Topic: Ok.. inspiration needed..so what are you cooking for dinner tonight

[Jeannine]

I hate this question, and yet I ask myself it every day, so go for it folks, maybe we can help each other.

Pretty basic tonight for me though.

lamb chops, mash, sprouts, carrots and gravy followed by steamed treacle pudding and custard.

XX Jeannine

[Obelixx]

Roast leg of lamb studded with rosemary and cooked pink.  Beetroot from teh garden peeled, chunked and roast with garlic and the stems and leaves sautéed quickly in abit of butter and plenty of black pepper.  Sauce made interesting with shallots, stock, red wine, mustard and home made and grown spiced blackurrant jelly.

Pud is blackberry crumble with fruit picked about 2 hours ago.  Yum yum.

Bon appetit.

[Jeannine]

You know in all my life I have never roasted a beetroot, can;t think why. So//my lamb chops still frozen are back in the freezer and I have a leg of lamb out for tomorrow..so forgive me if  I copy you..

Now for tonight, think I will do a bit of lasagna, just don't want any leftovers today.

Thank you for the ideas. U can't do the blackberry crumble as we didn't get to pick them this year and they are all finished here, but I could do blueberry  or rhubarb and strawberry. I do have homemade blackcurrant jelly but not spices, tell me how you add that to your sauce, I am a bit old fashioned where lamb is concerned and tend to stick to rosemary and mint, but I will have a go.

XX Jeannine

[Duke Ellington]

We had moussaka tonight but instead of the usual aubergine layers I used courgettes as the allotment is still producing them. OH had seconds!!!

Duke

[Obelixx]

Hi Jeannine.  I make the blackurrant jelly in the usual way - boiling and then straining the fruit through muslin and adding sugar according to the quantity but during the boiling phase I add a stick or two of cinnamon, some cloves and sometimes some star anise.   The resulting jelly is then good on toast, on open sandwiches with soft white cheese such as ricotta or Philly and also used in sauces for meat or game where you might use redcurrant jelly.

Roast beetroot is fab.  I only chunked mine tonight to save cooking time but it can be done whole.  We prefer mint jelly to mint sauce.  Gentler on the tongue and the lamb.

I have a recipe from a chef called Marion Jones who roasts her leg of lamb boned, butterflied and then rolled up with a stuffing of garlic, ginger, rosemary, spring onions and soy.  It's luscious.  No mint sauce needed.

[galina]

Nothing special.  Fried chicken thighs,  Boiled potatoes.  Beans and cauli done in the steamer.  Took the fried chickens out of the saucepan and put sliced courgettes into the remaining fat and cooking juices.  Sliced an elephant garlic clove on top of the courgettes, stirred and left to finish for a few minutes with lid on.  Made tomato salad with a bit of ground pepper, olive oil and thyme.

[Jeannine]

Thanks Galina, that replaces the lamb chops that got bumped.. sounds delish.

O.B...sorry that is my pet name for you, do you actually put the jelly in your sauce when you cook the lamb?

XX Jeannine

[Digeroo]

Nice piece of salmon with parsley sauce and lots of veg. Carrots, courgettes, runner beans, broccoli, potatoes.  Half price offer from supermarket for the fish and the rest came from lottie.  Also did cabbage with apple and herbs for OH.

My meals are very boring, tend to be meat or fish and vegetables.

[Obelixx]

Yes.  The sauce is made from chopped shallotts softened in dry sherry or martini rosso depending on whteher I'm doing fish or poultry or red meat.  Then add stock, juices from the lamb and reduce down.  Add a spoonful of red or blackcurrant jelly and ticken, if needed with slaked cornflour.  I also added a spoonful of Dijon mustard to this one but you could add garlic, herbs, whatever you fancy.

[Mrs Tweedy]

Belly of pork in BBQ spices, cold smoked for 4 hours and then rotisseried over charcoal and applewood, with chips, coleslaw and salad, with a homemade chipotles bbq sauce.

Fruit salad and salted caramel icecream and peanut butter icecream. All homemade.

[Obelixx]

Sounds fab.  How do you make salted caramel ice cream?

Here, for Jeannine is the Marion Jones recipe for lamb:-

Leg of Lamb with Rosemary, Ginger and Soy

For 8 to 10 people

2.75 kg   leg of lamb
60g   butter
½   onion, sliced thinly
2 level tsp   flour
150ml   dry white wine
300ml   light stock
1 level tsp   sugar
   Orange juice

Stuffing:-
1 tsp   ginger, peeled and chopped finely – save the peelings
2 cloves   garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 bunch   spring onions, trimmed and sliced
2 handsful   parsley leaves – save the stalks
Sprig   rosemary
1 dsp   Dijon mustard
1 dsp   soy sauce

Coating:-
1 dsp    Dijon mustard
3 dsp   soy sauce
1 dsp   sunflower or grape seed oil
1 clove   garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tsp   ground ginger
Few leaves   rosemary, chopped

Begin by opening up the leg of lamb down one side and removing the bone.

Combine all the stuffing ingredients and spread them on the cut surface then roll up the leg again and secure with a skewer then tie with string to keep its shape.  All this can be done in advance and placed in the fridge but the meat must be brought back to room temperature before cooking.

Preheat the oven to 220C.  Mix the coating ingredients together.  Place the lamb on a rack in a roasting pan and coat with half the mixture.  Dot with butter.   Roast for 1.25 hours, basting every 20 minutes.  For the last half hour, turn the joint over and coat with the rest of the mixture.  Baste again after 15 minutes.

Transfer the meat, on its rack, to a deeper dish and cover tightly with two layers of foil and then thick, folded towels to retain the heat.  Leave to rest 20 to 30 minutes before serving.

Pour off the excess fat from the cooking juices and add the sliced onion to the juices.  Cook till lightly browned then sprinkle on the flour and stir well.  Add the ginger peelings, parsley stalks with the wine, stock.  Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 5 minutes.  Strain and season to taste with the sugar and a squeeze of orange juice.

Serve the lamb and sauce with Italian style roast new potatoes (garlic, rosemary and olive oil) or plain new potatoes and either a green vegetable such a s broccoli or a green salad.

Marion and her husband ran an excellent restaurant in Malvern Wells and this recipe featured in a series that Jane Grigson did on British cuisine for the Observer about 25 years ago.

[Jeannine]

OOOh thankyou, as luck would have it we didn't get the lamb cooked yesterday. John went to put the lamb chops in the freezer but put them in the fridge so we had  chicken and lamb chops so cook on Saturday so yesterday ended up  as a funny sort of leftover mix of both!!

I will do that lovely lamb another Sunday.

Today is going to spare ribs and rice, not sure yet which way to go on the flavouring, that will come when I go to do them.

XX Jeannine

[Obelixx]

I hope you'll like it.

I did Rogo Josh with the left over lamb this evening.   Possum pulled a face when I told her but then loved thearoma of the spices as I prepared it and enjoyed her supper. OH is out at a committee meeting so din't get any.  Poor OH.

[Jeannine]

Last night we had   Plaki, I bend the rules a bit and add some smoked sausage to it sometimes then I make French bread, a side salad and we just tuck in.

I also made clam chowder, managed to get some lovely fresh clams so had to go for it. Dessert was Banoffi pie.

Not sure about tonight, I took a bag of drumsticks out of the freezer, still pondering my options with those. Dessert will be bread and butter pudding by request.

Tomorrow will be any left overs, breakfast for dinner, bacon, eggs, sausage etc etc, it is too much forn us as a breakfast these days LOL

Sunday is Michaelmas so I get to cook my goose and for dessert  apple dumplings cooked in blackberries with a dollop of cream on top.

XX Jeannine.

[artichoke]

Lovely to read about people going to such trouble with their food and enjoying it so much. My husband barely notices what he eats and would be happy with bought pizza daily - or when still single he would make a huge pot of watery beef stew with few flavourings apart from a tin of tomatoes, and make it last the week. No pasta, no curry, nothing unusual, and not too keen on most of my allotment vegetables. Really REALLY likes boil-in-the-bag frozen cod in an insipid grey "parsley sauce". Tips "salad cream" thickly over all my salads to get them down. So my cooking is a tricky compromise between what he will agree to eat and my own favourites.

He is 80 today! and I give myself the credit that, apart from well-controlled diabetes, he is the strong and healthy man I see before me, thanks to being force fed for a couple of decades with fresh veg, daily salads and fruit.

We take turns in cooking during the autumn and winter months and I don't know what he is planning tonight. If it were me, and he was out, based on what I know we have in the house, it would be a mound of chewy spaghetti plastered with a sauce of finely chopped fresh kale, mushrooms and summer squash with bits of butternut, lots of fresh herbs, some cream, and grated cheese. Ojala, as the Spanish say...

[Melbourne12]

Tomorrow night we have our vegetarian daughter-in-law coming over.  So, seeing as the cooler weather is here, we're going to do a raclette.  We've still got a few home-grown spuds, plus onions, a fortuitous crop of mushrooms from last year's mushroom compost, tomatoes, and spinach.  No peppers this year, so we might have to buy some of those.  Home pickled cornichons.

We MIGHT, just MIGHT, hand separately some crispy bacon bits for the non-veggies amongst us.   

[Jeannine]

Can you not get the artificial bacon bits over there, certainly not the same but for the veggie folks they are legal..XX Jeannine