisfying pasta dish is brought to you courtesy of Chop Sizzle Wow; a new cookbook bringing together 50 quick and easy classic Italian recipes from the bible of Italian home cooking, The Silver Spoon, in a fun and engaging cartoon format.
I was sent a review copy, and as the press release said it is perfect for cooks young and old, I decided to put the children to work testing out one of the recipes.
Our chosen recipe was rigatoni with meatballs. Except we didn’t have any rigatoni, nor did the corner shop, so we went with penne instead. Jess and Mia loved the cartoon concept of the book and found the recipe fairly easy to follow, but they definitely needed some adult assistance from time to time; such as when they couldn’t get the meatballs to fry and brown without them disintegrating. At this point I stepped in and cooked up the meatballs in a separate frying pan.
But all in all the dish was a resounding success and the end result was very good. I think it’s one the kids will want to cook again. Oh, and they also have their eye on several recipes in the desserts section, such as the Chocolate Delight and the Stuffed Peaches.
The recipes in Chop Sizzle Wow are brilliantly simple and very easy to follow, although you probably do need a little kitchen nouse to fill in some of the gaps.
The book is divided into five sections: appetizers, pasta, main courses, deserts and baking, and extra stuff. There’s also a witty introduction giving an overview on how Italians cook and eat.
The illustrations by Brazilian illustrator and artist Adriano Rampazzo (a recent graduate of London’s Central St Martin’s art college) are fantastic and I’m sure this book will appeal to comic book fans, as well as those looking for an easy introduction to Italian cookery. I think it would make a great Christmas present for students returning to their uni digs after the holidays.
If you’d like to try those tasty meatballs yourself, here’s the recipe…
300g minced meat (our pack was 400g and we used all of it)
Half a clove of garlic (we used a full one – who saves half a clove?)
1 onion
1 carrot
1 celery stick
1 sprig parsley (we decided this wasn’t enough, and used a small bunch)
1 sprig rosemary
1 egg
350g rigatoni (we used penne)
plain flour for dusting
3 tbsp olive oil
400ml passata
25g grated Parmesan
Serves 4
Thinly slice the onion.
Chop the garlic.
Chop the carrots and celery.
Chop the parsley.
Chop the rosemary.
Lightly beat the egg.
Mix the meat, parsley and garlic. Then season and mix in the egg. Shape into small balls. Dust with flour.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan on a low heat.
Cook the onion, carrot, celery and rosemary for five minutes on a low heat.
Increase the heat to medium and add the meatballs. Cook until lightly browned all over. (This is where I had to jump in and rescue the meatballs because they were falling apart. I fried them in a separate pan and then added them back to the vegetables.)
Season and add the passata. Simmer for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta for 10 minutes, or according to packet instructions.
Drain the pasta, then add to the meatballs. Gently stir together and serve, topped with pasta.
Delizioso!
Chop Sizzle Wow is available from the Phaidon online store and costs £12.95.
As this dish is a perfect one for older children to make themselves, I am entering it into the Family Foodies challenge, which I host with Eat Your Veg, where the theme for October is Cooking With Kids.
Disclosure: I was sent a complimentary copy of Chop Sizzle Wow from Phaidon Press for review purposes. No money exchanged hands and all opinions expressed are my own.
There is nothing that shouts out autumn to me more than beetroot. You might have gathered by now I’m ever so slightly addicted to this perfectly purple vegetable and I reckon the best way to eat it is simply roasted, when it goes all sticky and sweetly caramelised. Just delicious.
Roast beetroot is the predominant ingredient in this gloriously robust salad. It is inspired in part by a recipe by Tom Hunt’s from his brilliant cookbook The Natural Cook and also by a Riverford recipe which partners the roast beetroot with slices of nectarine, which is just the most brilliant pairing. Continue reading “Roast beetroot with labneh, nectarine and cumin”
Bangers & Mash 