Knickerbocker Glory

Before Chayne became pregnant we used a have a beer with our tea most nights but that's had to stop now. You would have thought that I would have lost weight in the last few months but her taste for beer has been replaced by a fondness for puddings! After finding some tall glasses at the back of the cupboard the other day, I decided to try making a knickerbocker glory but I didn't realise how massive they were until I filled them with raspberry compote, ice cream, raspberry sauce and squirty cream. No wonder I haven't lost any weight! This is scandalously bad for you and you could probably share one. We didn't.

Ingredients
210g raspberries
20g caster sugar
1 tbsp icing sugar
Vanilla ice cream (We used Carte D'Or)
Squirty cream

Recipe
1) Start by making the raspberry compote. Put 100g of raspberries in a small saucepan with the caster sugar and cook over a high heat until the raspberries start to break up. Remove from the heat and put the compote into a bowl.
2) Now for the raspberry sauce. Blend 100g of raspberries with the icing sugar and 1 tbsp water. Set aside.
3) Put a spoonful of the compote in the bottom of each tall glass. Then add a scoop of ice cream followed by a spoonful of raspberry sauce. Repeat this until you have almost filled the glass. Then add a swirl of squirty cream and plonk a raspberry on top of each one.

Extra Thick Pumpkin Soup

Of all the vegetables Chayne grows in the garden. her favourite is the pumpkin. In fact she enjoys growing them so much that she'd like to do it for a living - a bit like the late Ralph Upton, King of The Pumpkin World who grew 50 varieties in his garden. Pity then that she doesn't enjoy eating them quite as much as she does growing them! She only really likes pumpkin in a sweet pie or her own lovely extra thick spicy soup. It really is extra thick too. In fact, it's so comfortingly gloopy it has been compared (by me!) to baby food. Although, from what I've read about babies from the various books I've read in preparation for fatherhood, it wouldn't be advisable to feed this to a little one. It's a bit hot!

Ingredients
1 small pumpkin (about 500g)
2 cooked medium-sized floury potatoes
2 parsnips
2 red chillies, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Large pinch of chilli flakes
1/2 pint vegetable stock
Olive oil

recipe
1) Heat the oven to 200c. Peel the pumpkin and chop it into large chunks. Peel and chop the parsnips to the same size as the pumpkin. Sprinkle with chill flakes and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 25 minutes or until soft. Don't worry if the edges brown - this just adds to the flavour.
2) Meanwhile peel two medium sized floury potatoes (we use Maris Pipers), cut them into quarters and boil for 10-15 minutes until cooked.
3) When the pumpkin, parsnip and potato is cooked, heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large saucepan and fry the onions for five minutes. Then add the chillies and continue cooking for two minutes before adding the garlic and giving it a quick stir around for another minute. Next add the cooked pumpkin, potato and parsnip to the pan with the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Take the pan off the heat and liquidise the soup in either a food processor, blender or, even better, in the pan using one of those stick blenders. Return to the heat to warm through and serve.

Bean & Potato Stew

The picture makes this look like some potatoes with some baked beans but then that's pretty much what it is. The need to get more pulses into my wife's diet is more urgent now that she's pregnant and this is one of my more successful attempts. She doesn't really do lentils unless they're mushy and she's not too keen on big beans like butter beans -even cannellini beans are probably a few millimeters too large! So I went for haricot beans and by serving them with potatoes - Chayne's food heaven - I was hoping that her attention would be diverted away from the evil pulses. It worked! We had this with a tomato and baby leaf salad and some nice bread.

Ingredients
10 Charlotte (or any waxy) potatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 green pepper, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
400g tin of haricot beans
200 ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper

Recipe
1) Meanwhile, slice the onions, roughly chop the pepper and finely chop the garlic.
2) Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, add the onions and fry for around three minutes before adding the peppers. Continue cooking until the onions and peppers have softened, add the garlic and stir for a minute.
3) Next add the paprika and cook for a minute before adding the tomatoes, stock and beans. Season with salt and pepper and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
4) Meanwhile, chop the potatoes in half and cook them in a pan of boiling water until they're done - around 10-12 minutes should do it. Finally, add the potatoes to the stew and stir around.

Tacos

Tacos is a regular Friday night tea for us. Tacos followed by Gardener's World. Rock n roll. People can be a bit sniffy about Tacos. Maybe its Eminem's fault (he famously used to take a Taco Bell cook on tour with him) or perhaps its because they're not authentically Mexican. Who cares? After spending a couple of weeks in Mexico this summer I think I might actually prefer the American Tex Mex take on Mexican food anyway. That's not to say I didn't like Mexican food - It was pretty good but I did get sick of refried beans with every single meal. And the grasshoppers weren't great. We used the crunchy Tacos you buy in the shop and filled them with vegetarian chilli, salad leaves, grated cheese, Chayne's salsa and sour cream. We also like this chilli on a jacket potato and we often have the leftovers on toast the next day.

Salsa
Ingredients
8 medium tomatoes
1 green chilli
1 red chilli
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
Juice of one lime
Handful of coriander, finely chopped

Recipe
1) Finely chop the red onion, place in a bowl and cover with the juice of one lime. Set aside for 20 minutes.
2) Dry-fry the chilli until the skins are blackened. Take them off the heat, place in a bowl and cover with cling film for 20 mins. Peel the skins, deseed and finely chop.
3) Peel the tomatoes, chop and deseed them.
4) Finally put everything in a bowl and mix around with some finely chopped coriander.

Vegetarian chilli
Ingredients
175g Quorn mince
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 red pepper, roughly chopped
8 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
400g tin chopped tomatoes
6 Tacos
Grated cheddar
Salad leaves

Recipe
1) Preheat the oven to 200c. Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the onions for five minutes. Next add the peppers and mushrooms and continue cooking for around three minutes. Then add the chilli and garlic and fry for a further minute.
2) Add the chilli powder and ground cumin to the pan and stir for a minute before adding the Quorn mince and chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 20 minutes.
3) When you're ready, put the tacos into the oven and heat through for two minutes. Now you're ready to fill your tacos. It's up to you how you do it but tacos can break if they get soggy so I start with the salad leaves on the bottom followed by a spoonful of chilli and then some grated cheese.

Quorn and Pea Curry with Spicy Potatoes and Beetroot Thoran

If Chayne was famous enough to make an appearance on Saturday Kitchen, her food heaven would be potato. She loves it in all its forms but especially when mashed, chipped or roasted. In fact, she believes she should be the patron for the potato society because there isn't a greater advocate of the potato in the British Isles. This is partly one of the reasons we don't have rice with curry. That and the fact that Chayne thinks rice is borin'! On this one I'm going to agree. I'd much rather have these spicy potatoes on my plate than a spoonful of plain boiled rice. The potatoes were once featured in a Delicious Magazine Indian supplement, the Quorn and pea curry is my creation while the beetroot thoran is a recipe I picked up on an Indian cooking course I went on a few years ago. More on that another time. This will be enough for three.

Quorn and Pea Curry
Ingredients
Large handful of mint leaves
Large handful of coriander
2 green chillies, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
2.5cm piece of ginger, grated
5 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
350g Quorn pieces
1 can of coconut milk
2 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
150g peas

Recipe
1) Put the mint, coriander, green chillies, garlic cloves an ginger in a blender or mini chopper. You need to blend this into a paste with 4 tbsp of sunflower oil.
2) Dry fry the coriander and cumin seeds in a small frying pan. Grind in a spice or coffee grinder, or bash up with a pestle and mortar. Set aside.
3) Heat 1 tbsp of sunflower oil in a saucepan, add the onion and fry for five minutes. Then add all the spices and continue cooking for a minute. Next add the spice paste and stir around the pan for two further minutes. Then stir in the Quorn, add the coconut milk and simmer for 30 minutes.
4) Now for the peas. If you're using frozen peas (which is what I used by the way), put them in a jug, cover with boiling water and leave to stand for a minute. Then drain them and add them to the curry for the final five minutes.

Spicy Potatoes
Ingredients
15-20 new potatoes
2 tbsp sunflower oil
4 cardamom pods
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
2.5cm piece of ginger, grated
200g can of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp, chopped coriander

Recipe
1) Cut the potatoes in half and boil for 15 minutes or until soft. Drain and set aside.
2) Crush the cardamom pods with the back of a spoon. Heat the oil in a frying pan to reach a medium heat and add the cumin seeds, cinnamon stick and bay leaves. When they start to pop, add the potatoes, ginger, tomatoes, sugar and 100ml water. Season with salt, partially cover with foil or a lid if you have one and cook over a low heat until the sauce has reduced by half. Stir in the coriander.

Beetroot Thoran
Ingredients
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
2 tbsp grated coconut (use dessicated coconut soaked in 2 tbsp water if you can't get fresh)
3 shallots, roughly chopped
1 green chilli, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
150g fresh beetroot, grated

Recipe
1) Peel and grate the beetroot. Now you need two tablespoons of grated coconut. It is nicer fresh but if you can't get a coconut or can't be bothered with the faff (more likely!) you can use dessicated coconut. Just put it in a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of water to rehydrate.
2) Put the coconut in a mini chopper or blender with the green chilli, shallots and turmeric. Give it a quick whizz.
3) Heat the oil in a small saucepan or frying pan and add the mustard seeds. When they start to pop, add the coconut mixture and stir fry until light brown. Next add the beetroot and fry for ten minutes until it is really dry.

Linguine with Watercress and Feta

Chayne was out last night and I'd usually take this as an opportunity to eat meat or fish. I had planned to do something with the beetroot that's currently poking its head out of the soil in the garden but when I got back to Walthamstow, I was absolutely starving and couldn't be bothered to wait around for the beetroot to roast, so I picked up a bag of watercress and made a quick pestoey pasta sauce with stuff I had lying around in the cupboards. I say pestoey because I didn't have any parmesan and couldn't find any pine nuts in the kitchen even though they were right in front of my eyes. Black olives would be good, too but Asda didn't have any! Chayne returned home when I sat down to eat so I asked her to try some. "It's nice but not as good as chips," she said before putting some chips in the oven and smothering them with cheese. It's hard to disagree with a statement like that.

Ingredients
200g linguine
4 cherry tomatoes (you can have more!)
85g watercress
1 tbsp cashew nuts
1 garlic clove
1 tbsp lemon juice
6 tbsp olive oil
50g Feta cheese
1 tbsp sunflower seeds

Recipe
1) Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and stick them in the oven for 15 minutes.
2) Put the watercress, nuts, garlic clove, lemon juice and olive oil in a mini-chopper and whizz until smooth.
3) Meanwhile cook the the linguine in salted water according to the packet instructions. 10 minutes should do it.
4) While the pasta is cooking, dry fry the sunflower seeds until they're toasted and crumble some Feta.
5) Drain the pasta, return it to the pan with a spoonful of the water you cooked it in, stir in the watercress 'pesto' and serve in bowls. Spoon the tomatoes and crumbled Feta on top and sprinkle with roasted seeds.

Enchiladas

This is one of Chayne's specialities. She says she can only cook four things but that's not true. She's a very good cook and even if it were true, the four things (sausage and mash, roast dinner, spicy cottage pie and these enchiladas) are great and I'd be happy to eat them every week. Which is good as part of the pre-nup was that we had to eat sausage and mash once a week and have a roast on a Sunday. Fine by me. I'm not allowed to grow my hair either which is probably for the best, too. People who have seen pictures of me with long hair have compared me to Mick Hucknall.

Ingredients

For the salsa
8 medium tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 lime, juiced
Handful of coriander, roughly chopped

For the enchiladas
4 flour tortillas
250ml creme fraiche
125g mozzarella, sliced
150g cheddar, grated

Recipe
1) First make the salsa. Finely chop the red onion (if you have one of those mini chopper things, now is the time to use it!). Put in a bowl and cover with the juice of one lime. Leave for 20 minutes.
2) Dry fry the chillis in a frying pan until the skin is blackened. Place in a sealable sandwich bag or Tupperware box with a lid and leave for 20 minutes. Skin, deseed and finely chop them.
3) Skin and the tomatoes. To do this you should put a slit in each of the tomatoes, cover in boiling water and leave them for a few minutes or until you can peel them easily. Alternatively, buy a soft fruit peeler (available at Lakeland and other well known kitchen shops) and peel the things. Much quicker and you won't burn your fingers. However you skin your tomatoes, you'll need to deseed and chop them next.
4) Roughly chop the coriander, put it a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and mix together.
5) Now you're ready to make the enchiladas. Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Slice the mozzarella (you might as well eat your end slices as they'll be too small) and put one slice in the centre of a tortilla. Dollop about three desert spoons of salsa on top and put another spoonful of creme fraiche on top of that. Roll into a sausage shape. Repeat this with the remaining tortillas, put then all in a glass pyrex dish and cover with grated cheddar. Put the dish in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with a salad. We like to use tomatoes, spring onion and baby leaves with a lime dressing made with one tablespoon of lime juice, three tablespoons of olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Quorn, Mushroom & Leek Pie

My first recipe uses a substance that seems to divide vegetarians. Quorn. Not surprising really, considering that it is as unnatural as Angel Delight (something my wife loves, incidentally). Wikipedia tells me that Quorn is a mycoprotein made from a processed edible fungus. It doesn't say which fungus but, either way, it's not mentioned on the packaging. But then chicken-style pieces does sound more appetising than mycoprotein edible fungus pieces. Still, my wife does need her protein and I'm not quite brave enough to introduce the chick pea to her diet yet so I made this pie. It serves four and is a good option for a vegetarian Sunday dinner served with my wife's amazing roast potatoes, roast beetroot and swiss chard. I'll write more about these another time.

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 leek, halved lengthways and sliced
125g mushrooms, sliced
350g Quorn Pieces
1 small glass of white wine
125g creme fraiche
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp chopped chives
250g puff pastry
1 egg

Recipe
1) Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and add the leeks. Fry for five minutes until soft and then add the mushrooms. Continue to cook for a couple of minutes before adding the Quorn and frying for a further two minutes.

2) Now add the wine. You must reduce this right down until there isn't much liquid left. Then take the pan off the heat and add three heaped dessert spoons of creme fraiche (about 125g) and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Season with plenty of salt and pepper and cook on a medium heat until the sauce has thickened and reduced a bit. It should be at the same level as the Quorn. Spoon it into your pie dish
.
3) If you've bought a 500g block of puff pastry, cut it in half and make it into a ball with your hands. Then roll it out into a circle about 1 inch thick. Drape it over your pie filling, trim the sides and make three slashes in the top. Then beat the egg and brush the top of your pastry. Put it in the oven and cook for twenty minutes or until it is golden brown.

This is my wife. She's a vegetarian.



This is me. I'm not



I love meat but I also love my wife and this my attempt to find vegetarian meals that we can both eat and enjoy. It would be easier if my wife - Chayne's the name (pronounced shay-knee) - actually liked foods that vegetarians often eat. Chick peas, lentils, beans or that sort of thing. But, being from Yorkshire she's suspicious of anything a bit 'foreign'. She also doesn't like cheese. Specifically goat's cheese which, apparently, tastes like lamb smells. I've got my work cut out but I'm determined to change her stubborn ways.